Habits On A Budget?

Randomly seeing this prompt in the middle of the night and I’m rushing to go @merit.ahama’s page because I could remember vividly she brought this exact same topic up on Discord and as expected, a lot of people had different reactions. And now also, I’ve read a lot of entries and I’m seeing the same thing. **DOES MONEY BEGET HYGIENE?**  Let’s forget about the long talk the prompt came with, I think this is just what the prompt wants to know. I feel like a few people whom I read their entries that stood their ground on yes focused more on the luxury aspect of cleanliness or hygiene, talking about being able to afford expensive soaps and all. But honestly, being able to afford expensive soap is different from having an intentional sense of hygiene. Since everybody gets a chance to say something on the matter, I am definitely saying no and I would love to give instances about myself and my upbringing that supports my no. Growing up as a child, my dad was the biggest advocate of hygiene and cleanliness and he was the biggest influence. Were we so rich then? No. But will my dad use our local broom to sweep the entire place 100x a day? Oh yes, he will. A little exaggeration with the number there but I was just trying to make a point. As his child, it was almost hard for me to keep up with his level of cleanliness. We had this little sit-out/balcony where my dad stays with his visitors most times and I can’t even remember the many times he had to sweep it all over again even after I had done it the first time just because he still felt sand under his feet. He is the biggest advocate of cleanliness, not only because it’s one step to living a healthy life, but also because he believes it creates a good impression/reputation. Each time he scolds us about being clean, he has a favorite line: *“What if someone shows up here unannounced and meets everywhere dirty, what kind of image do you think it paints of us?”* And truthfully, there have been a lot of times people just show up at our house unannounced but we didn’t panic because we had already cleaned up after ourselves. You cannot be caught in the home I grew up in leaving a dirty dish laying carelessly in the kitchen. You either wash it off and put it right or you rinse it completely so that flies won’t have something to play with. My mom cannot leave her bed rough, it’s always smooth and she makes sure our hair, nails and everything were in the right order. We didn’t even own mops then but we had old clothes turned to rags for wiping surfaces and leaving them sparkling. So personally, I feel the combo for cleanliness is training + bare minimum + willing effort. Bare minimum because honestly, we don’t need much to be clean. I read @nhajo01’s post on this and I love what she said: >“How much would it cost you to wash, probably just a small bar or soap and a bucket of water.” Where I live, with ₦200 (about $0.133), you can get a bar of soap and about 50 liters of water to make sure your clothes are clean. Your clothes, your body, your environment, it’s just the basics you can start from. Someone might argue, *“What about deodorants and perfumes, you need money to buy them,”* but hey, I didn’t grow up on that and I didn’t smell like I came from the gutter. However, money will only help you enhance your cleanliness if you already have the value in you. That’s when we can start talking about expensive soaps, skincare, and all that.  Money will buy you washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, and other cleaning tools to make the job easier and faster, but in all, it still starts with '**you**'. If you don’t value hygiene, rest assured with all the money in the world, with all those machines and fancy products, you’ll still lead a dirty lifestyle. I feel it’s as simple as that. It’s not a very complicated prompt, we all have our views and if you may, let me know what you think down below. [Image Here](https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/02/21/23/22/bathroom-4012503_1280.jpg) [Image 2](https://pixabay.com/photos/vacuum-cleaner-carpet-cleaner-657719/)