It might not be the first thing on your mind when you pick up a jug of Clorox Liquid Bleach or Clorox Clean-Up, to say, “I wonder what the Clorox ingredients are?” But have you ever taken a moment to wonder what’s inside your cleaning product?

This week I’m excited to share a post with a fellow mom and blogger, Mary Gagliardi – Clorox’s Dr. Laundry. As a Clorox scientist and mom of two, Mary is a bona fide laundry expert. Take a sneak peek of our chat about laundry piles, household helpers and New Year’s Resolutions.

I’ve seen a lot of public restrooms recently.

No, I haven’t been dealing with digestive issues, our family has just been traveling for the holidays. With two cross-country flights, multiple road trips and a preschooler who is just mastering potty-training, our family spent a lot of time in the necessary evil of the public restroom.

Every office has one: the office germaphobe. You know, that weird person who uses paper towel to open restroom doors, disinfects their desk regularly and hogs the communal hand sanitizer like they’ve just discovered a bowl of free cookies sitting in the office kitchen.

It’s that time of year when we sit down and think about what our resolutions will be. Last year, my resolutions included going to bed by 10:30 p.m. each night, exercising more and beginning Max’s potty training. These seemed like reasonable resolutions until I realized that I couldn’t even get the kitchen cleaned by 10:30 p.m., I valued sleep more than a treadmill, and I didn’t end up potty training Max until October.

Dr. Alanna Levine is the mother of two young children and a pediatrician at Orangetown Pediatric Associates in New York. She has partnered with Clorox this holiday season to educate parents on how to keep their children healthy this time of year.

Every year, I swear I will get ahead of the December holiday gift-giving stress and every year, my plans are foiled. And not for lack of trying.

You see, my Master Plan is to get all my holiday shopping done throughout the year. The strategy is simple: buy gifts whenever I find the “perfect” gift for each person on my list. Then, tuck the gifts away in closets so that by December, I simply pull them out and present them to the recipient who swoons with delight at my thoughtfulness. Easy, right? Well, as I self-congratulate myself in July at having found the “perfect” holiday gift for my mother-in-law, by December, I end up forgetting where I put it and inevitably stumble upon it months after Christmas.

My 3-year old son, Max, is obsessed with sweeping the kitchen floor. Besides looking at him fondly as he sweeps away crumbs from under the table (admittedly, he’s more pushing them around rather than truly cleaning them up), I am also taking photographic evidence to show him in his teenage years that say, "Yes, you really did help Mom sweep the floor every day and I expect you to keep it up, buddy!”

To prepare for the stampede of guests known as the December Holiday Season, I need all the help I can get with cleaning my home. Fortunately there are two pint-sized creatures that live under my roof whom I can authoritatively put to work to get the place in order: my kids