5 Hygiene Practices from Mama P

Growing up, Mama P knew.

She just knew.

There were things Mama P knew before anyone else did. Like the character of a person, even if she had no evidence. Like fashion trends that would become mainstream: even in hospice she captured the trend of rose gold and animal prints. Or like if something was bothering me and I hadn’t even worked it out myself yet.

Sometimes it was really eery how she just knew. Other times it was really frustrating because she didn’t have any logic or proof, but she stuck to her instincts and ended up being right.

As a kid I knew I wasn’t Canadian like a lot my classmates were (read: first generation). From listening to varioius snippets of their lives and routines, I figured out quite quickly that the way my mom ran her household was quite different. Everything from food shopping, cooking, to laundry and personal hygiene practices were just a little odd in comparison.

But somehow Mama P just knew that the way she did things were good, useful, and healthy. To this day I only have vague rationalizations for her practices, which I have adopted. So this post is more to pay homage to Mama P’s instincts than something spectacularly backed up by research. But in an ironic twist, a lot of government advice sounds very similar to what Mama P had been doing all along.

See, Mama P knew.

Wash your hands with soap and water. Often.

Mama P wasn’t obsessed with washing her hands, but her reasoning for washing her hands often was that one’s hands touched everything, and you couldn’t trust other people to wash their hands. So hand washing became part of some everyday routines:

• after using the toilet

• after blowing your nose

• after sneezing or coughing into your hands

• after coming home, from anywhere, after having touched anything outside of her house

• before food prep

• before sitting down to eat

• before doing make up

• after doing any sort of exercise or sports

After having this enforced my entire childhood, it became second nature in my adulthood. So it seemed like a no brainer to me when the UK Government had to release advice to wash hands to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Almost shocking, really.

What was everyone doing before the coronavirus came around? I mean, I thought everyone just washed their hands.

Don’t touch your face.

As we know, your hands go everywhere. And bringing your hands to your face also brings all sorts of fun bacteria and virus to your face. Sure, your mouth, eyes, and nose are pathways for bugs to get into your body, but have you thought of all the things like live ON your skin?

Sure, you could wash your hands, but what if you can’t? Or what if putting your face into the palm of your hand is also second nature? What if your eyeball starts itching or your contact lense just doesn’t feel right? You’re going to rub your eye aren’t you?

While we are all freaking out about COVID-19, it’s also important to remember nobody wants to clog up their skin’s pore with dirt or contract pink eye.

Wash your clothes hot.

My used to boil her towels before realizing that she could get away with a 60 degree wash. But this is how she grew up: it was commonplace to wash towels and linens at 90 degrees, which was referred to “koch wesher”. Literally meaning cooked laundry.

Washing at near boiling temperatures was an accessible way to sanitize, particularly when the laundry chores were an all day, fully engaged activity. There was no option to just throw a few towels into a machine and come back to it later.

While detergents and washing methods have improved over the last few decades, we appear to be coming back to washing our clothes very hot again. Health care and hospitality policies are recommending that linens and uniforms should be washed at 60 degrees or more and for over an hour for them to be considered clean, preventing the spread of viruses and bacteria.

Mama P knew.

Hang your clothes in the sun. Or use a drier.

Have you ever seen what the sun can do to wood? Plastic? It can break that down to smithereens. Takes a while, but eventually it gets there. Sunlight can do the same to viruses and bacteria.

Mama P had been hanging clothes outside in the sunshine all of my life. Even if the temperatures outside were like 2 degrees or it was cloudy, all clothes would start off outside before being brought inside to finish the drying process. Not only did all my clothes and linens smell amazing, but they just felt that little bit extra clean.

Obviously, not everyone has the ability to hang their clothes up outside, so a drier is the next best thing. The heat from the drier also helps to destroy viruses and bacteria. It’s why this practice is also included in hospital and hospitalit laundering policies.

Don’t have a drier? Then Mama P’s third hygiene practice becomes even more important.

Fresh Air.

Adequate ventillation and circulation of clean air has become a much higher priority of many policies since the Coronavirus lockdown has started to ease. If air is moving then aerosol can disperse much more easily, helping to prevent infection by preventing accumulation in one area.

Not that this is why Mama P kept her windows open at night: fresh air just smells better than stale, stuffy air. It makes you feel cleaner and more freshed, even if it’s a little chilly. A lot of Mama P’s carers commented on how clean and fresh her room smelled in hospice, and it wasn’t just the Neal’s Yard Bergamont room spray that she used.

I would definitely say she was onto something when she slept with her window open all year and kept our windows open as kids as well.

While my blog post isn’t overly science backed, you can see overlapping elements between what Mama P did all of her life and what governments are including in their policies to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. And if it’s in their policies, there’s probably (hopefully) a bit more research involved.

If these 5 tips aren’t included in your list, or you have more practices during these post lockdown times, let me know in the comments.

Stay safe and healthy!