I actually think it's good to eat with dirty hands once in a while, to keep your immune system up to snuff. I have two friends who were raised in germophobic households, fastidiously kept indoors away from dirt and ordered from childhood to frequently wash their hands, and I've noticed they get sick the easiest and most often.

Nevertheless, I've heard many a germophobe say things like "After using the toilet, when you turn the sink on, you put germs on the handles. Then you wash your hands, and turn the water off, and get the original germs on your hands again." It is for those people that designers Wu Chi-Hua and Wang Li-Hsin, Red Dot Award winners in the Bathroom category, have designed the Easy Clean faucet.

The concept is that you turn the water on by depressing the water spout itself, which acts as a lever to trigger waterflow. Thus your filthy, filthy germs from the initial contact are rinsed away by the flow of water. While I find germophobia silly, and I realize motion sensors can do the same trick, I love the look of the minimalist, no-handles-necessary spout. Another innovation in the Bathroom category comes from design Su Pin Chia, whose Inflatable Bathtub is intended to ease entry for the elderly.

Get the water running to the right temperature, then step over the low threshold, have a seat in the raised, molded area at the rear of the tub, then hit a button and the front portion of the tub inflates. Germophobes may not like that you have to touch the conventional handles first, "infecting" them, but if you've lived long enough to achieve elderliness in the first place, you should simply consider it a miracle you've made it this far in our germy world.