Keep your family healthier

There are five of us in our family. With two of our three children in school, I feel like I am constantly fighting a battle with germs. As any mother knows, it is no fun to have a sick child. Worse, to have more than one sick child, and even worse than that, to BE sick with sick children! I am a firm believer that an 'ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,' so with that in mind, I started a regular routine to create a healthier family. Some things will be no-brainers, and some may not be quite as obvious.

• Always carry hand sanitizer with you, and use it any time you or your child touches something others touch (for example, the pen to sign the credit card pad at the grocery store... have you ever thought about how many people have touched that before you? Yuck).
• Keep hand sanitizer in your car. I like the foam the best because I can squirt it in my kids' hands and it doesn't drip as much as the gel. We use it any time we return to the car after shopping, school, or anywhere else.
• Wash your hands as soon as you enter the house. My kids know that first they put their shoes, coats and bags away, and then immediately wash their hands. Washing hands before meals and after using the bathroom are other obvious times to have your family do it. If someone in the family is already sick, have them wash their hands after they blow their nose, and have everyone else wash their hands a lot more than usual.
• Keep disinfecting wipes in several handy places in your house and use them A LOT. I use wipes almost daily to walk around my house and disinfect the sink faucets, door handles, light switches, remote controls, phones, downstairs bathroom, etc... Pretty much anything that has the potential to be touched by more than one person gets wiped down.
• Keep disinfecting wipes in your car. Use them to wipe down every shopping cart when you shop, and not just the handle, but all the way around the edge (especially if your kids like to hang on like firemen off the sides). You can also use them to occasionally wipe down frequently touched parts of your car (handles, steering wheel, gear shift, etc...)
• Replace hand and dish towels every single day. Any towel that gets used by more than one person in my house, gets replaced daily.
• Have everyone in the family take a multi-vitamin. I also like to give a vitamin D-3 supplement in the winter since they don't get as much exposure to the sun.
• Also try to get plenty of exercise, rest, and healthy food as well.

I hope you and your family are able to stay as well as possible this winter and all year long!