Regular cleaning is one of the most basic ways to keep your Cypress rental home a safe place during flu season. But this means you have to clean more than just 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 you do not sanitize these on a regular basis, these things may harbor more harmful bacteria than even your toilet.
Common Dirty Devices
You should regularly be cleaning your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller. As these electronic devices are heavily touched each day, phones, controllers, and remotes can often have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home! Think about it: each time you touch something and then touch your phone or computer keyboard, you have transferred bacteria from one surface to the other.
The more often a particular surface is touched, the more bacterial collects there, which then makes it a serious health hazard. Flu season is also the time when it is easier to pick up germs and unknowingly pass them on to others when using shared devices, controllers, and even the TV remote. This is why it is so important to clean your dirty devices. If you don’t have the habit of cleaning your devices every day, or after every use, you increase the chances of getting you and your family sick.
High-Touch Surfaces
Try keeping track of everything you touch around your house each day. You might be surprised! High-touch surfaces are the areas that are often used but generally do not make it onto your cleaning lists. Take your doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches, for example. These are all touched at least once daily, some even multiple times in a day.
These surfaces could be harboring high levels of harmful bacteria if they have not been wiped down with a germ-killing solution recently. One study found that light switches often have 200 bacteria per square inch, while most toilets have 20 on average.
During flu season, it is extra important to sanitize the high-touch surfaces in your home. But a lot of these surfaces cannot just be sprayed with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will probably damage them. There are wipes designed to clean electronic devices that you can purchase instead. With their alcohol content, these wipes help in getting rid of harmful bacteria.
You can spray the disinfectant solution on a microfiber cloth –not directly on the light switch or doorknob– and use this cloth to clean other high-touch surfaces. There are many suitable commercial cleaning solutions that state that they are anti-bacterial and are suited for your home’s plastic or other durable surfaces. Just avoid using harsh chemicals on painted surfaces, wood, or natural stone, as these may damage these areas.
In addition to high-touch surfaces, the CDC also recommends that everyone wash hands frequently and clean all home surfaces with a disinfectant ideal for the type of surface to be cleaned. Proper ventilation is very important when cleaning as well as following the indicated label directions of the 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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