If you, like millions of people worldwide, have started to take germs and bacteria a lot more seriously these days – for obvious reasons – but aren’t quite sure of where to start when it comes to disinfecting yourself, your loved ones, and your home, you’ve come to the right place.
The details below will help you get right to the heart of this issue, protecting those you love from germs, bacteria, and viral infections without having to spend a mountain of money on cleaning supplies that are scarce and in sky high demand during this global situation.
Let’s dig right in!
Keeping Yourself and Your Loved Ones Germ and Bacteria Free
The first thing you’ll want to do to keep yourself and your loved ones germ and bacteria free is to implement more frequent handwashing habits than you might have been sticking to already.
Washing your hands after you have coughed, sneezed, touched your face, used the bathroom, or have an out in public is more important today than maybe ever before. Hand sanitizer works wonderfully when you are away from a sink and soap, but if you’re having a tough time tracking and sanitizer down these days a little bit of warm water and soap will get the job done, too.
You’ll want to be sure that you are moisturizing your hands after washing so frequently, though. Water and soap strip your body of your natural oils and can draw your hands out – causing irritation, pain, and even allergic reactions. Use a quality moisturizer to replenish the hydration your hands were missing and you’ll be good to go.
Obviously, it’s also a good idea to stay home as much as possible and to practice social distancing whenever you are able to.
It’s best if you’re able to stay at least 6 feet away from other people in public, that you are avoiding large groups and gatherings, and that you aren’t going anywhere near people that are showing obvious signs of illness.
It’s also a good idea to steer clear of your very young and very old loved ones as much as you can, too as they may be the most vulnerable to germs and bacteria today.
Cleaning and Disinfecting Your Home
Before you start to clean and disinfect your home you’re going to want to understand that there’s a world of difference between cleaning and disinfecting – and experts recommend that you do both, especially if you want to make sure that your protecting everyone in the home from serious risk factors.
Cleaning is the process of removing contaminants from a specific surface. This is what happens when you spray a bit of cleaner on a countertop, for example, and then wipe everything off with a paper towel.
Disinfecting, however, is an entirely different animal altogether. This is where you are actively killing off pathogens, sterilizing a surface and doing a much better job at protecting yourself from bacterial and viral infections than you would with just cleaning alone.
You’ll want to start with your “high touch number” surfaces first, treating them as though they were ground zero in the war against germs and bacteria.
We are talking about:
- Door handles and doorknobs
- Flat surfaces like your countertops and tables
- Furniture that you use on a regular basis
- Pretty much everywhere in your kitchen and your bathroom
- Faucets and toilets
- Light switches and remote controls
… And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Really think about the surfaces that you touch most often throughout the day and hit them with a bit of cleaner before you come back through again with disinfectant to make sure that anything left over is sterilized completely.
DIY Disinfectants That Really Work
With cleaning and disinfectant supplies in such high demand these days trying to find “over-the-counter” or off-the-shelf cleaning materials can be a bit of a tall task.
Thankfully though, making your own cleaning and disinfectant spray is pretty simple and straightforward. There can also be done using ingredients you already have throughout the house, products you won’t have to spend a mountain of money on to get a quality cleaner you can trust.
A DIY disinfectant spray recommended by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is made up of four teaspoons of bleach that has been mixed into a single quart of water.
You’ll then want to pour the mixture into a spray bottle, shaking the mixture up pretty aggressively until everything is even, and then using this spray sparingly on surfaces your cleaning and disinfecting.
To get the most out of this DIY approach, spritz the surfaces that you want to clean and disinfect with this spray and then leave the bleach mixture there on the surface for 10 minutes or so.
After that, wipe everything away with a damp cloth (coming back through with paper towels to dry if you want) and you’ll have knocked out the cleaning and disinfecting parts of the equation all at once!
