Minimizing Bumbum Germs Post-Halloween, Can It Be Done? -- Guest Post

Resident clean-all-the-things blogger over at Poop on a Hot Tin Slide was kind enough to write up her take on the after-Halloween candy stash...and the germs it brings.

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Halloween is one of the most awesome times of the year. It's fall, so everything is damp and red and gold and cozy. You can start drinking pumpkin spice lattes, you can have a fire in the fireplace, you can curl up under your fleecy electric throw blanket, you can break out the Bath & Body Works Apple Harvest antibacterial foaming soap. And then on the 31st you get to give fun-size Twixes to little giraffes and baby Elmos and pint-size draculas. I love autumn, I love Halloween.






What I don't love is all the bum-bum germs.






Nothing freaks me out more than walking around the local town center to trick-or-treat, seeing and hearing all the coughing, sneezing, sniveling robots and witches and ballerinas wipe their noses and then reach into the common bowl of treats, rifle through them, and select the perfect mini Snickers. Then it's my kids' turn to reach into the germ incubator and pick their fun-sized bar of crispity crunchety peanutbuttery influenza, whereupon later they will go home, paw through their sack of candy, tear open the wrappers, and stuff chocolate into their gaping maws. With hands now properly coated with the sputum of so many other children. Mmm.

So how can we remedy this? We can't. The end. Love, Jo.






OK, well, I do have an idea or two. Awhile back, a friend suggested that you could possibly kill all the germs with fire ice. She wondered if maybe by putting all the candy into the freezer, you might end up with not only deliciously frozen treats, but deactivated bum-bum germs. I think this is a remote possibility, although I tend to think that freezing your candy only cryogenically preserves the viruses, to be later reactivated by your warm fingers.






You could also clean each and every piece of wrapped candy with a Clorox wipe, but even I, who cleans off her groceries, think this is an inconvenience.

Rather, I think the better option is to come home from trick-or-treating, take off your shoes, wash your hands, use hand sanitizer (OK this is just my regular routine), but then here's the kicker, one by one open each (or a select bunch of) candies, throw away the wrappers, then rewash your hands and put all the unwrapped candies into a bowl or jar. Then your kid can snack from the bowl of treats and not have to touch the wrappers that so many sweaty, sticky little fingers have previously manhandled.

Overkill? Not during flu season, says I. I know you're rolling your eyes at me, but that is why you will be eating Skittles + Snivels, and Reece's Pieces of Poop, and Hershey Squirts, and Butt-fingers, and Goober Boogers, and BubbleTapeWorms, whereas my children will be eating bum-bum-germ-free delights. Thank you and good night.









 

Three Fine Ways to Avoid Bum Bum Germs - Guest Post

Today, I'm blessed to have a post from the queen of clean herself, Jo from Poop on a Hot Tin Slide. While many people think they're clean enough, truth is, they're really...not. So she's got a few ways to be even more cleanly in your living, and, of course, avoid the bum-bum germs.

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We pick up bum-bum germs all day long, on our hands, our shoes, our cell phones, our purses, and so forth. But there are three big things you can do to remedy this nasty situation.

First: Take off your shoes when coming home. Do you ever think about the things you are tracking in? Dirt, bird poop, squirrel poop, dog poop, spit, gum, bum-bum germs galore. Would you lick the bottom of your shoes? I'm guessing that 99% of you would not, although I am excluding the Deep South from my facts and figures. So why would you walk on your floors and carpets or curl up on your bed or couch with your shoes on, and expect your kids to crawl, lie, or play on those now-yucky surfaces? Taking your shoes off at the door will prevent SO much muck from coming in, and hey, you won't have to clean your carpets as much. If you have a baby who is scooting or crawling, this is especially important. Because, groce.

Second: Wash your hands upon arriving home. After, naturally, taking off your shoes. Think of everything you touch while you are out: Shopping carts, gas pumps, doorknobs, escalator rails, your steering wheel, your cell phone, money, people's hands, restaurant salt & pepper shakers, and so forth. Maybe you even went to the doctor today and touched things that other sick people touched. Everything you can think of is crawling with germs. Colds, flu, fecal matter. Yummo. So as soon as you are home, lather up. Just get rid of all those things you've touched in the big scary world. Start fresh. This makes me feel like my home is a safe haven, free of the majority of "outside germs." If you're bringing your kids home from school, it's especially important to wash their hands, because school is a hotbed of disgustery.

Third: Never, ever put your purse or bag or wallet on the counter. Handbags are teeming with germs. They are dirtier than a toilet. Your purse handle touches everything you touch. You often place it on the floor of restaurants as you eat, or movie theaters as you get your World War Z on; it accompanies you to the public toilet and you handle it after doing your biznass; etc. The strap of your purse, the bottom of your purse, and the inside of your purse is filth-laden. Clean it on the regular, and never, EVER plop it on the kitchen counter along with your keys when you get home.

 

The Hygiene Hypothesis Disproved

Vindication for my dear friend, Jo.

As you know by now, we've been sick since preschool started. We're on day 13 of "oh, so I guess we're all still sick." We're at the point where we're sure every night before we go to bed, that this is it. This was the last day of lingering sickness.

Then the cough starts up. The cough that keeps everyone awake at different intervals throughout the night. We do steamed bathrooms, honey, vapor rub, water, head elevation. We read stories and chat quietly. We hug and love. We do not sleep.

The morning breaks, and here we all are, still sick, but surely today will be the last day of it, am I right?

Last week, I checked Dulce's throat and saw that her tonsils were swollen. Red alert. Emergency doctor visit time.

Of course, I was sure these were the biggest any tonsils had ever been ever in the history of mankind. The doctor laughed at that. "Slightly swollen," she said. "A virus that we can't do anything about," she said.

At least it's not strep, right?

But then she said something that showed me just how much I actually did buy into the Hygiene Hypothesis, and just how wrong I was.

"Is it normal for viruses to last this long?" I asked.

"Anywhere from one to three weeks," she said, offhandedly. "But since you've got twins, they're probably passing it back and forth between them, and who knows how long it will be around."

Wait, what?

You mean to tell me that my kids are not building immunities to this specific virus as we speak? You mean they're still susceptible to the exact same germs they've been fighting and winning against for a week?

Yup.

And if the babies can ping pong the same virus back and forth to each other while they are sick already, there goes the "they're already past the contagious stage," right? I mean, how are we to know when they are contagious or not? Clearly, they can infect each other or anyone else at any time. That annoying, persistent cough must still be transmitting the germs I thought were not transferable after a certain number of days.

So, really, the Hygiene Hypothesis seems to be a bunch of hype parents tell themselves to make themselves feel better. No one is getting immune, and diseases aren't becoming non-contagious after a few days. With the understandably slack rules about ill children in preschool, no wonder we're all sick all the time.

So, Jo, my hat's off to you. You win this bout. Now, how about you come over for some tea and lunch? I hear the babies are past the contagious stage. It should be just fine, right? What's a little runny nose?


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The Hygiene Hypothesis, Take Two

Jo has a problem with germs. A big problem. She hates them and has waged full-out war with them, and I, for one, support her cause...at least armchair style.  You see, Jo's motto goes like this: " Avoid What You Can, Deal With What You Can't."

I simply cannot avoid all the germs she can. I have a life.

The other day, Jo wrote about the "Hygiene Hypothesis" (something I hadn't heard by that name, but, of course, knew what it was), using my children's first day at preschool and subsequent immediate illness as an example.

Now, everybody told me my kids were going to be sick all year, from now until at least December, when maybe their unused immune systems would catch up to the rest of the world. They told me this because as a stay at home mom, the babies have seen me and the inside of this house about a million times more than they've seen anything else. They simply haven't been exposed to real-life germs.  According to the hypothesis mentioned above, this means they'll be prime real estate for those Mucinex-commercial guys. I bought into this, especially when the girls did indeed get sick the next afternoon. I referred to our lives as having been in a bubble.

Correctly, Jo informed me, that, no, we do not live in a bubble. She's right. We go to the grocery store. We go to the park. We have playdates, go to the library. We go to the Playland at the mall (shudder). We use public restrooms (my daughter is finally coming back around to big potties after I flipped out about someone leaving a turd in there. Bum bum germs that I can't see? Those don't usually cross my mind. Bum bum germs sitting in log form in the toilet my babies have to use. ACK ACK ACK. My reaction, obviously, made a big impression on the girls.)

Which brings me to my point, my one weapon against the cleaner of the clean. The microcosm of the public restroom experience gives great insight into the mind of a child and that child's relationship with her parents on a subconscious level. Dulce was more than ready to jump on the OMG I'm scared to death of this thing and that thing and this thing, and AHHHHHH! All she needed was a slight push from me. All she needed was to see me bolt from a bathroom one time, see me wrinkle my nose in disgust, see me complain to my husband about the indecency of some turd-leaving adults.

Those ten seconds of her life impacted her thoroughly for the next two months. We must be so careful.

I try never to go over the top with anything in our lives because I don't know how my reactions impact my girls. I want to keep them on an even keel. I'm not saying Jo doesn't, but I know in my family's case (particular to Dulce) they take strong cues from me. Another example is hand-washing. After the babies got sick last week, I implemented an even stronger hand-washing rule. No more was hand-washing just for after bathroom breaks and before meals, and after play. Hand-washing was all the time. Let's get rid of these foul germs, right? Let's wash them away. You can never have too much hand washing, right?

Wrong. At least in my case.

Within a few hours of this new regiment, I had a toddler melting down about not being able to wash her hands 24 hours a day. She washed her hands, then dried them, then wanted to wash them again. And again. And again. She tantrumed for a long time because her hands had dried and I wouldn't let her wash them again. Enough is enough.

Yes, washing your hands is good. Yes, it's clean and I advocate it strongly for everyone. But to the point of compulsion? If I see a compulsive tendency popping up in my kid, taking care of that (provided they don't have a mental block that predisposes them to compulsions in general) trumps hand washing.

Mental health as important as physical health.

I want my kids to be able to experience life to the fullest. I want them to run and play and jump and learn. They can't do that in a sterilized bathroom while they wash their hands over and over again.

So, again, I advocate moderation. My babies know about germs. They know that we are to avoid them. They will repeat endlessly in a public restroom, "don't touch ANYTHING," because that's what I tell them every time we enter.

But they touch grocery carts. The very same grocery carts that another child just wiped his nose all over, I'm sure. They slide down slides at the park and the playland and then, I'm sure, they touch their faces. I had to tell Natalina yesterday to please stop biting the outer wrapper of the goldfish bag. After the cashier and bagger had touched it, and the stocker and any number of children who wanted it before their parents put it back on the shelf.

They really haven't lived in a bubble, and that's okay. I'd rather them be sick sometimes if it allows them to live a little.

As far as the hypothesis goes, I don't really know if I believe in it. I certainly think that the babies will not be able to catch all the germs they need to in preschool in order to be germless for the rest of their lives.

Whatever the case may be, I don't think I'm better or worse than Jo. I do, however, feel pretty positive that we're both better than her "Acid Test" friends. But who knows even that? Maybe in ten years, we'll all succumb to a plague and the Acid Testers will be the only ones to survive because they've rendered themselves immune. Then the hypothesis will be a theory, won't it?

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