Seven Sanitary Routines for a Healthier Home

If you regularly listen to the news, eating, drinking, and even breathing can be scary. The world seems like it is filled with people suffering from flu-like symptoms, food poisoning seems to be a regular occurrence and the headlines about the West Nile and H1N1 viruses are simply scary. However, basic good hygiene practices can help you beat back the bugs, germs, and viruses that threaten your families health.

These seven household hygiene habits will help your family avoid illness:

1. Load The Dishwasher Every Night and Pick Up Pet Food Bowls at Night. Ants, roaches, and other bugs need food to survive. If you rinse your dishes, load your dishwasher, and pick up your pet dishes every night, you'll be denying creepy crawlies a delicious food source. According to stopgerms.org, a website sponsored by the non-profit Alliance for Consumer Education, roaches "feed and live on our waste." Even worse, they carry can spread dangerous food poisoning bacteria around our kitchens and dining areas. If you don't want bugs walking all over your dishes, put your dishes away. Stopgerms.org advises that food bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter can also be reduced by "washing dishes promptly."

2. Wipe Down The Counters Every Night. When you wipe down your counters with hot water and detergent or a detergent/disinfectant product, you are attacking the growth of dangerous bacteria. You should also make sure that your sink is clean, free of food spills, and regularly disinfected. Keeping food preparation areas clean and disinfected will eliminate food bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and campylobacter.

3. Wash Your Hands Regularly. After you go to the bathroom, wash your hands. If you handle raw meat, wash your hands. If you sneeze, wash your hands. If you touch surfaces on subways, escalators, and other public areas, wash your hands or use a hand sanitizer. If admonishments aren't enough to convince you, according to the New York Times, "a recent study of 404 British commuters found that 28 percent had fecal bacteria on their hands." If you don't wash your hands well, you will spread bacteria throughout your home.

4. Put Dirty Laundry In The Basket. If over a quarter of all hands have fecal bacteria, you can only imagine what horrors dirty underwear may contain. It's best to make sure that all dirty clothes make it to the clothes hamper and that the hamper is disinfected from time to time.

5. Put Trash In The Can. Bugs and bacteria thrive when they have access to our waste products. If napkins, food wrappers, and food waste are thrown away and placed in a plastic garbage bag, in a container with a lid, they won't be accessible to bugs and germs will be contained in the trash can. If you regularly disinfect your garbage can, you will be drawing the line against germs and bacteria.

6. Vacuum Your Bed. One way to control the spread of dust, dust mites, and other allergens is to vacuum your mattress. While Stopgerms.org recommends bagging your mattress in a dust-proof zippered cover designed to prevent the escape of dust mites, you can also wash your bedding regularly in hot water and vacuum your bed.

7. Clean Your Toilet Handle. While it's obvious that you need to clean your toilet regularly, have you ever thought about cleaning your hands before you flush the toilet? According to stopgerms.org, your toilet handle provides a home to enterococcus and rotavirus. Enterococcus can cause food poisoning and diarrhea and rotavirus is the leading cause of severe diarrhea among children. Germs like these reinforce the need to wash your hands and keep your bathroom clean.

By practicing good hygiene, you can take positive steps to avoid cold and flu, food poisoning, diarrhea, and many other ailments. It's worth it to establish good lifelong hygiene habits and defeat germs in your home.

Sources:

www.stopgerms.org

"With Soap and Water or Sanitizer, a Cleaning That Can Stave Off the Flu." Tara Parker-Pope. New York Times, September 14, 2009.
( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15well.html?_r=2&emc=eta1 )