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Thank God I grew up in the era when we were taught a little dirt never hurt anyone. We were routinely exposed to just about everything. In my neighborhood, there was no such thing as a germaphobe. I was raised about a mile from what what at that time, one of the largest stock yards in the country. We dug worms for fish bait out of the piles of straw and other things that came out of the pens. If I can live through that, a few germs on my mask or in my hose don't stand a chance of bothering me.

chunkyfrog wrote:Most of us start with "normal" immunity, but we can damage it by avoiding ALL microbes,
because the harmless ones help train our immune sytem, teaching it what to do when nasty stuff happens along.

I was trying to find the words, thank you! Couldn't have put it better myself! Bring on the mud pies!

My niece had pneumonia when she was a little over a year old.
After a short stay in the hospital, she recovered; but I always suspected
my sister-in-law's compulsive cleaning had something to do with it.
The woman put Clorox on everything. Ick!
My kids played in the dirt, CONSTANTLY, and were never sick.

chunkyfrog wrote:My niece had pneumonia when she was a little over a year old.
After a short stay in the hospital, she recovered; but I always suspected
my sister-in-law's compulsive cleaning had something to do with it.
The woman put Clorox on everything. Ick!
My kids played in the dirt, CONSTANTLY, and were never sick.

it's like peanut allergies, studies have shown that parent's fanatical avoidance of peanuts *causes* the vast majority of peanut allergies in kids.

palerider wrote:

chunkyfrog wrote:My niece had pneumonia when she was a little over a year old.
After a short stay in the hospital, she recovered; but I always suspected
my sister-in-law's compulsive cleaning had something to do with it.
The woman put Clorox on everything. Ick!
My kids played in the dirt, CONSTANTLY, and were never sick.

it's like peanut allergies, studies have shown that parent's fanatical avoidance of peanuts *causes* the vast majority of peanut allergies in kids.

And even worse, in my opinion, is the unintended consequences. Many school systems today (or maybe most?) disallow not only peanuts, but some other kinds of nuts at school lunch. This means a very inexpensive, relatively high protein meal - a peanut butter (optional jelly) sandwich is banned. It's the nearly perfect bring from home lunch due to its lack of required refrigeration. I brought in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for nearly all of my school lunches, and no one ever had any issues at all. I don't know if that's because there just wasn't anybody there that had a peanut allergy by chance or there was a much lower incidence of such allergies at that time (70's and early 80's). I was in a fair sized high school class - around 700 people, so around 2800 in the building, with three offset lunch periods. I don't remember a single incident, and peanut butter was quite common.

I'm late to this thread.

I stopped cleaning my machine since 2 months, so the mask is 2 months dirty.

The filter is about 3-4 month without being replaced / washed.

And I thought I was a horrible person...lol Thank you so much for this thread. I do clean my nasal cushion with baby wipes daily for better adhesion. I never clean my humidifier tank but make sure that at least twice a week I take it out and let it dry out completely. Hose I've been doing about once a month or so, but will now give that up. I think the filters are the only really important area for cleaning. Whew, what a relief, I used to feel so guilty all the time. Again thank you, thank you, thank you for this thread.

I look at the water in my tank before (and after) topping off the distilled water.
If I see threads of fungus, I dump, wash, and rinse with 3 parts water to one part cheap vodka.
Changing filters--every three weeks, unless they get grubby faster.