My Sundays are devoted to the dusting of shelves, corners, cleaning the bathrooms and changing bed sheets and pillows. On the last Sunday of the month, I clean the carpet, kitchen shelves etc. It was one such last Sunday of the month when I was tired after a day’s work and was contended with a speckles clean house. So I sat down with Hubby to watch a match.
Hubby was tugged into the sofa seat with a plate of pakoras on his potbelly, a TV remote in his left hand and eyes fixed on the match. I took the other corner of the sofa and sipped on some Adrak wali chai. My right hand held the bottle for our 6 months old son who was sandwiched between us on the couch with the support of cushions and pillows.
While we were engrossed in the match, I felt my son pulling on my pyjama. He had turned around and was trying to crawl by pulling my pyjama. I had been waiting for this moment for almost a month and finally, when it arrived, I missed the 1st moment. But I didn’t want to miss it further, so I pushed the center table aside and put my baby on the carpet to roll all by himself. While my eyes were fixed on my baby, my hubby got up to get some chutney kept on the center table now lying at one end of the carpet. He took a couple of spoons of the red chutney and in the process, a few drops trickled down into the brown carpet leaving no trace of its existence. But my eyes knew exactly where those 2 drops went. My hubby licked a few drops from his fingers and brushed the wetness of his fingers from the corner of the sofa seat.
While he continued to eat pakoras, he used the same hand to switch channels and just then the doorbell rang! With his oily hands and traces of chutney, he turned the knob of the door open to the vegetable vendor and picked up his mobile to make an online payment to him. And then he again got back to his pakoras. And my son picked up his mobile phone to put it into his mouth. (#Alarm)
While my hubby was gorging on pakoras, all I could see him as a storehouse of germs who went on spreading them open-heartedly, hopping from one surface to another. I never realised that the otherwise visually clean home might not actually be clean. But they are right in saying that a crawling baby rings so many alarms of caution in mumma’s ears. And the 2 most important ones are the safety of baby from sharp corners and edges and from the germs to not fall sick.
The mom in me suddenly got into ninja mode and I read a few articles online to baby proof my home and the surfaces to check out for disinfecting. I realised that TV remotes, pillows, cushions, carpets, sofa seats, door knobs are never cleaned but they are a storehouse of germs. When we are sick, we dig into a sofa to watch TV and transfer our germs onto it, never bothering to clean them away. The kitchen sponge that remains wet is a breeding house of germs. And a mobile phone carries more germs than a toilet seat because it is literally carried by us everywhere even in the toilets and used with dirty hands too. Phew!! So much? I am sure no sane mom can clean all those surfaces on a daily basis.
And while looking for solutions, I came to know that Dettol has come up with Dettol disinfectant to keep the surfaces germ-free. I am eager to try it. Are you?
