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A Cleaner’s Guide to Better Housekeeping – Disinfection

As Covid rates are on the decline, it is easy for people to relax and not be as cautious as they should be. However, we are not out of the woods just yet. We thought that it would be useful to share some of our disinfection tips and tricks to help you keep your household safe.

Alongside your normal cleaning routine (as well as maintaining the use of face coverings, washing your hands and keeping your distance) these tips will give you that extra layer of protection to ease your mind.

Although they are the areas in your home that have the highest amount of hand traffic, touchpoints seem to always get overlooked on the standard weekly clean. These areas and tips on how to clean them properly are listed below:

Doors:

Doors throughout the home are often forgotten when cleaning, but if you think about the number of times a day that you reach for a door handle you will soon realise how much bacteria will be harboured on them! When disinfecting your doors, make sure that you not only attend to the handles but also the frames and the door panel itself. If you have small children or any animals, it is also important to clean the lower areas where tiny hands or paws may brush against!

Tips:

  1. Observe where your hands reach for when opening doors. We often find that hands actually reach for the door panel around the handle rather than the handle itself.
  2. Don’t forget the exterior of your front door. Think about how many people have knocked on your door, pushed your doorbell or posted something through your letterbox. You may know that your hand hygiene is up to scratch, but can you say the same for everyone that comes to your door?

Light switches and plug sockets:

Just as doors seem to get overlooked when cleaning, so do light switches and plug sockets. If you take a look at the switches on each panel throughout your house, you will probably see some build up around the edges of the buttons. This build up is from your hands and during the current climate, this could be an area of concern.

Tips:

  1. As both of these items are electrical, it is important that you do not spray anything directly onto the switch or socket.
  2. We recommend using cotton buds that have been lightly sprayed with your disinfectant of choice. Not only will this keep you safe from being zapped but is also very good to get into all of the small nooks and crannies of the panels.
  3. For the standard light swich panel, don’t forget to clean the screws on either side of the switch!

Floors:

It is important that you not only keep your floors maintained by frequently vacuuming and mopping, but also to make sure that any non-carpeted flooring is cleaned with disinfectant, especially if you have small children and animals. Quite a lot of general floor cleaners are heavily fragranced so they give your room a fresh scent but may not necessarily contain any form of disinfectant.

Tips:

  1. Check the floor cleaning solution that you are using and switch to another if there is no form of disinfectant in it.
  2. Fairy liquid is antimicrobial so mixing a little of this with some hot water for an initial mop before going in with something more fragranced afterwards is a great way to ensure that your flooring is disinfected as well as smelling fresh.

If you haven’t already done so, check out our two previous blogs where we discuss even more tips and tricks for your living room, bathroom and kitchen.