Rachael O'Halloran's Trivial Thoughts for the Trivia Minded Reader™

If you can smell obnoxious odors, assume they are also full of germs. Here are some tips on how to cut down on the gazillion germs you are exposed to every day.

1. Always flush the toilet with the lid down.

Every time you flush the toilet, the spray from the flush water can shoot up as much as six (6) feet into the air around you.

If you use one of those over the rim toilet fresheners or any type of bleach product in the water to keep the bowl clean, you are breathing that in too.

Put the lid down and you have eliminated millions of germs you breathe in every day.

2. Your cellphone is ten times more germier than your toilet.

Get in the habit of disinfecting your phones by wiping them off a couple of times per week. Use a Lysol handi-wipe, an antibacterial wipe, or a dampened paper towel with half water and half bleach to disinfect the phone.

3. Wipe off your remote controls several times per week.

Germs can live on surfaces for days. If you have multiple people in your home handling the remote controls, it only takes one person to be sick with a cough, cold, sinus infection, etc. or if they don’t wash their hands when leaving the bathroom, to spread germs to anyone who handles the remotes.

4. Don’t think you are immune to germs because you are always in good health.

You are most likely immune to many of the familiar germs in your environment, but each new store or building you enter to run an errand is a new environment. Your body doesn’t have time to build up immunity to the new germs you are exposed to for the time it takes to get done your errand.

Carry small bottles of antibacterial sanitizer or wipes with you (in car, purse, etc.) so you can cleanse your hands as you go from store to store and whenever you leave a restaurant or a gas station.

Everyone should keep a small bottle of hand sanitizer in the car anyway, especially if your family goes on long trips.

Buy several to keep on hand

Use whenever you can't wash your hands.

5. Did you ever notice the containers of antibacterial wipes at the door of Sam’s Club, Walmart, Target and other big name stores?

They are there for you to wipe off the shopping cart handles and basket rims before using the cart, especially if you put your child or your purse in the seat.

You don’t know who handled the cart before you or what germs they might be leaving behind because of the way they used the cart. I could do a whole post just on germy shopping carts, but instead I'll just leave you with a few pictures.

My Walmart had them so far behind the lined up
carts, you couldn't get to them. One little chat
with the store manager took care of that problem.

The wipes should be prominently displayed NEAR the carts. They are not much good to you after you entered the shopping area of the store pushing your cart. Your hands are already germy.

Go out of your way to LOCATE the wipes before touching a cart.

The pictures I found while researching this post were enough to make me want to dip the carts into a vat of bleach or give up going to stores and just continue shopping online. If I could buy everything online (including fresh foods, milk, produce, etc.), I would do it. Check these pictures out:

The thought of this is very scary. What are her hands
going to touch when she is done this activity? It's what you don't know ...

Just think, if this kid's mother brought him to the store to try shoes on him -
with no socks and dirty feet - the transfer of germs from his feet
to any shoe he tries on is too yucky to even think about.
It's bad enough he is sitting with filthy feet in the basket part of
this cart (which he is obviously too big for in the first place), you
can only imagine the germ transfer from his hands and clothes.

While "service dogs" are permitted in most stores, this Bed Bath & Beyond cart
most likely will not undergo any type of cleaning between the time it is deposited
back in the cart corral when this shopper is finished shopping and the time the
next person comes into the store to use it. Think about all the "service dogs" who are brought into supermarkets, Target, Walmart, etc. Do you think those carts cleaned before the next customer takes a cart from the cart corral?

Many babies suck on the cart handle. Just think of the germs
and possible e-coli present on the handle this baby could
be getting in his mouth. If you at least wipe the cart off,
your child will pick up considerably less germs.

6. Always launder your underwear separately from your other clothes.

Your underwear can hold on to E-coli germs which gets on your hands when you transfer wet clothes to the dryer.

If you wash your underwear in a separate load in at least 175 degree hot water, and use bleach on your whites, you can significantly cut your exposure to E-coli.

E-coli can only be diagnosed with a laboratory test

7. Microwave your kitchen sponge every day.

Your kitchen sink has more germs than your bathroom, about 500,000 bacteria per square inch in just the kitchen drain.

Your faucets, garbage disposal, sink basin and sponge are full of bacteria. Bleach your sink every day with a spray bottle of 1 part bleach to 2 parts water. Sanitize your garbage disposal once a week with an over the counter garbage disposal cleanser.

Nuke your moistened sponge every day for 30 to 60 seconds or run it through your dishwasher to keep the sponge germ free.

Change your kitchen towel and washcloth every day so you aren’t transferring germs from one surface to another with its use.

Never allow children to wipe their mouths, faces and hands on your kitchen towel or washcloth. Not only does your kitchen towel and washcloth have germs (like e-coli from wiping up raw meat and chicken juices, food debris and milk spills), your kids can also be carrying many germs with them that they have picked up during the course of their day.

By wiping mouths and hands on your towel or washcloth, they will depositing them back on them, as well as transferring them to the rest of your house.

Give children paper towel to wipe face and hands.

8. When you are washing your hands, sing the song “Happy Birthday To You” slowly all the way through.

It should take you almost 30 seconds to get through the song. If you get done singing before 30 seconds, sing it again.

To adequately wash your hands, use warm water and an antibacterial soap to rub hands vigorously, causing friction to make a decent amount of suds. Rinse in warm water. Use paper towel to dry hands, then use it turn off faucets.

Proper handwashing

9. Never use public water fountains. Carry your own bottled water.

Drinking fountains are germy with anywhere from 62,000 to 2.7 million bacteria per square inch and that’s just on the spigot.

The button to turn it on is touched by people whose hands are dirtier than their mouths. Some people say a dog's mouth is pretty clean, but think about whether you'd want to drink from a water fountain right after the dog did.

Carrying a supply of bottled water for man and beast is best.

Some parks have pet designated fountains

If you must drink from a public fountain, holding your mouth well
away from the spigot may help cut down germ exposure.

This might have been a cute "photo-op" at the time, even if he did bring his
own bottle of water (see top center of fountain), but many people
take advantage of these types of drinking fountains in parks.
They grab a fast sip of water when they are on a jog or when they are on
an outing with their kids to the park. Letting your dog not only drink
his water but also walk through it is not the best thing for the dog,
or anyone who comes along after him to use the water fountain.

10. Change your bath towels and bath wash cloth every day, your bedsheets every week and clean your bathroom at least twice a week.

If you use a body wash sponge, toss the moistened sponge in the microwave for 30 seconds every week. At the end of the month throw it out, then put out a clean one. If you do it on the last day of every month, you won’t forget to change the sponge.

By using a clean towel and wash cloth every day, you cut down the risk of staphylococcus bacteria, which causes skin and sinus infections.

Your bed sheets are a breeding ground for mites and bedbugs, so change them every week.

Put your bedspread or blanket out to air once a week or toss in the dryer on low heat with a fabric sheet for 10 minutes (low heat setting not air fluff which has no heat).

Always take a shower before getting into bed (especially a freshly changed bed) so you are not bringing the day’s germs to your sleeping environment.

To clean your sink, tub/shower, toilet and floor, use a disinfectant type cleaner and really scrub it. Make sure you pay special attention to the faucets and vanity surfaces (including mirrors, toothbrush holders and cup holders).

Most people forget to wash the bathroom floor when they clean the bathroom and there are just as many germs on the floor as there are in the toilet. Use half bleach and half hot water, rinse in warm water so the floor is not sticky when you walk on it with rubber soles or bare feet.

Use a bath mat whenever you step out of the shower or bathtub and put out a clean one mid-week.

If you use one of those antibacterial bathmats, wash it in warm soapy water once a month. Rinse twice - once in warm water, then rinse in cold water which cuts down the suds and gets the rest of the soap out. You can also run it through the rinse cycle of your washer, then toss it in the dryer for 10 minutes. Allow mat to air dry in the sun until completely dry.

I hope you found something useful in this post. As always, I welcome your comments.

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Rachael O'Halloran's Trivial Thoughts for the Trivia Minded Reader™

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If you can smell obnoxious odors, assume they are also full of germs. Here are some tips on how to cut down on the gazillion germs you are exposed to every day.