Plenty of people comprehend that regular cleaning is the best way to keep your rental home safe during flu season. With that said, cleaning just the revealed dirt may not be actually 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 stack more harmful bacteria than your toilet.
How dirty are standard handheld devices?
It is really recommended that you regularly clean your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller. In as much as these electronic devices are touched so often each day, especially phones, controllers, and remotes, they can have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home!
Just consider it: when you touch something and then touch your phone or computer keyboard, you’ve transferred bacteria from one surface to the other.
The more often you touch a particular surface, the more bacteria will collect there, at once becoming a serious health hazard. Within flu season, it’s easy to pick up germs and heedlessly pass them along to others by sharing devices, controllers – even the TV remote. This is what makes cleaning your dirty devices vital. If you aren’t cleaning your devices every day or after every use, the chances are quite high that they might get you or your family sick.
Surfaces you touch every day
Have you ever tried to pay heed to everything you touch around the house daily? You may be quite amazed! High-touch surfaces, especially, get a lot of use but, in fact, may not make it onto your general cleaning lists. For a case in point, doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches are all touched daily, probably multiple times daily.
If you haven’t wiped these surfaces down with a germ-killing solution, they are surely harboring high levels of harmful bacteria. Studies have found these surfaces regularly contain far more bacteria per square inch than your toilet.
Sanitizing high-touch surfaces in your home is especially essential over flu season. Except these surfaces cannot squarely be sprayed with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will greatly damage them. Rather, you can apply wipes designed to clean electronic devices. These wipes mostly contain alcohol, which kills harmful bacteria.
For other high-touch surfaces around the house, work with a microfiber cloth and spray a disinfectant solution on the cloth, not right on the light switch or doorknob. A commercial cleaning solution that specifically connotes 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 best for the type of surface you’re cleaning. Just be meticulous to have proper ventilation and ensure you obey the label directions; it makes no difference what cleaning agent you settle upon. By taking these extra protective preparations, you can keep your home as germ-free as possible during flu season and during the year.
Are you in the market for a new rental home? Contact Real Property Management California Coast to freely speak with one of our property managers servicing Manhattan Beach and nearby or just check out our available listings.
Originally Published on November 26, 2021
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