Thursday, July 16, 2009

Germs be gone!


My phobias could give Howard Hughes's phobias a run for their money.
I won't go into too much detail because I don't really want anyone to know the depths of my insanity, but I will cop to latex gloves beneath my sink because I can't bear the thought of touching raw meat.
Seriously, if someone made a home autoclave, I would buy it. In a heartbeat.
Knowing this, you can imagine how traumatic it is for me to have young children.
They have no — absolutely no — concept of germs. If it's true that everyone has a purpose in life, then theirs is to gross me out enough to cause a stroke.
Why oh why must my 4-year-old drop trou and strip from the waist down — socks, shoes and all — to go to the bathroom EVERY TIME we go to a store?
Why can't any of them understand you don't ever, ever sit bare-butted on a public potty?! It must first be swathed in toilet paper. Or, you hover.
And why is it that at 7 years old, middle child still doesn't grasp that you wash your hands after you go to the bathroom?
Why is it that I will make a perfectly tasty not to mention incredibly sanitary dinner — no chance of raw meat contamination — that is deemed "dirty" by the same child who happily fished out a dried cranberry from the greasy mini van door rails?
Why must I be the mom who gets tapped on the shoulder at school and told, "Um, your daughter is licking the hand rails."
Sigh. My kids are skeevy.
Despite my anti-germ stance, though, I don't really do the hand sanitizer thing. It smells icky and worse, it's so drying. Burt's Bees does make a product that's not too shabby. The sanitizing spray has aloe and witch hazel, so the smell's still funky but at least your hands don't feel as thought you've skipped lotion for a year.
I'm thinking Frais hand sanitizer is the one that's going to travel with me.
It's Australian and has essential oils like ginger and tangerine and basil. The smell is a little spicy and citrusy and not the least bit unpleasant. So far, it's not as drying as the other sanitizers on the market.
At $3.50 for a nearly non-existent size (only 0.2 of an ounce), it isn't the cheapest. But, I only use this as a last resort anyway. Good, old-fashioned hand washing is still the best. But on those occasions when you're at the park — away from soap and water — and your kid's picked up something dead, Frais'll do. And do nicely.

1 comment:

SunnyDay said...

My grandma always said "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die", meaning it isn't good to be too clean, and you get immunity from being around things that aren't terribly sanitary! Not sure I go with grandma's advice on this.