Undeniably, most people comprehend that regular cleaning is an excellent way to keep your rental home safe during flu season. Having said that, cleaning just the noticeable dirt may not be adequate enough. Doorknobs, light switches, computer keyboards, smartphones, tablets, television remotes, and game controllers are easy to miss when cleaning the house. If you are not sanitizing them regularly, they may heap up more harmful bacteria than your toilet.
How dirty are standard handheld devices?
It is highly suggested that you regularly clean your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller. Seeing as these electronic devices are touched so often each day, especially phones, controllers, and remotes, they can have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home!
Carefully think about it: assuming you touch something and then touch your phone or computer keyboard, you’ve transferred bacteria from one surface to the other.
The more repeatedly you touch a particular surface, the more bacteria will collect there, immediately becoming a serious health hazard. During the entire flu season, it’s easy to pick up germs and heedlessly pass them along to others by sharing devices, controllers – even the TV remote. This is what makes cleaning your dirty devices so critically important. If you aren’t cleaning your devices every day or after every use, the chances are that they might easily get you or your family sick.
Surfaces you touch every day
Have you ever tried to pay very close attention to everything you touch around the house daily? You may be, in fact, surprised! High-touch surfaces, in particular, get a lot of use, but on the other hand, may not make it onto your general cleaning lists. For instance, doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches are all touched daily, and oftentimes, countless times daily.
If you haven’t wiped these surfaces down with a germ-killing solution, they are doubtlessly harboring high levels of harmful bacteria. Studies have found these surfaces frequently contain far more bacteria per square inch than your toilet.
Sanitizing high-touch surfaces in your home is especially vital in the time of flu season. However, these surfaces cannot directly be sprayed with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will impair them. Instead, you can choose to use wipes designed to clean electronic devices. These wipes usually contain alcohol, which kills harmful bacteria.
For other high-touch surfaces around the house, work with a microfiber cloth and spray a disinfectant solution on the cloth, not exactly on the light switch or doorknob. A commercial cleaning solution that specifically details it will kill bacteria will work for your home’s plastic or other durable surfaces. Just don’t use harsh chemicals on painted surfaces, wood, or natural stone, as the chemicals will damage these areas.
In connection to high-touch surfaces, the CDC recommends washing your hands frequently and cleaning all surfaces in your home with a disinfectant that’s just right for the type of surface you’re cleaning. Just be meticulously careful to have proper ventilation and obey the label directions, makes no difference what cleaning agent you desire. By taking these extra preemptive measures, you can keep your home as germ-free as possible during flu season and for the whole year.
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