How To Properly Sanitize And Clean Your Home: Answers To Common Questions

Currently, many people are taking extreme measures to disinfect and clean out living spaces and often-used products and items. And some such items to pay close attention to are tablets, cell phones, table surfaces and more. These items have the largest number of germs and need to be cleaned most frequently.

In addition, it’s important to make sure that your home is completely free from harmful germs and bacteria. In our day and age of COVID-19, it’s crucial to take proper steps to keep your home and living space safe.

In this article we will go over some frequently asked questions regarding cleaning and sanitizing your living space. Hopefully you will get a good grasp on all that needs to be done and what you can do to ensure your safety and that of others.

What products are recommended by the CDC to properly disinfect and sanitize the home?

The CDC is really stressing the basic and simple step of washing your hands. The recommended guidance is washing your hands for at least 20 seconds with soap and water. You can put the same type of guidance inside your home with those often touched items. Always make sure to use an effective multi surface cleaner-disinfectant. Products such as Dawn we think more of as a powerful degreaser for dishes. But in reality Dawn has many household uses. For example, did you know you can use Dawn as a laundry pre-treater? Dawn can also be used with soapy water to clean your kitchen countertops. Really it can be used all over your home to rid it from everyday grime, grease, and dirt that accumulates.

Next we want to be sure to have a strong and powerful disinfectant on our hands. You can check online with the EPA for a list of registered quality disinfectants that have proven to be effective on harmful viruses such as Covid-19. Properly disinfecting those high often touched items is extremely important. Anything that anyone touches in an apartment, home, or office on a steady basis. Light switches, door knobs, countertops, remote controls, tabletops, and any type of surface within the bathroom. Fixtures like the toilet handle or the sink faucet. You'll want to make sure to disinfect those and to read the product label to make sure you're using it the right way. Or you can hire a professional office cleaning service in NJ for a professional deep clean of your workspace.

A noticeable thing that everyone is seeing is the push for everyone to on a daily basis clean off their smartphones. How would you recommend that be done?

Smartphones could be the most common thing that people touch constantly in their everyday lives. You always want to make sure you are careful with anything that has to do with electronics. The last thing you want to do is soak it with a solution that has too much moisture. That’s why items such as disinfectant wipes are perfect for that. The main thing I want to state is when disinfecting, whether it be a surface or a smartphone, is most of the time, everyone doesn't realize there is a big difference in sanitizing versus cleaning it and disinfecting.

Let me try and break it down for everyone:

Thoroughly cleaning something is getting rid of the surface soils, grime, and most of the germs. The main difference between disinfecting and sanitizing has a lot to do with the time spent that the surface remains wet with the cleaning solution. In theory the more time the surface has to interact while still wet with the product ( as well as the viruses and bacteria that are still on it) the greater potential it has to kill all the germs off.

A major issue that everyone is experiencing now is all our favorite household cleaning supplies disappearing off the store shelves. So what can we all do at home to improvise with some items we may already have, being that all of those popular cleaning items are not available?

If a surface cleaner is your go to product and is not available you may want to look for alternatives that you could possibly already have. As a good example again Dawn mixed with water is a good solution to thoroughly clean up those surfaces. Now in terms of household disinfectants, bleach has always been a staple. You can dilute bleach and make a solution by adding some water. There are a ton of go to recipes online on how much to use. Ideally I'd say 5 tablespoons of bleach for every 1 gallon of water is a perfect recipe to start with. (Just make sure if you're going the bleach route just test on a small area that is not visible so you can make sure you're not causing any type of damage to the surface.) On the other hand you can also take a look around for 70% alcohol solutions. Typically we all have first aid kits at home. So if you find an alcohol solution in it, as long as it’s more than 70%, you can use that to sanitize multiple surfaces as well.

With a lot of us cooking at home more than we ever did in our lives. Do you have any tips to ensure that we can clean our dishes as thoroughly as possible?

It used to be before the current virus situation that you would have left all your dirty dishes to sit in the sink until days end because there weren't that many. But best habits now would be to load those dirty dishes into the dishwasher or hand wash them immediately following use, you don't want to have dirty dishes lying around. Also it is important that you should make sure that you are not sharing utensils or cups with friends and family in your household. Washing with Dawn or your favorite dish soap with the warmest water possible is still the most effective on your dishes. Or you can just put them all through your dishwasher on a sanitation cycle if you have one.

Now for the rest of the home, when prioritizing, what specific rooms should we be cleaning as often as we can?

As a basic rule of thumb it should be whichever room people congregate and spend the most amount of time in. It is because the items in there are going to be the most touched and contain the most amount of bacteria. For the most part the entryway where a lot of people are always coming in and out. Now maybe that’s not happening as often nowadays with most people staying at home. Bathrooms and kitchens are number 1 when it comes to very high traffic areas. For instance most people are probably using the table in the kitchen as desk, that is a high priority one that you'll want to make sure you sanitize and clean on an often basis.

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