Alexa, Wash my Hands! The fun way of Hand-washing

There are many ways to wash your hands! While we won’t tell you why, when and how to wash your hands (folks at the CDC can explain that much better, you’ll find more links below), we will look into some ways to turn hand-washing into a fun experience with Alexa. Pick what works best for you and your family!

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

The Boring Way to Wash your Hands with Alexa

We will start with a pretty uninspired way to wash your hands. Can’t believe some folks prefer this over music:

• Alexa, set a timer for 25 seconds!

Please note, the CDC recommends scrubbing your hands for at least 20 seconds. Extend the time to what works best for you and don’t forget to grab the soap!

The Singing Way to Wash your Hands with Alexa

Alexa’s favorite way of hand-washing! You might have heard that humming the “Happy Birthday” song twice from beginning to end does the trick, but why not have Alexa sing for you? And soon enough you’ve learned the hand-washing song lyrics and can sing along!

• Alexa, wash my hands!
• Alexa, sing a song for twenty seconds / The Hand-Washing Song (0:29)

You might wonder, why is this song 29 seconds long? Well, it has an intro and outro and 20 seconds scrubbing is the minimum recommendation, remember?

It’s kind of lame that Alexa currently only knows one hand washing song, so we checked out all the 48 something songs Alexa can sing (from our infamous Alexa music post) and identified the ones which are between 20 and 30 seconds long! Here we go, Alexa’s smartenlight approved hand-washing songs:

• Alexa, sing Your Attention, Please (0:22)
• Alexa, sing Pi Day (0:23) Yes, we know it was already on March 14th, but who cares?
• Alexa, sing The Cloud (0:20)
• Alexa, sing Happy Birthday (0:27)
• Alexa, Drop Some Props for Grace Hopper (0:27)
• Alexa, Drop Some Props for Shirley Chisholm (0:27)
• Alexa, Drop Some Props for Jackie Robinson (0:23)
• Alexa, sing My Country, ’Tis of Thee! (0:28)

Following are Christmas songs, we checked with Santa, and he says it’s OK to practice them during hand-washing:

• Alexa, sing Good King Wenceslas (0:28)
• Alexa, sing Jolly Old St. Nicholas (0:24)
• Alexa, sing We wish you a Merry Christmas (0:25)

All other Alexa songs are either shorter than 20 seconds or longer than 30 seconds. You can find them in our Alexa Music post.

You can find international Alexa Songs which are suitable for hand-washing in our post Alexa, sing a song! A Musical World Trip with 118 Alexa Songs.

The Pro Way to Wash your Hands with Alexa

Yes, we know. You wouldn’t be here at smartenlight, if you were not looking for a much cooler way to wash your hands with Alexa, right? Ha, here we go!

When we say: “Alexa, wash my hands”, she will play a random song out of our predefined “hand-washing” playlist, for 25 seconds. No more boring hand-washing, a surprise song each and every time!

For this, we will create a hand-washing music playlist and an Alexa Routine! This is by far the most sophisticated way to wash your hands, check it out!

Please note, this will work with Amazon Music. Spotify still has this bug that it always starts with the same song even on shuffle, and with Apple Music, Alexa has troubles finding the playlist. Bummer!

Create a “Hand Washing” Playlist in the Amazon Music App

1. Open your Amazon Music app and tap on “My Music” at the bottom and then on “PLAYLISTS”.
2. Tap on “Create New Playlist” and enter “Hand Washing”, tap on “Save” (Note, you can of course create different playlists for tall and small, old and young and all those in between hand washers!)
3. Tap on the little “+” button next to the songs you’d like to add to your playlist. The more songs you add, the bigger the surprise.
4. Tap on “Done” at the top right.

Create an “Alexa, wash my hands” Alexa Routine

If you’re completely new to Alexa Routines you might enjoy our post: Alexa Routines: How to Automate your Life with your Amazon Echo.

1. Open the Alexa app
2. Go to the Menu and select ‘Routines’
3. Tap on Plus (+) at the top right to create a new routine.
4. Select “When this happens” and choose “Voice”
5. Enter the phrase that you/your kids will speak to activate the routine, e.g. “wash my hands”, or, whatever works best for you.
6. Select “Add action” and choose “music”
7. Enter “My Hand Washing Playlist on Shuffle”
8. Select Amazon Music as music service
9. Tap on the timer and set it to 25 seconds (or longer), tap “Next”
10. At the bottom of the routine, select to play the routine from “The device you speak to”
11. Tap “Save”

Give it a minute to transfer the Alexa Routine to all your Amazon Echo devices. And voila, no more boring hand-washing!

More Information from the CDC

• Handwashing: Clean Hands Save Lives
• When and How to Wash Your Hands
• Handwashing: A Family Activity
• Handwashing: A Healthy Habit in the Kitchen
• Life is Better with Clean Hands (here you can find fact sheets and posters to print out as reminders)

More Alexa Information at Smartenlight

Here’s a selection of Alexa posts, you might like:

• Alexa, Play Some Music: All The Music Commands
• Alexa, sing a song! A Musical World Trip with 118 Alexa Songs.
• Alexa Routines: How to Automate your Life with your Amazon Echo
• Alexa Routines: Immersive Storytelling with Ambient Scenes and Sounds.
• Alexa Alarms, the Smarter Alarm Clock!

Conclusion

Who would have thought that life is so much better with clean hands? And who would have thought, that hand-washing can be fun with Alexa?

We hope you’ve enjoyed our Alexa hand-washing post and it helps you and your family to build a healthy and fun hand-washing habit.

“Wash your hands everybody!
Everybody wash your hands!
So here’s a song, sing a long.
Tell germs nope, grab the soap …”

Happy hand-washing! =)

P.S. Need to go wash my hands now, but you can find more Alexa posts here: Amazon Alexa