Coronavirus and Home Cleaning - What You Need to Know

By Ines Cohron, Owner of Total Home Cleaning

Here’s what everyone needs to understand… Cleaning a surface removes the visible dirt and dust. Sanitizing is meant to reduce bacteria, viruses and fungi. In the cleaning industry, the word “sanitizing” refers to a solution or device that reduces the amount of germs on a surface by 99.9 percent or more—a level that’s considered safe by public health standards. “Disinfecting” is used for products that kill 99.99% of germs on a surface. At first glance that does not seem like a big difference but it is actually an exponential reduction. (Read - when you’ve ‘absolutely, positively gotta kill’ those germs).

Good news? … the coronavirus we are all fighting is susceptible to household disinfecting products! Take a look at the list compiled by the American Chemistry Council (it’s a little easier to read and recognize than other lists).. https://www.americanchemistry.com/Novel-Coronavirus-Fighting-Products-List.pdf.

A word to the wise – disinfecting is NOT effective without first cleaning. When you spread a disinfectant or sanitizer on a surface that has not first been cleaned to remove dust and debris you are wasting time, effort and product. The disinfectant will simply sit on top of the dirt that will shelter nasty germs. Also, disinfectants need “sit” time to be truly effective. That means, you apply it and let it sit according to directions for maximum efficiency. I like to leave the surface of a door knob dampened/wet with the disinfectant.

That brings us to the hot spots for germs in a home! Those include - light switches, door knobs, faucet fixtures, pulls and any high touch surfaces. Lots of people forget the very popular remote control and phones. When we clean remote controls, we dampen the cloth with the product and set the remote face down in the dampened cloth. This way we are not spraying into the remote.