# Touchless dispensers?



## wintz (Feb 20, 2017)

I was shopping in the supermarket the other day and I saw a row of touchless dispensers. It caught my eye but I didn't buy it.While doing a bit of research online I came across a blog that mentioned some benefits of getting touchless dispensers ( http://www.dispenser.com/blog/organizedbath/touchless-dispensers-are-great-for-homes-with-kids/ ). Has anyone ever used them before? How good are they? Any thoughts on this would be great.


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## Latestarter (Feb 20, 2017)

IMHO it's just one more "gadget" that had to be fed batteries or power of some sort... How hard is it to push down on a pump for soap or heaven forbid actually pick up a bar of soap and use it? Folks talk about transferring "germs" that way, but come on, really? We're exposed to those germs routinely in our environment(s)... If we try to live in a completely sterile environment, we'll lose the ability to fight off germs when we do come in contact with them.


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## frustratedearthmother (Feb 20, 2017)

I can see both sides of this.  Yes, they have to be fed batteries...and it's not hard to push a pump.  BUT, there are lots of times when I don't want to touch a pump.  Handling raw chicken, coming inside with mud, crap, grease and all manner of detritus on my  hands.  I don't want to touch my faucet handles or the pump handles, or anything else at that point!   I remember bars of soap... I usually have to wash the bar of soap off after washing my hands!

To each his own on this subject I guess!


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## greybeard (Feb 21, 2017)

A sterile, germless, riskless, effortless world seems to be the direction we're heading toward and I'm not so sure that's a good thing....we can't even be bothered to get up to change channels on the TV (much less go out and turn the antenna). Just clap to turn on a light--or just enter the room and it's illuminated.  Walk away from the bathroom device and it flushes automatically or walk up to a different one and the water comes on by itself.  When I was younger, an older man once told me "Boy, people don't stop doing things because they can't..people can't do things because they stopped doing them". I have found that to be more true than I ever imagined..
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I think there's something to be said for going out and playing in the dirt and mud puddles too.


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## AClark (Feb 21, 2017)

I'm with greybeard there. I have kids (lots of them! lol) and usually "automatic" means "someone is gonna play with it and make a mess". Germs, IMHO anyway, are not the devil. The exposure to them is what builds your immunity to not becoming extremely ill from them. There's nothing wrong with washing your hands, and I definitely use my elbows to turn the faucet on when I've handled raw chicken and such, but I think our culture has become too extreme with the germaphobia.

When I was growing up, we had a nasty e-coli outbreak in my house. My parents home is on a well, and those hornets that make mud nests had build a mud nest under the well cap, where it had vibrated off the well a bit. They built it out of horse manure, which can contain e-coli, and the vibration had knocked it down into the water. Both of my parents became very ill from it, and I showed no symptoms whatsoever. Our family doctor ran cultures on them and found out it was e-coli. The reason I never had any symptoms wasn't for a lack of exposure, but because I had been exposed to it so much I had an immunity. There is something to be said about being a dirty little kid! It's the same reason that Mexican's can drink their tap water, but the saying "don't drink the water" for American's rings true - they have immunity, and you don't since you grew up with clean water.

That said, it occurred to me the other night around 8 PM that I had been out handling the horses and goats, ate pizza, and had never washed my hands.


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