Hand dryers for your home? You bet: a great way

Hand dryers for your home? You bet: a great way to prevent disease!

We're all accustomed to finding hand dryers in public restrooms. With so many people washing and drying their hands each day, it just makes sense that the business owner can keep the restrooms clean of paper towel litter while saving time and money. But did it ever cross your mind that this little appliance might be a good thing to have at home? Probably not. However, with all the strange new diseases we hear about, such as the swine flu and avian flu, having a home hand dryer may not be a bad idea.

Previously, we've thought of these public restroom appliances as utilitarian devices, rather than a legitimate health product. Most of us also think that hand towels are much more elegant. Well, that's probably true, but ask any Mom about the amount of laundry she does each week. There's surely a few loads of towels, using laundry soap, electricity and water ... not exactly eco-friendly, but costly on the monthly power bill, as well as time and effort. So there you have a good argument for installing a hand dryer in your home bathroom.

It's also a well-established fact that school age children get, on average, 12 colds per year. Up to now, we've just accepted this as one of the things parents have to deal with. We teach our kids to wash, wash, wash and wash again! All to no avail. We use antibacterial products to clean doorknobs, the telephone, counter tops, you name it, all in an effort to not spread germs. Our lovely towels, are part of the dcor, yet there they hang, big as you please, serving not only to dry our hands, but spreading germs as well.

It's these 'designer' diseases combinations of human, swine and avian flu viruses that got me going down this line of thinking. Now, at the local supermarkets, I find they have installed machines filled with hand sanitizing wipes with which patrons are encouraged to wipe the handles and grocery cart baby seat, to help prevent the spread of germs and disease. With all the news of pandemics and such, I appreciate that the grocers are taking these preventative steps. What's the world coming to?

This doesn't mean I'm going to dispense with my pretty towels in the bath and kitchen. It just means that, with a hand dryer installed in the bath and kitchen, there'll be fewer illnesses in our household, less laundry to do and a longer life for those towels. This reminds me of an elderly aunt I visited frequently as a child. Her home always seemed like a museum, because she had plastic mats on traffic paths throughout her home, with little white starched doilies on the chair and sofa armrests. I guessed it was to keep things clean.

Perhaps she was ahead of her time. She would have loved a home hand dryer, warding off disease, while being far more elegant and low-key than her plastic mats.