am going to get the product you recommend. He plays with the dogs and the cat alot so I do want him to continue to clean his hands afterwards.
ALWAYS, washing hand with soap and running water is the habit to develop and to use as a first instance. And you have to be careful about what product you use if you are sensitive.
In the days before hand sanitisers, I was the mother of a new baby in the hospital. easy child was my first and I was conscientious in doing everything I was told, including washing my hands with the hospital's antibacterial wash (in a pump dispenser by the sink - all the staff use the same product, there was one dispenser at every sink). I had to wash my hands before every feed; after every feed; before changing the baby's nappy; after changing the baby's nappy. That is a lot of hand washing and by the second day the skin on my hands was breaking down. Meanwhile I was showering with the soap I'd brought from home, so I took to using my bar of soap to wash my hands with, instead of the hospital pump disinfectant detergent. My hands cleared up quickly, so I stuck with it.
So when I was ever in hospital after that (including the next three kids) I knew to avoid the hospital's product. A few years later, that product was banned because it contained hexachloraphene.
A cleaning product I've been using especially to remove dirt - and it's brilliant for that - is a mixture of olive oil and salt. You can use sugar instead, but you need to rinse thoroughly because it could bring the ants.
To make it, you put salt in a jar (make sure it doesn't have a metal lid) and cover it with olive oil, to about a cm or more over the top of the salt. Salt (or sugar) won't dissolve in the oil. I like to add a few drops of essential oil - it depends on how allergic you are as to which one you use but you can use an antibacterial oil if you choose. I tend to use lavender, it smells nice and was actually named by the Romans because of it's use in washing.
To use it, you put a small amount in the palm of you hand. I often put a small plastic ice cream spoon in the jar so there's always a small measure there for me.
Then you scrub your hands with it. Rub your hands together - the salt acts as a mild abrasive to scrape away any dirt, plus the salt itself is a great antibacterial, simply because salt is a preservative, it osmotically draws the water out of bacterial cells it comes into contact with. so, scrub with it - then rinse. Your hands at this stage will feel really oily and greasy, you will see the oil & water on your hands looking gluggy.
Next - pat your hands dry on a piece of cloth. Any oil left on your hands will be rapidly absorbed by your skin and there will not be a lingering greasy feel.
This method cleans hands, especially really dirty hands, and also disinfects (because of the salt). It also is great for sensitive skin or damaged skin.
I shopped around looking for commercial products like this - I found quite a few, many of them over $50 a jar. I can make the same quantity for about 50 cents.
The first jar I made was following a recipe on a TV show that deals with home improvements. They said to use lavender oil to perfume it and to also put in a few spoonsful of shredded lavender flowers. I've done so, but regret it - when I use that jar, I get bits of lavender flower all over me and they end up in the sink. But as you scrub with it, it does release a little more perfume from the crushed flowers.
The second jar I made, I added no flowers. I also used a different essential oil blend, one I put together because I liked it. Although it's only for my use, I put it in one of those glass coffee jars that has a glass lid with a plastic liner to it. I removed the liner and put a silk flower inside the glass lid, so it looks a bit prettier. It lives by the sink so I can use it to scrub my hands when I come in from gardening or painting. I have found it very useful for cleaning off dried wall acrylic paint from my hands. Plus it keeps my skin feeling moisturised.
If you think about it, the people flogging hand sanitisers and antibacterial products for use in the house, are the people controlling the information and the advertising. Of course they want us to buy their products, so the scare tactics are used. But we are better off not using too many chemicals or too many germ killers.
We are becoming too paranoid about germs and putting more and more barriers between us and the real world. This afternoon when I dropped easy child 2/difficult child 2 home to her block of flats, one of her neighbours was outside tending to her pot of herbs. This neighbour is a food technologist and was picking caterpillars off the herbs. I found another caterpillar for her and picked a few leaves for her. But then she walked to the bins to throw the herbs away - because a caterpillar had been on the plant! I reminded her that technically caterpillars are edible. Birds eat them. She could always wash the herbs, or put them in cooking (where any germs would be killed by the heat).
It makes me wonder if any of those herbs will ever get eaten, or will they all be thrown in the bin because they have been contaminated by nature?
Just what are we doing to ourselves in this world, by losing touch with where food really comes from?
Marg
