Find it before it finds you.

Let this sink in:

Research shows that your steering wheel could be filthier than a public toilet seat. A similar study found that “a vehicle’s interior doubles as an intricate ecosystem that’s responsible for trillions of different bacteria, and you’re touching it all.”

So I ask myself, if my steering wheel is that covered in so much invisible grossness, what other places might be secretly harboring the cold- and flu-causing germs that are sweeping KC right now? You can bet that as the flu maps become more red and scary, I’m pulling out all the stops to keep myself healthy.

Despite my efforts, our house got hit with some kind of stomach bug this week. I’ll spare you the details. For the parents out there, you know it’s impossible to protect yourself from your kids’ germs when they are breathing in your mouth, kissing your face and so graciously sharing their food.

But there is a lot we can do to protect ourselves from our sick coworkers, fellow Target shoppers and everybody else’s sick kids. Though the CDC has a long list of prevention tips, here is what I’m doing:

I keep hand sanitizer in the car and wipe down the steering wheel.
On my mother’s advice, I keep hand sanitizer in my car so the germs from the door handles don’t go straight to my steering wheel to linger for days. And I don’t want to even THINK about where those bacteria end up if I happen to be scarfing down breakfast en route to work.

I got the flu shot.
To all you who say you’ve never gotten the flu and never got the shot, you’re lucky. If you’ve truly had influenza, you’d get the shot if there was a glimmer of a hope you wouldn’t get this awful, awful disease.

I wash my hands.
I’m not the best at this and I certainly don’t have time to sing Happy Birthday every time I wash, but after grocery shopping I try to come home and wash the germs away.

Keep healthy
I do my best to sleep, take my vitamins, eat my fruits and veggies. Harder to do in the winter but I’ve found some tasty grapes and Cutie oranges from Costco that surely are pumping my immune system up.

How are you avoiding the flu and other nasty bugs this season? What about wiping down that steering wheel?

 

LWTK’s mommy blogger, Sarah, is attempting to be a good mama to little Henry, wife to Shea, full-time employee and part-time grad student all while avoiding making dinner from a box every night. In her non-existent free time, she’s running, eating popcorn and blogging about it all at The Gatsby Diaries.