Swine Flu? No problem. Easy tips for clean hands.

There used to be a woman in our community who was famous for wiping down surfaces everywhere with alcohol before she'd use them. I once entered a ladies room only to find her disinfecting it stem to stern with a little square of alcohol, proclaiming it "ready." (She even offered me one in case I wanted to use it.)

I don't mean to make fun of someone that careful; most of the time, we run to the opposite extreme and tend to be fairly relaxed about handwashing and public hygiene in general. Unless you're a surgeon or a health care worker, you probably don't think about it a lot, and even then, outside a medical setting, you might not take as much care. We thumb our nose at germs. Literally.

So now we're faced with an unusual situation, germs trolloping around the globe at a steady pace spreading a virus for which humans have no current defense except good hygiene. What's a person to do?

I recommend these simple tips, all of which, while they might feel silly, will help:

1) Use your shoulder or elbow to open or close doors. Instead of grabbing that doorknob, use a part of your body that isn't in contact with other things, like your face, to open and close doors that swing in or out, or don't require handling the doorknob to do so. The same hands-free policy can apply for turning on and off light switches.

2) Use a clean paper towel, tissue, or toilet seat liner in public restrooms. When you enter a public restroom stall, after pushing in with your elbow/shoulder, grab a clean piece of paper to close it. Hang onto the paper until you leave the stall, and keep it handy for leaving the room. Set it next to the sink while washing up (great place to park your cellphone or other hand items).

3) Learn to turn water faucets on and off with your elbows, instead of your hands. Many water faucets these days are designed for hands-free operation, using a forearm to turn them on and an elbow to turn them off. If they require hands to turn on and off, consider using a clean paper towel or tissue.

4) Pretend you're a surgeon. Learn to wash your hands properly. Use hot water for washing your hands, not lukewarm or cold. Lather up the entire hand area with soap and hot water, rubbing together for longer than you ordinarily would. Rinse well under hot water. Pretend you're scrubbing up for surgery, minus the scrubber. You'll quickly learn which public restrooms don't even provide hot water to their sinks, but should.

5) Don't drip dry. Use clean paper towels or the hot air blower in a public restroom to dry your hands (be sure to turn that blower on with your elbow, not your hand). Don't wipe your hands on your clothing as you whisk out the door as a substitute for paper towels or a dryer.

6. Get rid of the community towel. In home bathrooms and at the kitchen sink, get rid of the community hand towel for wiping hands after washing, and use paper towels or disposable hand towels instead.

7. Toss the handkerchiefs. They look sophisticated and polite, but use tissues for blowing or wiping your nose, then discard immediately, instead of carrying around a soiled handkerchief for re-use. Clean your hands thoroughly after using; if soap and water aren't available, use hand sanitizer. Keep the handkerchiefs in your pocket.

8. Use the handwipes at the grocery store. Most grocery stores these days have sanitizing wipes to wipe down the handles of grocery carts. Use them.

9. Carry hand sanitizer. You can't just stay home all the time and avoid contact with germs in the outside world, so carry a small container of hand sanitizer with you, or wipes, for those situations when soap and water aren't available.

10. Adjust your social habits. Find appropriate substitutes for the handshaking in the meantime. Be creative. Elbow bumps work. So does a friendly wave.




Kathy Riordan, full-time writer and part-time handwasher, first learned how to scrub up working in a small rural hospital in southwestern Wyoming and found it immensely useful when her husband was a patient at Mayo Clinic for several months, where she probably washed her hands a few thousand times.

Follow on Twitter at @katriord