Cold Season: How To Keep Your Home And Family Healthy
EPISODE 44
by Dianne Jimenez
This article takes 7 minutes to read
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Cold Season: How To Keep Your Home And Family Healthy
In this episode I talk about tips and strategies to help you stay healthy during the cold season. These are strategies that we practice at home, what my friends do, as well as a pretty cool way of looking at how we wash our hands. Are we actually doing it thoroughly?
Hope you enjoy this quick episode my friend! More to come each week –
XO – Dianne
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Welcome back, we’re trying something new
Hey there! Welcome back to Parenting Guide Organizing Habits Made Easy podcast. And we are gonna try something a little different or a lot different where each week I will be giving you a tip or a strategy and these will be released every Tuesday and we’ll call it Tuesday Tips.
So these tips and strategies are about organizing your home, your schedule, couple hood and parenthood, and teaching kids life skills. And these episodes, I intend them to be short and sweet and to the point, but they won’t be replacing my previous format where they’ve been more detailed step-by-step, no. Those will also be mixed in a little bit here and there.
Reason for the change
The reason why I am doing these quick tips on a weekly basis, which are shorter episodes, is because I’ve kind of sat back and analyzed my last few months of podcast episodes. And I realized that, especially in the summertime or when the kids are off, which happens throughout the year, it’s very difficult to release an episode on a weekly basis; especially long ones that are more in depth, more step-by-step, more, you know, just, there’s just more oomph and meat in them.
And it’s not that I don’t like doing them, I love doing them. It just takes a lot of time. And what I believe that my audience needs right now is sometimes just quick tips and to the point strategies on a more consistent basis.
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About the Weekly Tips & Strategies
So these tips and strategies are ones that work for us at our house, as well as things that my friends and clients do that work for them. And I’ll even be sharing things that you send me through email or on DM. This way, more people can benefit from these tips and strategies and they don’t only come from me, but from the community here. So I’m very excited to share tips and strategies every Tuesday with you, and I hope you participate too by sending me a DM of what works for you at your place. So here we go.
Cold Season Tip #1: Disinfecting commonly used areas
So my first tip today, and like I said, short and sweet and to the point right now, is about: cold season. And there’s a lot of germs going around.
So the first thing that I do, especially because I just got off having a cold myself, is I will disinfect the bathrooms, the faucet, the sink, the counters,… Basically anything that people touch, like the doorknobs and the light switches, I will disinfect with a Lysol wipe. I’ll also further disinfect or clean out the toothbrushes with a vinegar and baking soda concoction inside a glass. And I’ll let them sit there for a while and then thoroughly rinse them out with water afterwards.
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Now, ideally I’d be doing this every day, but you know, it’s not always possible or realistic for me. So I do this as much as I can, as often as possible. And of course, if I remember.
Cold Season Tip #2: Hand washing reminders
Now, the one thing that we continue to do or I continue to do is ever since C O V I D and all the requirements that we had to do, is I’m always asking the kids, once they come home, if they’ve washed their hands. So much so that I will even ask if they use soap because you know kids, I’ve watched them and I observe them at school: They take the soap, they pump it into their palm and then they put their hand under the running water. So where does the soap go? Down the drain. Ugh, that annoys me so much.
And occasionally I’ll even check to see if I see some lathering happening and if I see some thorough washing. Call me…., I don’t know what, but I don’t care. I need these kids to wash their hands properly; Not just because of this time of the year (of cold season), but just general hygiene. Wash your hands properly. It’s not hard.
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But I get it: If you have little ones, then we gotta take that extra time to reteach them how to do these things because they’re just gonna end up doing something incorrectly or developing bad habits. And then it’s just going to be more of a struggle on our end too, to have them unlearn and reteach them proper ways when they’re a lot older. So let’s try to nip that in the bud.
Proper hand washing technique not just for Cold Season
Okay, now for those of you who are visual learners, I got something for you. I remember seeing a handwashing video that was so good that it made you think twice about whether or not we’ve been washing our hands properly at all, all these years.
And this video came out especially during C O V I D. So it’s about three years ago, and it was basically a guy wearing white gloves or latex gloves and showing how, with black ink, how we typically wash our hands. You saw the areas where the soap, or the black ink at this time, was not being applied on our hands. It’s crazy! I’ve linked the video on my show notes for today so you can see what I mean.
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Cold Season Tip #3: Let the kids watch this too
So maybe you can watch this with the kids and see and have a discussion about it and see: ‘hey, is this what you do with your hand washing?’ Because you know, sometimes when they do have the posters up in the washrooms, whether it’s public or in school, they do have the pictures and the images of what your hand positions are supposed to be when you’re washing, right? There’s like seven steps or something like that. But this video actually shows it with the images at the same time. So it kind of gives you a clearer picture or an idea of like… just basically a clear idea of what it’s supposed to look like and what it’s supposed to do.
So check out this video that I linked in my show notes and watch it with your kids. I encourage you to do that because it’s a great eye-opener, kind of like a reeducation on washing your hands and being a little bit more mindful about the way we wash our hands from this point forward. Anyways, I hope it helps.
Cold Season: Strategy
So in regards to strategy, a friend of mine, actually, my girlfriend, she does this and I think it’s brilliant. And basically to help the kids remember to wash their hands when they come back from school (or from outside), is that she places a kind of sticker or like a to-do list, but with images, right where they set their bags.
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I think it’s really cool because once they put their bags down, let’s say it’s in the dining room, well it’s right there: they’ll see the reminder of what to do next.
And I think this is brilliant because it helps them to develop habits. It helps you to not have to repeat it yourself and especially if you’re not there, they’re hopefully doing it and developing a routine that way.
So it’s kinda like a win-win. Yes, there is a sticker or a post-it or an image in the middle of the room, but you know what? It’s temporary and it’s a learning tool. You can tell your guests that it’s to help your kids develop new habits and routines. Plus it saves you from repeating every single day to wash their hands.
Thank you and please share this episode with a friend
So this is my tip and strategy of the week. I hope you found it helpful and maybe even as a reminder for this cold season. Now, don’t forget, if you have another tip or a strategy that works for you and your family in your home, please just send me a DM on Instagram at 1Tidy Place or an email at info@dianejimenez.com. And that’s Dianne with two ‘n’s’.
Alright my friends, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you have a great week and I will see you next time. Bye-bye.
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