Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Hand Sani Roundup.

I thought it might be interesting to show you the amount and placement of the various, miscellaneous, assorted, and sundry hand-sanitizing items scattered about my homestead. Note that this does not include other disinfecting items such as Comet, bleach, Clorox wipes, Lysol sprays (although these items may make a guest appearance), or other such cleansers--this is mainly contained to hand sanitizers. I just wanted to document how they appear in every nook and cranny of my abode.

Upon entering the ancestral manse, you'll first see this to your immediate right:


Often, if you are a guest in my home, I will also have an additional spare container of hand sani gel placed on this table that you are faced with, just upon entering. This is a not-so-subtle hint to cleanse your gee-dee hands, but also provides you with a choice: Would you rather wash your hands at the sink, use hand sanitizing wipes, or just use hand sani gel? You decide. I'll at least grant you that. The disinfecting of the hands is otherwise nonnegotiable, unless I'm feeling particularly vulnerable or insecure that day and can't bring myself to ask you to clean your hands. Which is 99% of the time, unless you are acquainted with my OCD. 

Next, only a few steps into the living room, you'll see this, a well-loved container of Germ-X and some baby-friendly wipes on what we call the "lamp table":


Febreeze peeks out behind its stronger and more important siblings. Here we have alcohol-based hand sani for the hardcore germaphobe, plus a more gentle, kid-friendly, earth-friendly, biodegradable benzalkonium-chloride-based antimicrobial wipes. The Germ-X is used liberally by me and the paterfamilias; the Germinator wipes are used more sparingly and on the younger generation, such as when we come home after someone has touched the baby's hands or she has touched a--gasp--restaurant table.

If you take a firm left into the kitchen and take a peek into the undersink cabinets, you will of course be faced with an onslaught of harsh chemicals, but if you merely glance upwards, you'll see this:


This is above the kitchen sink, the sink where we go to wash immediately after coming home; and when we are done washing, we employ a liberal use of this very hand sani. 

To the left of the sink, just hanging out on the stovetop, is a box of Purell wipes. These, I include in my daughter's lunch box when I pack her lunches for preschool.



"Perfect for...Lunch boxes!" Why yes, I think so!

Just next to the kitchen area, in fact where I am sitting at this very second, is the table/my laptop area. To my right you'll find this teency-tincey sani:


A little blurry, but it's a Bath & Body Works "Apple Pie" purse-sized sani. Smells sooooo delicious, and does the job if I decide in the middle of a blog entry that I'm just not sterile enough and I need a burst of chemicals. Hey! Now's as good a time as ever! *hand-sanis*

I also have one of these by my bed.

If you take a stroll down the hall, you'll see my purse, where I have tossed it haphazardly. (Hey, I said I'm a germ freak, not a neat freak.) Inside my purse is the omnipresent bottle of Purell. I have to refill this little guy an awful lot. I use it with alarming regularity.



And should you continue to meander down the hall and need to use the bathroom facilities, this is what you will be faced with, as a guest in our home:


BAM!

"Regular-sized" hand sani provided for size reference. Because we have BIG-ASS HAND SANI in our bathroom. So that you can't miss it. HINT HINT. I also have the following picture taped to the inside of our bathroom door:




Insulting? Perhaps, to those of you who Get It, but you have no idea how many guests and family members we've had to our home who DO. NOT. WASH. their hands after using the bathroom. (From afar, outside the bathroom, you can hear the water run. Or not run, as the case may be.) So we've decided to treat ALL our guests like kindergartners and remind them of the basics of hygiene. Anyway.

Then there's the baby's room. I always wash with soap and water after I change Naomi's diaper, because nothing beats soap and water, but occasionally, I need to finish diapering her or clothing her before I am able to get to a sink. In which case, a gallon dollop of hand sani is nice to have at the ready. So this is in Naomi's room at her changing table:



So that we can X the Germs. 

Next comes the master bedroom and bath.

Here is what you'll find just above my head, on my side of the bed:


Purell for when I'm feeling grody and don't want to get grodiness on my Kindle, and Cetaphil lotion for when my got-damn hands are dried and cracked within an inch of their very lives from overPurelling.

And last but not least, the master bath. Here is what you'll see if you take a wander there:




Or should I say,



Another tub of Sani-Hands. This is the particular tub I usually use when sanitizing my forearms and elbows for when they have rested on the grotesque tables at restaurants.

Also:



Another absolutely *BAM!* GARGANTOR container of hand sani, thanks to Costco or the dollar store. We go though these at a terrifying rate. And finally, next to our GARGANTOR tub of hand sani, you will also find, bafflingly enough, some Hibiclens. You know, in case we plan to perform some home surgery or something. 



And there you have it. All most of the hand sanitizers in my home. The ones I could think of, anyway.

All I have to say is, when bat flu strikes, you'll wish you were a guest in my home.

10 comments:

  1. Out of legitimate curiosity--do you guys happen to know how much you spend on hand sanitizer a month? Just curious, but wasn't sure if you'd ever tried to track it or if you work off a budget.

    While I'm quite a fan of the portable hand sanitizer bottles (always have one in my purse, one at my desk--along with a mini-bottle of Lysol that I break out whenever I hear coworkers developing sniffles/coughs/etc., and one in my field bag, because even though I'm wearing nitrile gloves when I touch those soil/water samples, I just feel a lot better when my hands smell like green apple & alcohol (YAY Bath & Body Works!) rather than nitrile & residual petroleum. I'm not sure if Germ-X is as effective on benzene & MTBE as it is on fecal coliform, but hey...never hurts.

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  2. Oh, not very much. Those ENORMO jugs are super cheap, actually. Like $3 at the dollar store (I know, the irony) (wait, did I just use "irony" wrong) (how ironic), or like $6 or $7 at Safeway. They last a fair amount of time. I use them to refill the littler ones, and I use them after I wash my hands too. So I dunno, not very many US dollars per month really.

    Germ-X smells lots better than Purell. I love Germ-X. But nothing beats Bath & Body Works for their delicious, delicious scents.

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  3. my hands are cracking & splitting just from reading this! do you use any that have a nice moisturizer built in?

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  4. You know what, it's the worst when the babies are under a few months old. Then, we are constantly, CONSTANTLY, washing. But then we relax a little. So right now, our hands are OK. Plus, I drink a ton of water, so that helps. And Cetaphil hand lotion is The Best. But yeah, dry hands are always a challenge. With our first baby, we literally had dry, cracked, BLEEDING HANDS. It was that bad, for months at a time. And it was so hard to fix. I feel like the hand sanitizers with moisurizers built in don't work as well. It's totally a mental thing. It's a visceral thing. It just FEELS like they don't work as well, so I don't use them.

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  5. I was going to suggest you try Scentsy's hand sanitizer, it smells even better than bath and body works stuff and it's alcohol free, but then I thought about how quickly you go through sanitizer and it would probably get spendy for you. I go through it in about 3 months and i don't even use it that often.

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  6. Do you clean the mini hand sani bottles that you refill? We have a foaming soap thing in the kitchen, but I only refill it a few times before dismantling it and soaking it in a bleach solution...even though it's SOAP, I know it can still get dirty and gross and who knows if the inside got contaminated.

    Anyway....

    Also, you forgot the sign outside your front door! Unless it's gone now? I remember it. :)

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  7. Kirbz: Is it that benzalkonium chloride stuff instead? See, even though I do use that on occasion, I just feel like it's not good enough. I prefer instead to kill things with fire where possible, and I love 65% alcohol. :)

    Ches: No, guess I don't. I figure that if any germs get in the bottle I'm refilling, they're sitting around nonstop in 65% alcohol and they're dying dead. But the soap thing eaves me wondering...good point.

    The sign is still on the door but covered up. I covered it when we had a specific delilveryman bring something one time, or some damn thing and it's still half-covered. Oh! I know, it was when we had a local lady bring us her unused disposable diapers. She offered online and I was like "yes I want!" and she brought them and I felt foolish with my "NOW ENTERING OCD LAND, PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS" sign up, so I covered it. :)

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  8. I'm kind of jealous of how little you spend on sanitizers.

    Just about an hour ago, in Australia, I paid about $8 for a 240ml pump sanitizer and a 200ml small bottle of sanitizer. I spend far too much on the stuff, and I don't have the luxury of having nearly as many bottles as you do. I wish my house was like yours!

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  9. $8 for 240ml! Oh good heavens! I'd be broke as a joke in no time. Yeah, that huge enormous giant one you see in my photos, those are just a few bucks. And they are a full--*runs to check*--yep, a full 2 L. For just like $6 or $7.

    Want me to ship you some? ;-)

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