Regular cleaning is one of the most basic ways to keep your Kenmore rental home a safe place to be during flu season. But you may be neglecting a lot more areas if you are only cleaning the visible dirt. Doorknobs, light switches, computer keyboards, smartphones, tablets, television remotes, and game controllers are all easy to miss when cleaning the house. If not sanitized regularly, these things could accumulate more harmful bacteria than even your toilet seat.
Common Dirty Devices
Ideally, you should be cleaning your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller regularly. Since these electronic devices are touched multiple times throughout the day, especially phones, controllers, and remotes, they can have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home. Touching something and then touching your phone or computer keyboard is just like transferring bacterial from one surface to the other.
A surface that is often touched will collect more bacteria, rapidly becoming a serious health hazard. When it is flu season, it becomes easier to pick up germs and unknowingly pass them along to other people by sharing devices, controllers, and even the TV remote. This is why it is so important to clean your dirty devices. You wouldn’t want your family to get sick just because you didn’t clean your devices every day or after every use.
High-Touch Surfaces
Are you keeping track of everything you touch around the house each day? You would be surprised! High-touch areas are those that get a lot of use but often do not make it onto your general cleaning lists. Examples of these are doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches which are all touched daily or even multiple times a day.
If these surfaces have not been wiped down with a germ-killing solution recently, chances are, they are harboring high levels of harmful bacteria. One study found that light switches often have 200 bacteria per square inch, while most toilets have 20 on average.
Regular sanitizing of high-touch surfaces is especially important during flu season. However, most of these surfaces are not fit for direct spraying with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will probably damage them. Instead, you can get those wipes that are specifically designed for cleaning electronic devices. These wipes usually contain alcohol, which can kill harmful bacteria.
You can then use a microfiber cloth and spray a disinfectant solution on the cloth, not directly on the light switch or doorknob, as you clean the other high-touch surfaces around the house. There are many commercial cleaning solutions that claim to kill bacteria and are suitable for your home’s plastic or other durable surfaces. Keep in mind that harsh chemicals can damage painted surfaces, wood, or natural stone.
In addition to cleaning high-touch surfaces, the CDC also recommends washing your hands frequently and cleaning all surfaces in your home with a disinfectant appropriate for the different surfaces you are cleaning. Maintain proper ventilation at all times when cleaning and make sure to follow the label directions regardless of what cleaning agent you choose. These extra precautions can help keep your home as germ-free as possible, not only during the flu season but all year round.
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