For right now, each day that goes by we should be doing all we can do to help protect ourselves and our family from getting the virus.
I make sure to wear an apron when cleaning and doing laundry and then putting my apron in the wash or put it in a bucket to be washed. In ordinary daily chores It helps to protect our clothing. Right now is especially important to wear an apron.
We are the home front, not the hospital, and our jobs are very important that we do things right if we "have" and only "have" to go out and then in our home, so we do not get the virus or become infected with anything and put more burdens on the nurses and doctors.
We cannot become Complacent and we must keep washing our hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds even when we are just at home. We should keep our face washed and our teeth brushed and use especially good hygiene.
Keep the bathroom clean, the toilets and the faucets.
We need to be especially careful to not have an accident of any kind because we do not need to go to a doctor or hospital because it is so high risk right now. This is not a time to do any kind of home project that has a risk of injury, even a laceration that needs stitches or a fall from a ladder. Please be careful.
I have started clearing surfaces. As many of you have noticed that I love textiles and keep our tables dressed and tops of furniture with dresser runners and doilies. But this is the time to make changes so daily cleaning can be done. I am wiping down surfaces more often. The virus may last longer on hard surfaces so the cloth could be better but it takes too much water to be continuously washing. So this is what I am doing here in our home.
Being that I worked in hospitals I am familiar with certain practices. Not everyone knows procedures of disinfecting or even the simple things such as the proper way to remove gloves the way a hospital does it because we are not the hospital.
To remove a glove we remove it so that we do not touch the outside and we pull it off turning it into itself starting at the wrist.
Here I have a disposable cloth, this could have been used to clean a toilet or maybe we used a strong cleaning solution. I generally use brushes and washable cloths and disinfect them but sometimes we need to use something disposable.
So we put the item to dispose inside our glove.
Reach inside of that glove with our thumb of our other hand and pull down.
Now the dirty side is turned in with the disposable item inside.
Place that into the other glove..
Now do the same with this glove. Reach in with the thumb...
And pull off. Dispose the gloves properly and wash our hands with soap and water right away.
But at home many people do not have gloves or even disinfectants because now there is a shortage. So we use soap and water. We literally get a soapy rag and soap up the surface and rinse well with hot water or as warm as we can handle.
Real soap has glycerin in it which is better for wood. I do not have any furniture that cannot withstand soap and water so you will have to check your furniture. We can always go over it with furniture oil after cleaning if needed.
We do the same with the floors. In the past when I was younger I always washed my floors on my hands and knees ,and I still do this to our bathroom floors even though it is not as easy for me anymore.
I have a bucket of soap water and one of clear water and I wash and rinse as I go. I go through the entire house like this and why I do the one room proper now (in my post called that) where this is not such a large amount to do.
On painful days I use a mop and good days I do it the old way.
We are doing everything we can to keep Charles from catching the virus and bringing it home. He is in product sales for Grocery stores so he is in the service industry and he is going in and out each day at grocery stores.
So Charles routine is as soon as he comes out of the store washes his hands with this running water. He flips the lever up and down with the back of his hand. He soaps up and washes the 20 seconds. He has alcohol and wipes as long as they will last and wipes the lever, the handle of the car the steering wheel, keys etc. Anything he touches.
If people would stay home when they are sick, if they would distance themselves as they are told, if they would wash their hands every time then it would be so much better.
But Charles is out there working and he can see that people are not distancing themselves in the stores, they are much too casual about this so we have to protect him from them and this is a case when we feel a mask is needed for Charles since Charles is in the older group but still not retired. So I am making him masks with a non woven filter in the inside which is VERY important. Just sewing cotton fabric together is not making a good mask for a virus like this one going around.
This one fits better than it may look, it has a nose piece, it gathers on the side and fits well. I am working on another type but this is what he has now.
He has "many" of these so he can remove them often and put a clean one on. He has a clean and dirty container in the car. He knows to sanitize his hands after he removes the dirty before he puts on the clean one. He knows to not touch his face or mask. And he is truly doing this no matter what others think! Charles is the type of person that does not live his life concerned what others think and I truly love this about him.
The mask should be well fitted and have one or two layers of non woven pellon or something like that inside the plain or decorative fabric which is the top and bottom layer. The two layers of non woven material is so that the small particles cannot go through. I did much research on this and also the nose piece is just as important so that it is fitted to the face.
I finally found a link to a good video to a different shape mask and she shows how to put that non woven material I was talking about. I will put a link at the bottom.
Supplies are getting very difficult to find so we have to look around to see what we have in our homes that can be used.
There will be a link below to see how this is done.
Charles is bathing outside before he comes into the house in the bathhouse I showed in the last post. We have a camp stove that heats water and we have an outdoor bath area we built several years ago for the summer when working in the yard and garden. We also have an outdoor laundry area.
We have a procedure for when Charles comes home. It takes a lot of time to get him and all his items from his wallet, ink pen, glasses, keys etc disinfected every day when he comes home. Each day we get a little better at it.
Anything that comes in our home is being washed, food, birdseed packages (we have a cockatiel), laundry soap, bananas. We are trying to bring in as little as possible but we are taking items to a 82 year old family member when she needs them so that gets wiped down before coming in, then I wash it in the sink with soap and water and it is placed in a tote to be taken to her. I will link a article to this too.
This is not over kill! This is what it takes to not get the Virus. I do wish Charles could be home right now so we could isolate. Please keep Charles and I in your prayers.
Another surface I cleared except these two pieces. The little girl is a piece from my childhood and the dog is a piece from Charles childhood.
One of our rustic arbors is in need of some repair this year. Everything here is leafed out now and the dogwoods are blooming as well as the fruit trees. This brings me to why it is important to grow a perennial garden.
This is a fig on our fig tree. Charles and I have a small house and a small lot in the city that is fairly triangle shaped. We realized the need of growing food as well as trees that will give us fruit. We also have pecan trees.
This is one of our peach trees blooming. We have two pear trees, two peach trees, two apple trees, several blueberry bushes, one fig tree, a lemon tree, two satsuma trees (similar to an tangerine) three mulberry trees, two pecan trees and two plum trees.
Just think if we all grew gardens and had trees that produce fruit how much better it would be for our food supply during an emergency.
We can preserve our food by canning and dehydrating it. We could exchange food with others that grow something different than we do.
Or what if we just grew a soup garden which is what I call our small backyard garden. Just enough of this and that to make soup.
If people would just consider the simple life and get back to our roots and live a more sustainable life it would truly be so much better. Keep a better stocked cupboard and pantry, grow food even if it is a small amount. Those that live in apartments find their community gardens and rent a patch. If there are none then consider starting one.
If we live below our means so there is not so much financial stress and we would have the ability to better survive the bumps in the road.
What if everyone considered the well being of nature... All we have to do is just do this, that is really all we have to do... Just do it.
My love for the very old handwork is because it was done with the hands of someone long ago. I think about them sitting there with needle and thread and turning a simple piece of plain fabric into something very lovely. But it is more than that, it is that when you do something like this it means that person has slowed down, something we do not do today unless we have been forced to do so and then many people do not know what to do with themselves.
Never feel locked in when you are at home because it can become a magical place.
Charles and I are always looking for a spot to put in a new garden bed. We plant vegetables mixed with flowers all along our yard.
I am having a hard time believing that in this day and time we were not better prepared for this serious virus. Our countries and others as well should have learned from the lessons of the past how bad this can get.
So people have to know that "We" have to be the ones to learn what to do and have what we need that are practical things we can use. "We" need to save for long term emergencies.
"We need to learn to grow and preserve food and get back to our roots.
Please remember there is nothing we can do at this time that is overboard. Do everything we can in a very sensible way.
Grandma Donna
Watch what to put for a filter inside a mask, link below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8HNYKvlaN8&t=629s
Clean what you bring into your home, link below,
