How to Properly Wash Your Hands

Protect Your Health By Washing Your Hands the Right Way

With flu season starting amid another COVID-19 spike, it’s essential to take extra precautions to keep you and your family healthy. This includes avoiding touching communal surfaces where germs live, such as door handles, but it also means washing your hands — the right way.

Did you know that over 95% of people wash their hands incorrectly? Even scarier, research shows that 33% of people don’t use soap. While many individuals use hand sanitizer as a replacement, it is not as effective as washing your hands with running water.

Keep reading to learn how to ensure your hands are properly sanitized from the World Health Organization:

1. Wet Your Hands

Take off all jewelry such as rings and bracelets before you begin to wash your hands with warm water, as these cling to our skin and keep germs trapped.

2. Apply Soap & Hot Water

Pull your hands from the stream of water and add about a quarter-sized amount of soap. Adding soap under running hot water will make it run off your hands!

3. Rub Your Palms Together

Form a rich lather between your hands for around 5 seconds. This will add water to the soap to create a foam to use on your hands.

4. Rub Backs of Hands Together

Start with your right hand and massage the back of your left hand. When you’re done, switch sides and repeat.

5. Interlace Fingers

Rub your palms together, and clean the underside of your fingers. Rub your fingers along your knuckles, and be sure to get into all crevices.

6. Scrub Your Thumbs & Rub Palms With Your Fingertips

Close your right hand over your left thumb and wash. Repeat this step on the opposite side as well. Take your fingers and move them along on your palms. Be sure to switch hands and repeat.

7. Wash Your Hands Off

Rinse the soap away until your hands are washed clear of suds. Turn the faucet off with a towel — not your newly washed hands!

8. Dry Your Hands

Dry your hands with a clean towel instead of a hand dryer. These devices can spread more bacteria. Also, remember not to rub your clean hands on your clothes, as these carry germs as well.

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Washing your hands the right way is one of the best ways to ward off germs and shouldn’t take you longer than a minute — a short amount of time to keep you and all of those around you healthy. Remember, you should wash your hands:

• Before and after you eat.
• After you use the restroom.
• If your hands are visibly dirty.
• Throughout the day after touching public surfaces.