The Elephant in the Room

Alright, people, we can't avoid it any longer. It's time we talk about the thing that has been weighing so heavily on all our minds: cell phone hygiene. That's right, I said it, and I'm not ashamed.

My personal journey with cell phone hygiene, or CPH, began about 2 weeks ago. A dear friend had sent us a "summer school" care package full of fun activities and experiments for the kids to do, then we were to report back to her (don't worry T, that report is coming). Unfortunately we didn't do much of any school over the summer. We were too busy doing our play, and going to Lagoon, and camping and hiking, and going to fairs and concerts and the demolition derby, and swimming,and, well...isn't that enough?! But now that we have started school again, we are trying out some of these experiments. The one we started with involved growing things in petri dishes - so scary. We were supposed to do one swabbing of dirty hands, one swabbing of just-washed hands, and one swabbing of somewhere where germs might collect, like a doorknob or lightswitch. Only my kids didn't want to do a doorknob or lightswitch. They wanted to do my phone. I did not want to do my phone. If I didn't have hard evidence, I could go on pretending that there was no way for germs to be on my phone. But when you homeschool, you have to make a lot of sacrifices, not excluding your own peace of mind. So we swabbed my phone. Nine days later:



'Nuff said. I have since rubbed my phone down with hand sanitizer multiple times, and plan to continue doing so on a very regular basis. Also, since my sister so innocently pointed out: "Have you ever thought about how many germs must be on the outside of a hand sanitizer bottle? You only touch it when your hands are really germy..." let's just say, I have since been sanitizing my sanitizer, too!