Surely most people are informed that regular cleaning is an excellent means to keep your rental home safe during flu season. On the other hand, cleaning just the obvious 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 heap up more harmful bacteria than your toilet.
How dirty are standard handheld devices?
It is especially recommended that you regularly clean your smartphone, tablet, keyboard, mouse, television remote, and gaming controller. This is because these electronic devices are touched so often each day, notably phones, controllers, and remotes, they can have ten times the amount of bacteria found on other surfaces in your home!
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 repeatedly you touch a particular surface, the more bacteria will collect there, rapidly becoming a serious health hazard. The whole length of flu season, it’s easy to pick up germs and involuntarily pass them along to others by sharing devices, controllers – even the TV remote. This is what makes cleaning your dirty devices salient. If you aren’t cleaning your devices every day or after every use, the chances are quite likely that they might get you or your family sick.
Surfaces you touch every day
Have you ever tried to take note of everything you touch around the house daily? You may be blown away! High-touch surfaces, particularly, get a lot of use but, on the other hand, may not make it onto your general cleaning lists. To cite an instance, doorknobs, cabinet handles, window blind controls, and light switches are all touched daily, maybe quite a lot of times daily.
If you haven’t wiped these surfaces down with a germ-killing solution, they are probably harboring high levels of harmful bacteria. Studies have found these surfaces generally contain far more bacteria per square inch than your toilet.
Sanitizing high-touch surfaces in your home is especially beneficial through the course of flu season. But be aware, these surfaces cannot directly be sprayed with liquid cleaners or disinfectants. Spraying anything on your tech devices will destroy them. In contrast, you can just use wipes designed to clean electronic devices. These wipes usually contain alcohol, which kills harmful bacteria.
For other high-touch surfaces around the house, make use of a microfiber cloth and spray a disinfectant solution on the cloth, not outright on the light switch or doorknob. A commercial cleaning solution that specifically signifies 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.
Besides high-touch surfaces, the CDC recommends washing your hands frequently and cleaning all surfaces in your home with a disinfectant suitable for the type of surface you’re cleaning. Just be on guard to have proper ventilation and pay attention to the label directions, it doesn’t really matter what cleaning agent you single out. By taking these extra precautionary measures, you can keep your home as germ-free as possible during flu season and during the entire year.
Are you in the market for a new rental home? Contact Real Property Management Optimum to chat with one of our property managers servicing Oxbow and nearby or look at our available listings.
Originally Published on November 26, 2021
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