Keeping your home clean and germ-free during the COVID-19 crisis is on everyone’s mind. But good cleaning practices aren’t things you should only consider during a pandemic.
Keeping a clean home is a necessary part of good health because it’s an environment where you spend a lot of time. It should be an oasis, not a place where you worry about coming down with a bug. During cold and flu season, we bring in potentially harmful viruses each time we step out of the house. With the COVID-19 virus running rampant, this is especially concerning right now.
That’s why we’ve come up with a list of tips to help keep your home fresh all year long, all the time. These cleaning recommendations aren’t just for pandemics. The best course of action, when it comes to COVID-19, is to limit the amount of time you spend out of your home or in public areas. Staying home cuts down the risk of bringing any viruses or germs into your home.
Wash Your Hands
It kind of feels like we’re just hitting you over the head with this tip. Consider this: you’re cleaning your home, and you’re wearing rubber gloves. You did a great job, and everything is nice and clean. You take the gloves off and start touching all these freshly cleaned things. The problem is you never washed your hands before starting to clean, so now everything’s dirty again.
Proper hygiene is vital to your health. Keeping your hands clean is the most natural part of this, but you should also be keeping your hair, body, and teeth clean daily to prevent the spread of germs.
Cleaning & Disinfecting Are Different
Cleaning is taking a warm wet cloth and wiping the counter down to get rid of all those crumbs and sauce splatters. Disinfecting is killing all of those germs and bugs you can’t see on these surfaces. You need to do both to keep your home clean and germ-free.
Think of it this way, if you had just moved into a new rental, would you feel like a quick wipe with a damp paper towel was “good enough”? Probably not. Deep cleaning isn’t something specially reserved for once a year or during move-in and move-out times for rentals. You should be using a disinfecting agent all the time in your daily and weekly cleaning routines.
Remember All the High-Touch Surfaces
Make sure you’re putting your fantastic cleaning and disinfecting skills to good use! There are a lot of areas we use numerous times a day that never get cleaned.
Double-check this list when you’re cleaning your home:
- Doorknobs and handles on doors, cupboards, and drawers
- Light switches and thermostat dials
- Remote controls and game consoles
- Faucet handles and taps
- Chair backs and the adjustment handle on your computer chair. You’ve never cleaned that, have you? Gross.
- Keyboards and your mouse
- Toilet seats and handles
- Counters and tables
- Your phone
- Pens and pencils
Keep Your Laundry Fresh & Clean
Cutting down on germs means a clean house and a clean self. Part of keeping yourself clean is wearing clean clothes, using clean towels to dry your hands and dishes, and sleeping in clean sheets and linens. If you want to cut down the germs in your home, it means ramping up that laundry schedule.
Don’t Forget Packaging & Products
There are lower risks with getting germs from packaging, but there are still risks. When you bring groceries home, make sure you put them away without spreading them out all over the place to contaminate surfaces you use all the time. Anything you’ll be using in the next 48 hours should be cleaned off with disinfectant wipes during situations of extreme cleanliness, such as COVID-19.
If you receive mail, open it up and put the packaging in the recycle outside right away. Then, you guessed it, wash your hands!
Staying safe at home means a lot of things. It means remembering to turn the stove off, using knives and outlets properly, locking your doors, etc. But part of staying safe at home also means keeping your home clean and germ-free. Whether you’re living in a rental home or your own home, make sure it’s clean.
Are you looking for a new place to call home? We’re here to help. These are stressful times and looking for a new rental home is already stressful; it doesn’t need to be more stressful. We’ve created a new service to help you find the right home or apartment that meets your personal and financial needs. Let us take some of the stress off of you. Get in touch today and let us advocate on your behalf.