EEEWWWWWW!

Yeah I am queen of Purell around here. I keep it in my drink holder on my stroller, in my pocket-book, car, diaper bag etc.

I have a shopping cart cover for Griffin and it's helpful for me.

I use a Mr Clean magic eraser on my bathtub with Ecover natural cleaner. I've read that scrubbing is better than relying on antibacterial soaps. I was told to use Disinfecting stuff over antibacterial stuff. There's a Dr. Gorba, or "Dr. Germ", who puts out is own list of recommendations.

I also put sea salt and epsom salt in Griffins bath.

I run our sponges throught the dishwasher and dry cycle and I've also heard that you can microwave it and it works too. The key is to dry it quickly.

There is a site about sterilization that I found one time and it has the exact times and temps it takes to kill things on there. I found it when I had to start sterilizing nebs and I wanted to make sure I was doing it right. It had a lot of useful info.

People are using dry heat to sterilize baby stuff now rather than steam. One of those things is called the Germ Guardian I think.

Oh well, I was always told that it's not good to be too sterile. But I also don't want to have us catching everything under the sun.

That guy Dr. Germ says that most of the illnesses your child gets are Not going to help them build immunities. He said that the instance of illness in daycares canbe cut from 8 per school year down to 3 with siomple handwashing and disinfection of common toys. I'm a nanny so I try to have a handle on that stuff and we're doing pretty well.

Hi there!
I am always worrying about how clean things are, and how safe they are.
I clean kitchen sides down with bleach or hospital detergant sanitizer, and then wipe over again with disposable antibacterial wipes.
If I am feelin ill, I wash my hands thoroughly with soap, and then use the alcohol handrub that you get in hospitals. (I stay in hopsital often enough to have a nice free supply of these).
I use bleach in and around the toilet, and use toilet cleaner once a week to get rid of limescale.

The hospital is the worst breeding ground for germs. We have a kitchen, that we have too keep clean ourselves. The last time I was in hospital, the kithen smelt funny., so I went round with hospital sanitizer, then dried it all up quickly. The paper-towels I was using were coming up black.
You're never going to be able to get rid of all germs round your house, but some practices are valuable to get into I think.

I carry hand sanitizer with me everywhere as well, I also bought a diaper wipe hard case and put sanitizing wipes inside. (I put in big letters "Disinfectant wipes Do not use as a diaper wipe" You can never be too careful.

A family friend who happens to be a dentist came to visit Benjamin in the hospital the other day, and he said he has a hand sanitizer that he's going to give us a bottle of that has an ingredient that stays on your hands to kill bacteria for up to 4 hours. When I get it I'll post more about it on my journal.

I couldn't open up the second page :( but I love articles like this. I'm a germ-a-phobe and drive my family crazy with "have you washed your hands yet?" I wash my hands with hot soapy water throughout the day, I even use a nail scrubber! I've got them by every sink!
I also use hand gel, wipes, and spray. I clean my house the same way. When we go into the hospital I spend the first couple hours cleaning his room because it's always filthy. 20 years later I'm still amazed that our hospitals are still so dirty!

I too carry hand sanitizer with me every where. Last week, Kennedy was outside playing and a neighbor girl came up to her and touched her hand (this little girl had snot running out of her nose). I though my husband was going to grap her and run. However, because we having told our neighbors he instead restrained Kennedy's hands, made up an excuse, and rusher her inside to santize. In a way it's humorous, but in reality it's part of all of our lives.

The other thing I find funny, is that when she was 2-3 months old a child psychologist aquaintance asked if she could hold her. I asked her to sanitize her hands, and she lauged at me until she figured out that I was serious. Last week that same psychologist wouldn't bring her 2 month old to a x-mas party because she didn't want her to get sick.

I need to ask this family friend about the hand sanitizer that he told us about, but a few days ago I heard on the news about an ingredient in antibacterial soap and some hand sanitizers that causes problems with peoples hormones. As if these kids need another problem. I can't remember the name of the chemical, but it started with the letter "t"