Undoubtedly, most people are aware that regular cleaning is a great means to keep your rental home safe during flu season. However, cleaning just the seen dirt may not be ample 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 store up more harmful bacteria than your toilet.
How dirty are standard handheld devices?
It is urgently recommended that you regularly clean your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller. Owing to the fact these electronic devices are touched so often each day, particularly phones, controllers, and remotes, they can have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home!
Just consider it: whenever you touch something and then touch your phone or computer keyboard, you’ve transferred bacteria from one surface to the other.
The more repetitively you touch a particular surface, the more bacteria will collect there, instantly becoming a serious health hazard. At the time of flu season, it’s easy to pick up germs and unconsciously pass them along to others by sharing devices, controllers – even the TV remote. This is what makes cleaning your dirty devices so necessary. If you aren’t cleaning your devices every day or after every use, the chances are massively high that they might get you or your family sick.
Surfaces you touch every day
Have you ever tried to closely check everything you touch around the house daily? You may be flabbergasted! High-touch surfaces, especially, get a lot of use but, even so, may not make it onto your general cleaning lists. For instance, doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches are all touched daily, occasionally a multiple number of times daily. If you haven’t wiped these surfaces down with a germ-killing solution, they could be harboring high levels of harmful bacteria. Studies have found these surfaces ordinarily contain far more bacteria per square inch than your toilet.
Sanitizing high-touch surfaces in your home is especially focal through flu season. Having said that, these surfaces cannot solely be sprayed with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will ruin them. Nevertheless, you can get wipes designed to clean electronic devices. These wipes ordinarily contain alcohol, which kills harmful bacteria.
For other high-touch surfaces around the house, take advantage of a microfiber cloth and spray a disinfectant solution on the cloth, not actually on the light switch or doorknob. A commercial cleaning solution that specifically identifies 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.
Over and above high-touch surfaces, the CDC recommends washing your hands frequently and cleaning all surfaces in your home with a disinfectant best suited for the type of surface you’re cleaning. Just be observant to have proper ventilation and comply with the label directions despite of what cleaning agent you decide on. By taking these extra preventions, you can keep your home as germ-free as possible during flu season and throughout the year.
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