Many people really understand that regular cleaning is a great habit to keep your rental home safe during flu season. But, in actuality, cleaning just the recognizable dirt may not be simply 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 harbor more harmful bacteria than your toilet.
How dirty are standard handheld devices?
It is firmly recommended that you regularly clean your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller. Insofar as these electronic devices are touched so often each day, specifically phones, controllers, and remotes, they can have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home!
Look at it carefully: when, as it happens, you touch something and then touch your phone or computer keyboard, you’ve transferred bacteria from one surface to the other.
The more frequently you touch a particular surface, the more bacteria will collect there, right off becoming a serious health hazard. During the time of flu season, it’s easy to pick up germs and, without being aware, pass them along to others by sharing devices, controllers – even the TV remote. This is what makes cleaning your dirty devices pertinent. If you aren’t cleaning your devices every day or after every use, the chances are high that they might get you or your family sick.
Surfaces you touch every day
Have you ever tried to track carefully everything you touch around the house daily? You may be completely surprised! High-touch surfaces, specifically, get a lot of use but, at the same time, may not make it onto your general cleaning lists. Like, for instance, doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches are all touched daily, perhaps various times daily.
If you haven’t wiped these surfaces down with a germ-killing solution, they are practically harboring high levels of harmful bacteria. Studies have found these surfaces typically contain far more bacteria per square inch than your toilet.
Sanitizing high-touch surfaces in your home is especially imperative throughout the time of flu season. Although, take note, these surfaces cannot directly be sprayed with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will definitely damage them. But instead, you can buy wipes designed to clean electronic devices. These wipes commonly 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 bluntly on the light switch or doorknob. A commercial cleaning solution that specifically indicates 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 conjunction with high-touch surfaces, the CDC recommends washing your hands frequently and cleaning all surfaces in your home with a disinfectant that’s suitable for the type of surface you’re cleaning. Just be more careful to have proper ventilation and stick to the label directions, it hardly matters what cleaning agent you decide to use. By taking these extra preemptive measures, you can keep your home as germ-free as possible during flu season and throughout the year
Are you in the market for a new rental home? Contact Real Property Management Eclipse to converse with one of our property managers servicing Kenmore and nearby or scrutinize our available listings.
Originally Published on November 26, 2021
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