how to disinfect your house after an illness

Disinfect Your Electronics

We use various electronics several times a day. We can’t live without our smartphones and our TV and air conditioner/heater remote controls when we are healthy, and it’s even worse when we are laying around sick.

Out of 110 nurses who carried mobile phones in a hospital ward, 79.1 percent had viable bacteria on their devices, according to a 2011 study by Japanese researchers.

With viruses like influenza, germs spread rapidly. As you sneeze into your hands and proceed to use these devices, or if you sneeze directly on or around said devices, the germs slather all over them and are easily picked up by others.
This allows the disease to persist.

Disinfect Your Laundry

Household linens, towels and clothes can harbor infectious bacteria for weeks and perpetuate the cycle of disease in your home.

About 4 percent of the clothing worn by caregivers in children’s intensive care units had detectable respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – a leading cause of respiratory infections, according to a 2015 study published in American Society for Microbiology.

About 68 percent of hospital privacy curtains were contaminated with healthcare-related viruses, according to a 2008 study published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

For thorough cleansing, soak the soiled objects in an oxygen-bleach powder solution before putting them in the washing machine. Then, wash them using laundry detergent and the warmest water that you can as recommended on the item’s label.

Add a laundry sanitizer. Alternatively, you can use chlorine bleach, but only for white clothes.

Vary the quantity of the water, the pre-soak oxygen bleach, the detergent and the sanitizer or bleach according to the instructions on the box or bottle and the amount of clothes and linens you are cleaning.

Disinfect Your Bathroom

Bacteria thrive in damp, warm bathrooms. Bathroom viruses can cause gastrointestinal, respiratory and skin diseases as well as intensify allergies.

Bathroom sinks carry the highest risk of infection. Out of 92 hospital bath basins, 98 percent showed some kind of bacterial growth, according to a 2009 study published in the American Journal of Critical Care.

Bath mats soak in bacteria-laden shower water and constantly encounter feet that have collected bacteria from the bathroom floors.

Airborne bacteria found around jet-air dryers was 4.5 times greater than around warm dryers and 27 times greater than around paper towel machines, according to a 2014 study published in The Journal of Hospital Infection.

So, quit using jet-air dryers installed in your homes. Opt for disposable paper towels or cloth towels that you can wash frequently.

Wash or replace the bath mats used when sick. Also, avoid walking barefoot on them.

Use a high-quality disinfectant cleanser to clean your bathroom after an illness, paying special attention to the showerheads, sink and bathtub drains, and the exhaust air vent.

Disinfect Your Kitchen

Contaminated people contaminate kitchen items.

Multi-drug resistant bacteria spread through cutting boards used in household and hospital kitchens, according to a 2014 study published in Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

Sponges, towels, dish rags and scrubbers are some of the most severely contaminated items in a kitchen. Run the scrubber (which is usually metallic) through your dishwasher, or soak it in a bleach solution for 10 minutes, after each use.

Scrub your countertops, handles, refrigerator and microwave with spray bleach.

Kitchen cleaning cloths spread salmonella infection that causes typhoid and food poisoning. This risk can be almost 100 times reduced by soaking cleaning cloths in sodium hypochlorite (bleach) solutions for longer periods of time or with a higher bleach concentration, according to a 2014 study published in Letters of Applied Microbiology.

Use a high-angled brush and chlorinated powder scrub to wash the walls of your garbage disposal and under the rubber splash guard. Do this once every month.