What You Absolutely Need to Know About Home Disinfecting

We all share concerns about keeping our families safe, especially after the cold or flu or when illness seems like it’s just around the corner. 

If someone in your house gets sick, you don’t have to panic. There are precautions you can take to kill the germs that cause illness and keep the infection from coming back.

How do you disinfect your home so that you can trust it’s truly germ-free? What are the ways you can keep your family safe from infection? 

Here’s what you need to know about home disinfecting. 

Choosing the Best Disinfectant Spray For Your Home 

When choosing the right cleaning products to disinfect your home, you want to consider a few things. Check the contact time to see how long it takes for the disinfectant to kill all germs. Is it realistic? Also, check to see if it will harm the surfaces. Wood, granite and marble are all tricky surfaces to clean, so make sure your cleaner is safe to use on each surface.

Ensure you have the proper cleaning tools to use with each product, like rubber gloves, paper towels, a soft cloth or a mop. You’ll also want to see if it’s safe to use in your home, especially if you have young children or family members with asthma or breathing issues. Here is a list of the best disinfecting cleaners to use in 2020. 

Are you in search of all-natural cleaners? If you want to take care of germs but have concerns about the kinds of chemicals that are found in some household cleaners, you can consult this list of natural antibacterial cleaners to get the job done. 

Cleaning High-Touch and High-Traffic Areas

Not all germs are harmful, but it’s best to go after them where they live. High-touch surfaces in your home tend to collect germs since we carry them on our hands. Items and surfaces that spread germs through touch are known as fomites. These can be anything from kitchen countertops to door handles or light switches.

What are the high-traffic areas that need attention in your home when you are disinfecting it?

•  Your phone. Eighty percent of phones in a home where a child has the flu have the flu virus living on the surface.
• The remote control, which is one of the most-touched and least-cleaned items in your home
• All surfaces in the bathroom
• Tables: the coffee table, kitchen table, play tables, nightstands
• Computers and keyboards
• Stuffed animals (if they can withstand a machine wash, they should be washed)
• Bed linens and towels
• Light switches, doorknobs and cabinet pulls
• Countertops

Even when no one in your home is sick, it’s a good idea to disinfect these high-touch surfaces as often as possible.

Disinfecting Your Home After the Flu

When someone in your household contracts the flu or any other virus for that matter, you want to mitigate the chance of spreading it to the rest of the house. One way to do that is by disinfecting your home during and after their sickness.

You can do your best to keep the flu from taking over your home by following these steps:

• Quarantine the sick person as much as possible.
• Disinfect all surfaces that may have been touched by the sick person and anywhere respiratory droplets (from sneezes, coughs or heavy breathing) may have landed by using an antibacterial cleaner or a solution of bleach in water. Surfaces are disinfected when they remain visibly wet with cleaner for four minutes and then dry. 
• Use paper towels or disposable wipes for cleaning instead of a sponge that can spread germs from one surface to the next.
• Disinfect all surfaces in the bathroom, including the toilet seat and handle.
• Sanitize laundry, including clothes, bed linens, hand towels and bath towels.

After an illness, you may want to consider a disinfecting fogger as well. You place one in a vacant room (and don’t forget about your pets!), and one to two hours after starting it, the room is disinfected with no remaining moisture or residue.

Disinfecting Linens

Especially after someone has been sick, it’s time to disinfect the linens in your home, but it’s also a good idea to disinfect them on a fairly regular basis too. You already should wash your bed linens once per week, but disinfecting them from time to time is a wise practice to maintain as well. 

How do you go about disinfecting your linens so that they are germ-free? Here are the steps:

1. Remove all of the linens from your bed, including pillowcases and shams, pillows, sheets, and comforters, and sort them by color. If you have white linens that will withstand bleach, wash them separately.
2. Use the hot wash-cold rinse cycle to disinfect your linens. Thick sheets or blankets also should be cleaned on the “heavy wash” cycle. 
3. Pour in the appropriate amount of detergent (and bleach where applicable), and start the machine as normal.
4. Dry your linens on the hottest setting possible, and dry them for at least one hour.
5. Allow the linens to sit in the dryer for at least an additional 20 minutes after they are dry to kill any remaining bacteria. 

You also can add one cup of white vinegar to the rinse cycle, which can help kill germs and deodorize linens, which is a good indicator that germs have been killed. While vinegar is not an EPA-approved disinfectant, it does do a good job of taking care of germs in loads of laundry that are not bleach safe and acts as a natural fabric softener too. You can find a list of laundry additives to help kill germs here. 

Do you want some professional help disinfecting your home after the flu virus takes hold, or are you looking to protect your family members from germs, viruses and bacteria? Housekeeping Maid Easy is proud to serve families in the northeastern suburbs of Indianapolis, disinfecting their homes and working to keep them safe and healthy.

We’re here to ease your concerns and help you sanitize your home with our house cleaning services, but we offer a host of other services as well. Our clients are happy to share their stories of satisfaction too because we take the time to ensure that the surfaces of your home are cleaned and disinfected and that your home also looks its best. 

Hiring a house cleaning company will put your mind at rest so that you can trust that your home has truly been disinfected. Can we disinfect your home for you? Request a quote today!