Please Do Not Put Your Purse On My Couch

Elizabeth Bacharach

July 23, 2019 3:27 PM

Entering my apartment is a multi-step process.

Please Don't Put Your Purse On My Couch

Step one: Take off your shoes.

Step two: Drop your purse.

Yes, on the ground. Next to the shoes. In the entranceway.

Yes, I know, this greeting isn't really Martha Stewart-approved hostess etiquette (sorry @ mom). But it's my best bet at keeping dirty items a la your purse from camping out onand in turn, contaminatingmy couch.

My logic? It's simple. Just like your shoes, your bag goes everywhere you go: scoring an empty seat on the subway to work, taking up lodging under your desk at the office, and hanging on the hook of a bathroom stall as you do your business. Now just think about all of the other people who've sat on that subway seat, about the last time that office carpet was cleaned, about the germs slashing up from a flushed toilet.

Through all of these adventures, the surface of your bag, be it a leather crossbody pocketbook or a nylon tote , is racking up a disturbing amount of dust, germs, grime, liquids, and bodily particles. And unlike with my floors and countertops, I can't whip out a Clorox wipe and start scrubbing my sofa silly in an attempt to destroy any potential grossness and grim. (But, hey, please don't make it come to that, eitherjust leave the shoes at the door.)

So no, I do not want your bag trailing remnants of these slimy surfaces into my home, not to mention onto my twill couch, where the filth will find a new home in the hard-to-clean fabrics.

The challenge of figuring out how to best clean my sofa's surfaces isn't what scares meafter all, I'm pretty sure Monica Geller is my spirit animal. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it propels my particular propensity. More often than not, I have a hard enough time squeezing in a sweat session, so just the idea of adding "figure out how to disinfect couch" to my to do list is enough to twist my tum into knots. Seriously, who needs an extra stressful situation that? Not me.

As someone who spends an embarrassing amount of her free time cleaning (like I said, a lot like Monica Geller), I seek solace in the fact that my apartment, my couch, is a hygienic space completely separate of everythingthe stress from work to the unbearably high level of yuck on the streetthat lives on the other side of my door.

So if I find your purse comfortably reclining in the same spot I watch Veronica Mars reruns every night, my imagination immediately takes off, transforming my little sanctuary into a dirty and potentially dangerous cesspool no longer free of the outside world's

Bottom line: If you're going to swing by my humble (read: clean) abode, please part with your purse the minute you step inside.

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Elizabeth Bacharach