There’s A Right Way To Wash Your Hands And You Definitely Haven’t Been Doing It

We’ve all given ‘judging you’ eyes to that person in the public loos who breezes out the door without so much as glancing at the sink, while we smugly wash our own hands.

But unless you’re spending close to a minute at the sinks, you’re definitely in no position to throw shade. That’s according to new research in the Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology journal, which says the ideal hand-washing process takes six (very detailed) steps and should last around 43 seconds.

Here are the instructions, as per the World Health Organisation’s official guidelines.

1. Rub your hands together palm to palm.

2. Rub your right palm over the back of your left hand to clean between your left fingers. Switch hands and repeat.

3. Then place your hands palm to palm, interlacing the fingers, and rub.

4. Interlock your fingers, placing the fingertips of each hand into the palm of the other. Rub. 

5. Clean your thumbs by wrapping one hand around the other hand’s thumb and rubbing. Switch hands and repeat.

6. Finally, use the fingertips of one hand to rub circles in the other hand’s palm. Switch hands and repeat.

Wow. That’s definitely a lot to remember.

Just to complicate things further, the WHO have also made a handy printable, though it goes into so much detail that the six steps have become 11.

It’s all worth it for clean hands though, right? RIGHT?!

• germs
• health
• washing hands
• whats the right way to wash your hands