I have a pair of scissors that’s been in a mostly unopened cabinet for 5+ years. I wanted to cut open a bag of breastmilk with clean scissors but water and soap aren’t readily accessible at the moment.
The cabinet is in a former classroom so presumably the scissors were used by kids. My husband says using the scissors wouldn’t be sanitary. I believe him, but honestly I don’t understand why with time and no food the bacteria wouldn’t just die.
EDIT: I should have used the term sanitary not sterile. My baby is old enough that we don’t sanitize pump and bottle parts daily, just wash and dry after uses.
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There’s actually quite a bit of microbes that are moved about by air currents. Humidity and dust (which can contain dead cells from skin and so on) are sufficient for some things to live for quite some time.
Some microbes, when water or food resources get low, form inactive spores (imagine seeds, or dehydrated yeast from the supermarket) that become active again when there’s sufficient water or nutrients (like in breast milk).
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