Keeping Your Family Safe Around the House

As we all adapt to the new-normal, the world has opened back up and people, carefully, are returning to the usual routines of going to work and running errands. Many children are back in school and, as the holidays approach, each family decides just how much travel and visiting is safe. Whether you'll be carefully hosting family, traveling to visit, or staying cozy with your nuclear family, it's important to take safety measures both inside and outside the house.

Between school and work, many households have a few possible vectors for picking up germs, and visiting with family can increase that risk, depending on the measures you take. Thankfully, if everyone sanitizes, distances, and wears masks with care, we can be safe with our families this year.

One of the best things you can do to make both nuclear and visiting family safe around the home is to provide the means (and encouragement) to maintain safety measures. Nice-smelling sanitizer, clean fabric masks, and a way to avoid cracked over-washed hands are all essential to keeping virus particles at a minimum inside the home.

Hide Wipes Near High-Use Places

Clean surfaces are a must. Any cough, sneeze, or item that comes in from outside could carry a virus particle, and the best way to keep your home virus-free is to clean regularly. Make it easy for yourself and every contributing family member by stashing sanitizing wipes near most of your high-touch surfaces. Hide one in a side-table to quickly wipe down the living room area. Hide one at the top and bottom of the stairs so anyone can do a bannister sweep. Make cleaning easy by putting the tools close at-hand, maybe even reachable while sitting.

Place a Basket of Fresh Cloth Masks by the Door

If it's just your nuclear family at home, it's important to mask-up before leaving the house to keep everyone safe. If you are hosting visitors, you'll want everyone to mask-up on their way indoors, if they haven't already. Designing your home, you have a great way to both remind everyone to put on their masks and provide one if they don't have a handy mask hooked around their neck or in a pocket. 

Find a decorative basket, line it with cloth, and then fill it with rows of freshly cleaned cloth masks. Sort them by size if you have small children, sort them by style to entice each family member to wear their favorite kind of mask. Provide festive holiday designs to make holiday masking more fun. Don't forget mask-spacers, that handy cloth strap that hooks the ear straps and holds the mask behind the head at greater comfort, and easier around-the-neck docking.

Design Decorative Hand Sanitizer Displays Around the House

Hand sanitizing is important both inside and outside the house. Viruses spread, not through the skin, but when hands touch a virus particle, then touch the face. The more often you wash surfaces, fabrics, and hands, the fewer particles can make that transition. Washing hands constantly can get tedious, and many prefer a squirt of hand sanitizer. But how can you make it festive? 

Nestle your hand sanitizer bottles in decorative displays throughout the house. Place one in the entryway for those entering and leaving the house. Place one along the living room path, one in the kitchen, and one by the back door. Put one in each bedroom, or in the hallway that connects bedrooms. Surround the bottle in a small basket with lace, silk flowers, or festive linens to match the rest of your decor to make sanitizing both beautiful and convenient around the house.

Provide Hand Lotion or Moisturizing Sanitizer for Dry Hands

Of course, all that hand-washing and sanitizing has one major downside - especially in winter. Often, hands become dry and cracked when washed too much, and the only solution is moisturizing. Many people are doubling on the hand-pumps, with a lotion right next to the sanitizer to their skin. The more efficient option is a moisturizing hand sanitizer like Muse, which combines vitamin E and glycerin to help moisturize hands while also killing germs.

For little ones, for visiting relatives, and for yourself, it can really help to think ahead about keeping clean, and protecting hands from cracking at the same time.

Prepare a Cozy Outdoor Seating Area

Doctors today recommend that any mixing households that have not both isolated should primarily meet and socialize outdoors. That will make this a pretty chilly holiday season, but one you can warm up with preparation, love, and a cozy burning fire pit. A brazier, a fire table, or a simple tone-lined fireplace make a lovely way to gather and socially distance at the same time. Same-household family members can share blankets and scarves while warm family conversation flows over the top of the fire.

Give Keychain Sanitizers as Pre-Holiday Gifts

One of the best ways is to make hand sanitizer easy to grab, with a refill back home. Make it simple for your family members to sanitize on the go or clean a space with sanitizing keychains. A little moisturizing sanitizer in a keychain can go a long way to encouraging each family member to avoid picking up germs when they are outside the house, as well as staying safe inside the house.

Find Fun Mask-Included Holiday Hats

Want to make mask-wearing even easier and more fun? Make it festive! Find fun felt and costume hats that can incorporate the mask as part of the festivities. A Santa hat with a mask-beard is the clear starting place. But you can also have snowmen with a coal-and-carrot mask, reindeer with snouts, or earlier in the season, turkeys with beaks. For little kids and silly relatives, hat-masks can be the perfect way to make masking fun.

Keep Your Family Safe and Fight Chapped Skin

This year, family time is at a premium, and family safety is all about germ control. When you are on your game with hidden wipes and good-smelling hand sanitizer at every corner, your family will find it easier to stay safe, and more enjoyable. And because hand sanitizing is so drying, protect your family from chapped skin and cracked hands with a moisturizing sanitizer by Muse Health for everyday use. Your own hands will thank you as well.