With the start of the school year comes the potential for germs to spread. Here’s how to stop them before they can get started.

 

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Keeping kids (and the whole family) healthy can be as easy as singing “Row Your Boat.” The U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC) maintains that thorough handwashing is one of the most important steps to avoiding illness. In Clean Hands Save Lives, the CDC recommends spending at least 20 seconds on every hand-wash. An easy way for kids to time their handwashing is to sing “Row Your Boat” two times through.

That advice gets hearty approval from us. Not only does it help kids get their hands cleaner, the song helps them stay cheerful, which is believed by many to have immune-boosting benefits. Learn more in the article, Clean Hands Help Keep Kids in School.

Regular cleaning can make your home inhospitable to germs, even when you’re not using disinfectants. Here are some important cleaning routines from the IEHA that can help minimize illness-producing bacteria in your home: Cleanliness is Next to Disinfection.

Sometimes it is necessary to clean with disinfectants, like after a family member has been ill or during a particularly severe flu season. But, it’s also a good idea to know just what germs your disinfectant will kill. Here is an informative article by the President of HousekeepingChannel.com that helps explain what various disinfectants will – and won’t – kill: What Germs Are We Killing? Testing and Classifying Disinfectants.

Germ Warfare is a primer that takes you behind enemy lines to see how germs operate and why certain tactics are necessary for their defeat.

(Note: The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent those of The Housekeeping Channel, LLC.)