March 11, 2008 | Kids clean, Cleaning products
Q. Could you please tell me what I could use to sanitize my twins’ sippy cups when they drop them on the floor of the store (something portable so we can finish our trip) & to “try” and sanitize the shopping cart handles?
A. I’ve got 3 suggestions for you. The first is that according to Parenting magazine, parents don’t need to be so vigilant about what falls on the floor. Apparently there’s something to that 5-second rule. Of course, I’d throw that advice out the window in certain places - public restrooms (ew!), malls, etc… General dirt won’t hurt anyone, and it’s actually been found to increase endorphins. It’s the germs you can’t see that you need to be concerned with.
Now, to actually answer the question. One of my favorites is Clean Well. They have a line of hand sanitizers and soaps that are non-toxic, kill 99.9% of germs, are alcohol-free and biodegradable, smell nice, and leave your hands soft. You should be able to find a supply at your local Target.
Lastly, a travel-sized bottle of Listerine (or presumably any other mouthwash) will kill germs equally well. Of course, you lose the environmental friendliness, and many of them contain alcohol. But in a pinch, a bit of Listerine will kill any germs your child’s paci, bottle, or sippy may have gathered from the floor. It’s cost-effective and easy enough to use. You could even put some in a small spray bottle to keep in the diaper bag. (And now for the shocking reveal: I use mouthwash or toothpaste to clean my kids’ things when I’m upstairs and too lazy to go downstairs. I don’t want to use regular soap on anything that might find its way to their mouth, so if dish soap isn’t handy, I go for toothpaste or mouthwash.) I don’t know if toothpaste would be as effective as mouthwash, but Listerine was originally used (in the 19th century) as a multi-purpose disinfectant for surgical purposes. The active ingredients are 4 oils: thymol, menthol, eucalyptol and methyl salicylate. Do rinse well though, because a baby wouldn’t be so happy to get a paci back in his mouth if it tasted like Listerine, and frankly, Listerine isn’t meant to be ingested anyhow.
RSS feed for comments on this post.
The URI to TrackBack this entry is:
http://broomhuggers.com/2008/03/11/portable-disinfectants/trackback/
Allie says:
Wow! This is a great tip! I don’t have kids, but I like the idea of keeping a bottle of Listerine around to disinfect anyway.
March 18th, 2008 at 5:27 pmvictoria says:
awesome! thanks!
March 24th, 2008 at 3:21 pm