Regularly cleaning your Manhattan Beach rental home is a great way to ensure that it remains a safe place to be during flu season. But this does not mean you only get rid of 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. These electronic devices are touched each day– especially phones, controllers, and remotes– and they can 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 usually the time when germs are easily picked up and passed along to others through shared devices and controllers, 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
Do you know all the things your touch around the house each day? You might be surprised! High-touch surfaces are those areas that are used a lot but rarely make it into our general 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. 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. With their alcohol content, these wipes help in getting rid of harmful bacteria.
You can spray some 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 commercial cleaning solutions that claim to kill bacteria and are suitable 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 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. With these extra precautions, your home can be germ-free, not only during flu season but all year round.
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