We have all heard of social distancing at this point, and this is the best way to prevent spread. The obvious answer to protecting your home from the virus is to stay home where you can’t possibly catch it from someone else. This helps to “flatten the curve” of infection. However, it’s always possible that you’re living with someone who is still required to work, because they are in a field that is essential to society. Or, maybe your partner or roommate isn’t obeying the rules, because they believe they would only get “mild symptoms” if they got sick. This is especially dangerous, because there is a lot of misinformation going around the Internet. Even if you are in self-isolation and leave your house for essentials like groceries, there is still a chance you could accidentally become a carrier. Here at Home Addict, we’re giving you some of the best ways to clean up your house to prevent the spread of this crisis.
20. Leave Shoes, Coats, and Bags at the Door
Whenever you leave your house to go to work, the grocery store, or pharmacy, you should protect your home from any remnants of the virus that could be potentially sitting on your clothes. This is why you should take off your coat, shoes, and purse in your front entryway. If you’re the sort of person who usually leaves your shoes on when walking around the house because your feet get too cold, buy a nice pair of house slippers online, and switch to them as soon as you walk inside. Some people have a smaller house or apartment without a mud room or dedicated entryway, so you might want to buy a coat and shoe rack to assemble near your front door. Cube shelving is also a good option that doesn’t take up a lot of space, but it gives you a dedicated space to place your shoes and bags.
After hanging up your outdoor items, spray the objects with an aerosol disinfectant, or use disinfecting wipes to clean anything that has been outside. In households where there are vulnerable people living inside, some have gone the extra step to take everything off before they enter the house. Leaving a can of disinfectant spray on your front porch might be a good idea to spray yourself off before entering. Even without a crisis, creating a dedicated entryway is a great way to keep your home clean and organized. So by taking the extra steps to do this now, you’re going to set a president for cleanliness going forward.
19. Wash or Steam Your Outerwear
If you haven’t washed your coat in a while, it’s time that you do this right away. It’s especially important to clean your jackets when you go on public transportation, because you’re exposed to so many people at once. People are coughing and sneezing on buses and trains, which releases germs and viruses into the air. So even if you’re standing a fair distance away from someone, your outwear could still be carrying the virus. In the warmer months, you won’t wear a jacket as an outer shell around your body. Your clothes may be contaminated in the same way. So after going for an essential food trip to the grocery store, it might be a good idea to change your clothes as soon as you walk through the door, and wash them immediately. Make sure your machine is set to warm, which will help kill any lingering viruses. Don’t worry about cross-contaminating your other laundry, because the soap will kill the virus, much like washing your hands for 20 seconds.
Sounds like a lot of work, right? It might not be possible for you to wash your jacket every single day if you need to go to work. One great alternative is to purchase a clothing steamer, and go over your clothes with it once you get inside. The steam gets hot enough to kill the virus, which is all you need to make sure your outerwear is protected when it enters your home. This only takes a couple minutes to plug in the steamer, allow it to heat up, and go over your clothes with the high temperature steam. Just make sure to follow the instructions so that you don’t burn yourself while using it.
18. Wash Your Hands For 20 Seconds
We have all heard the advice on the news to wash our hands for 20 seconds at least a million times at this point. However, most people don’t realize the reason why we need to wash our hands for that length of time. A microscopic virus is coated in a layer of fat, which helps it keep its shape. Soap helps to break down the fats of the virus’s outer shell, but it takes time to do that- 20 seconds, to be exact. Warm water will rinse off the dead virus, and it goes down the drain.
If this concept is difficult to wrap your head around, and you want to see this effect in real life here’s a science experiment for you and your kids; Take a bottle of water, and add oil to it. Even when you shake the bottle to mix up the oil, you will see globs of it still floating in the water. As the old saying goes, oil and water don’t mix. But when you add soap and shake the bottle for 20 seconds, you’ll see the oil begin to dissolve. A great video that explains all of this is called “How soap kills the coronavirus” by Vox. Take some time to watch and share the video with your family and friends.
17. Clean Your Phones, Tablets, and Computers Daily
Even during a regular cold and flu season, germs can linger on your phones, computers, and tablets for several days. This is especially true if you have recently taken your technology out to coffee shops or to the office for work. Think about all of the times that you put your phone down on a desk, picked it up, rubbed your eyes, and touched your mouth. It’s really no wonder why people get so many colds in the winter time. So few people actually take the time to grab a few disinfectant wipes and clean off these items. Obviously, a lot of stores are running out of wipes. However, you can get some rubbing alcohol on a paper towel, and it has the same effect.
Just like your jackets and shoes, your phone is going out in the world with you. People touch objects on shelves, steering wheels, toilets, and so much more before they touch their phones. And yet, people never stopped to think that they might need to be cleaned the same way that so many other things in life do. Try to get in the daily habit of cleaning your phone if at all possible. Even in the future, when we have a vaccine for this current virus, everyone should get in the habit now, and carry it over for the rest of their lives.
16. Don’t Allow Visitors
As sad and lonely as social isolation may feel, it’s really the best defense we have against this crisis. If you have a health condition that makes you vulnerable to the virus, it is especially important for you to keep visitors away. Even if your loved ones seem perfectly healthy, they could be carrying the virus without showing symptoms. In Hong Kong and China, they had a rule that no one was allowed into a building until they checked their temperature. If they had a fever, they were turned away. You can choose to do this for your own home by purchasing a digital forehead thermometer, and inspecting each person before they come through the door. It’s also good practice to check your temperature daily, at least until the virus is contained.
Remember that even if you do everything perfectly to protect yourself, you have no control over what other people are doing. The more people you invite over to your house, the more chance you have at bringing in someone who has been in contact with a carrier. However, if you know that this friend is also self-isolating in their house without going anywhere, and they are going from their car and immediately to your front door, it should be fine, provided that they follow some of the other sanitation rules laid out on this list. This issue has caused a lot of people to get their feelings hurt, especially if they believe the concern is overblown. However, at the end of the day, you need to protect yourself, and your family. Hurting someone’s feelings by canceling plans should not come above your personal health and safety.
15. Wear Rubber Gloves
If you’re tired of washing your hands every five minutes while you clean the house, you might want to consider investing in a pair of rubber gloves. For years, people have used these to protect their hands from drying out and getting damaged by chemicals like bleach. This way, you can keep moving on through the cleaning process before taking the gloves off. You can wash your hands just once instead of several times during the process.
Personally, I have used rubber gloves to go grocery shopping for essentials. Since we don’t have the ability to buy medical masks, I can’t protect myself from breathing it in, but at least I can cover my hands. Even though grocery stores and pharmacies are wiping down the shelves frequently, the products themselves could still be dirty. By wearing the gloves, it’s also a reminder to myself that I can’t touch my face. And as soon as I get home, I remove my gloves outside so that I’m not bringing anything potentially contaminated inside. This is the type of product where you should be able to find them at Dollar Tree, but they might be sold out. Your only option may be to buy them online.
14. Disinfect Doorknobs
As soon as you enter your house, you’re immediately touching the door knob, so is everyone else in your family. It’s also potentially being touched by delivery drivers and other people who might come for a short-term visit. Try to get in the daily habit of cleaning your door knobs with a disinfecting spray and paper towel on a daily basis, especially if you know there are people in your house who need to work. If you’re lucky enough to have disinfectant wipes left in your stockpile, you could use those as well. In the worst case scenario, you could actually get a bleach solution in warm water on a wash rag to clean the surfaces that people are touching on a regular basis.
Don’t forget to wipe down countertops, remote controls, refrigerator handles, tables, desks, TV’s, and pretty much everything in the bathroom. Think about all of the things you touch in your house throughout the course of the day. As soon as you remember something, clean it. Even if your partner or someone else in your household has been cleaning too, it can’t hurt to do it again. We don’t know how long this pandemic is going to last, so it’s a good idea to get into a new cleaning routine to make sure all of your surfaces in your home are getting sanitized on a regular basis.
13. Dispose of Used Face Masks
At the beginning of the virus outbreak, there was a rush for people to purchase medical masks both in stores and online. So unless you were one of the lucky ones, you probably don’t have masks in your home. At the moment, medical masks and nitrile gloves are finally being relisted on Amazon, but the estimated shipping date is over a month away. Amazon Prime is also selling a first aid kit that is specialized for blood borne pathogens, but everything included is also appropriate for protecting yourself from viruses like the one is seeing right now.
However, if you’re lucky enough to already have medical masks stashed away for your family, remember that paper masks must be disposed of every time you are exposed to the virus. These can’t be reused, because the virus particles may be trapped inside of the mask itself. When you remove the mask, also be sure to wear gloves, or wash your hands immediately after touching them. This is especially important to remember if you’re taking care of a family member who is isolating themselves, because you don’t want to spread it to everyone else in your household.
12. Spray Your Rooms With Disinfectant
Viruses can stay alive in the air for several hours after an infected person has been in an area. If someone in your house is sick, and you’re waiting for the 14-day incubation period, you should go through each room of the house and use an aerosol spray disinfectant to clean the air. Even if someone gets sick in your home with the common cold for flu, this will be especially important for you to clean rooms the ill person has been in. Remember that catching a cold leaves your immune system vulnerable to catching something worse. So at times like this, you need to take every illness seriously.
Bathrooms, kitchens, and other common areas of your home are the most important to disinfect. With so many people sharing that space, the odds of germs or viruses lingering in the air is the highest. Remember to open your windows to air out the rooms, too. If no one in your house is sick, and you have all been in alone… together, it’s probably not necessary to clean the air with disinfectant spray too often, especially since it can cause breathing issues. So please don’t go overboard with this step, but do so when you think it’s appropriate.
11. Disinfect Food Deliveries
If you are picking up groceries or receiving deliveries from Amazon Prime, you might also want to disinfect the boxes and bags before you bring them inside. While we don’t know the exact amount of time that viruses survive on surfaces, we do know that viruses in general can still last for several days. Considering that items have passed through several hands before they get to your door, you don’t know where they’ve been. Even after opening the box and removing the objects, you should also wipe those down, as well. Most retailers are now required to wipe down shelves every hour, but they aren’t expected to wipe every single item.
Delivery services are trained to be extremely careful, and most of them will even drop the objects off at your door so that you don’t need to have any human contact whatsoever. However, you can never be too careful, and you don’t want to take any chances, especially if you have someone in your household that is at-risk. It only takes a few minutes to wipe down things before they come into your house, so it’s better safe than sorry.
10. Get Creative Using Bleach and Alcohol Based Products
Unfortunately, essential cleaning products like Lysol and hand sanitizer have been sold out from stores after people were panic-buying supplies. Companies like LVMH have even decided to stop producing their luxury products in favor of making more hand sanitizer. So it may take several weeks for us to get those products back into our homes. Thankfully, we can actually do a bit of DIY work in the meantime while we wait for stores to restock.
It’s possible to make your own hand sanitizer with rubbing alcohol and aloe vera. While companies like Lysol are going to take a long time to restock, you might be able to go out and find basics like rubbing alcohol at your local CVS and Rite Aid. And if you have a bottle of bleach, you can mix just a couple tablespoons of it with water into a spray bottle. If you have no experience cleaning with bleach, be careful, because it will leave orange spots on your clothes, and it can also stain your carpet. Always wear some of your oldest clothing before you clean your house.
9. Use Leather Cleaner on Chairs, Couches, and Accessories
Many of us have leather accessories in our homes- From couches, to chairs, purses, and even bags. They’re very luxurious, but the problem is that they are very literally animal skins. Just like human skin, they can contain a virus. But you can’t exactly wash your couch under a sink. One of the next best solutions is to buy specialized leather cleaner and conditioner. We highly recommend Leather Rescue. This will remove any existing scuffs and dry spots, which will make your leather goods look brand new.
For a quick daily clean, it’s okay to use disinfectant wipes or alcohol to disinfect your leather goods. However, keep in mind that leather is going to react the same way as washing your hands too frequently. It’s going to get very dry, which lead it to become discolored and crack. This is why you may want to consider buying a leather conditioner, which essentially acts like lotion to hydrate your items to keep them feeling soft. Leather goods have been known to last a lifetime, so long as you take care of them properly. Now more than ever, it’s important to take care of your belongings, because it’s not like we can go out and buy new furniture anytime soon!
8. Mop Your Floors
Mopping your floor is something that people should do at least once a week, but it’s one of those chores that many people let slide when they get too busy. If you are lucky enough to have Lysol or bleach in your home, pour some into a bucket of water and mop hard surfaces made of tile or vinyl. If you have real hardwood floors, be more careful with the products you’re using. Murphy’s Oil Soap is an amazing product to keep your wooden floors looking great, and it can still disinfect the area.
Remember that your mop heads can get dirty and contain viruses after a while. Instead of reusing the same bucket of water for your entire house, empty it out and start over for each individual room, in order to prevent cross-contamination. Also remember to soap the mop head and let it air dry, to make sure that it’s clean. Even after all of the panic buying, there are still plenty of mops available for sale online, and at Walmart. If you want to get your entire house done quickly, you may want to buy more than one mop and bucket. Dollar Tree usually sells these items, so you might want to check it out before spending too much money online.
7. Color-Coordinated Microfiber Cloths
If you have run out of wipes and paper towels (or you just want to be more eco-friendly with your cleaning products) you may want to invest in a package of multi-colored microfiber cloths. Instead of using the same cloth throughout your entire house, make sure you use a different cloth for each room of the house. This helps to make sure that you don’t accidentally cross-contaminate various areas.
Once you are done cleaning with the microfiber cloths, you can either allow them to soak in a disinfectant solution like Lysol, or put them in the washing machine on the warm water setting. Don’t worry about them contaminating your clothes. A typical wash and rinse cycle takes at least an hour, but it only needs 20 seconds for soap to kill a virus. Then, they are heated in the dryer, which would also kill anything else that was on the clothing and towels.
6. Change Your Garbage Bags
Lining your garbage cans with plastic bags can help ensure that you’re keeping all of the germs in one place. But you won’t want them to linger for too long. Frequently switch out your garbage bags, especially if someone is coughing and sneezing into tissues and throwing them away. Once the bag is removed, you may also want to spray the can down with disinfectant spray.
If you’re out of disinfectant spray, you could take a plastic garbage can outside with some liquid dish soap. Spray it with your hose, and suds it up with soapy water. Just like washing your dishes in the sink, this process will help to clean any viruses that may be lingering on the trash can. Of course, this only works if you have a warm day that allows you to clean and air dry the can.
5. Wash Your Kid’s Toys
Most children play with toys every single day. Now more than ever, it’s important to keep your kids occupied so that they don’t go stir-crazy while they stay inside. Toddlers will put toys in their mouths, because they obviously don’t know any better. So it’s incredibly important that you sanitize these items to make sure your kids don’t get sick. Even if children have very low odds of catching the virus, this isn’t exactly the best time for them to get a cold or flu, either. Plastic toys can be cleaned in a solution of warm water and bleach before being left out to air dry. Sometimes, you can even get away with putting plastic toys in the dishwasher. (Just be careful you don’t accidentally melt the toy.)
Plush toys can sometimes go through the washing machine, so long as you use a mesh bag that’s meant to protect delicate items from falling apart. Or they can be hand-washed in a tub of laundry detergent and left in the sun to air dry. Since schools are closed, this might be a great opportunity to teach your children about hygiene. Ask your kids to help with the process of cleaning their toys, so that they can learn how to do this on their own some day.
4. Clean Your Car
If you’re leaving the house for essential trips to the grocery store and pharmacy, you might be accidentally carrying the virus into your car with you. This is why it’s very important for you to wipe down the services of your car, especially the steering wheel. Car washes may not be open during the crisis, but you can still clean everything at home. And if you choose to go to a self-service car wash, always sanitize anything that has been touched by other people. Since these are high-traffic areas, your safest bet is to clean your vehicle at home.
If you don’t already have one, consider investing in a handheld car vacuum. This might not clean up the virus, but it will help to clean any dirt that might have accumulated on the mats of your car. Amazon also sells car cleaning kits that should come with everything you need to get the job done at home. There are also loads of other soaps, buckets, and microfiber cloths that are specially made for cleaning cars.
4. Clean Your Car
If you’re leaving the house for essential trips to the grocery store and pharmacy, you might be accidentally carrying the virus into your car with you. This is why it’s very important for you to wipe down the services of your car, especially the steering wheel. Car washes may not be open during the crisis, but you can still clean everything at home. And if you choose to go to a self-service car wash, always sanitize anything that has been touched by other people. Since these are high-traffic areas, your safest bet is to clean your vehicle at home.
If you don’t already have one, consider investing in a handheld car vacuum. This might not clean up the virus, but it will help to clean any dirt that might have accumulated on the mats of your car. Amazon also sells car cleaning kits that should come with everything you need to get the job done at home. There are also loads of other soaps, buckets, and microfiber cloths that are specially made for cleaning cars.
3. Wash Towels and Sheets More Frequently
During normal times, some people go an entire month without washing their bed linens. Towels are often hung in the bathroom and used two or three times before being washed. Linens come in direct contact with our bodies, and they usually have loads of germs. This is especially true for sheets, since most people shower in the morning. Considering that we need to keep our homes as clean as possible, you should get in the habit of washing those items more frequently. Use your towels just once before washing them, and clean your sheets at least once a week.
Don’t have enough towels to maintain daily washes? Buy a full set of towels and washcloths online. These will never go to waste, since they’re an essential item that you’re going to use for the rest of your life. Same goes with a new set of sheets. These can help hold you over if you’re planning to dedicate just one day a week to washing your clothes. It may take your family a while to transition from their old habits, but it’s well worth the benefits you get from keeping clean, and it will also keep you busy if you’re bored while being stuck at home.
2. Prepare Bedrooms For Isolation
All across America, hospitals are running out of ICU beds with ventilators, and many people cannot be treated for their ailments. New hospitals are being built, and old facilities are being reopened. Doctors are even treating coronavirus patients in tents. Staff is unprotected, and they are calling in retired doctors and nurses, as well as medical school staff to help with the crisis. Since hospitals are filling up across the country, people with a more mild cases of the illness are being instructed to stay home in self-isolation. This means that one of your family members will need to be sequestered to a room of the house alone while the others try to stay away. However, the disease makes you so weak, you absolutely need help from someone to make your meals. It’s also incredibly difficult to walk up and down the stairs, because of labored breathing.
In a large house, the task should be easy to isolate someone. Maybe you already have a bedroom with an en-suite bathroom, so that the rest of the family can use a clean environment to get ready in the morning. Other have already kitted out their basements as an extra apartment, which would be perfect as an isolation area. But other people who live in a smaller space aren’t so lucky. Have a conversation with your partner about what’s going to happen if one or more people in the family gets sick. Consider getting rid of unnecessary items that are preventing you from having space to create this solitary area. If at all possible, try to create an area of your home that is all on one level, so that people don’t have to walk up and down stairs to get to a bathroom. The more you plan ahead of time, the better prepared you’ll be if the virus ever reaches your home.
1. Wash Your Hands After Petting Your Dogs and Cats
Lastly, you shouldn’t forget about your furry friends. Even if you’re practicing social distancing, you still need to take your dog outside for a walk. Or, an indoor-outdoor cat might explore the neighborhood. Thankfully, most pets are not going to get sick or die from the disease. But they could still be carrying germs and accidentally give it to you. Your immune system needs to remain strong to fend off the virus, which is why it is incredibly important for you to wash your hands after petting your dogs and cats.
Even without this virus outbreak, this is still a good hygienic practice for you to take. You never know where your dogs have been, so it’s always good to make sure you’re being careful about germs. Also be sure to carefully clean your cat litter boxes. Consider purchasing disposable litter trays, if you would rather skip the process of cleaning out their plastic bins with soap and water every week. Also consider giving purchasing special pet shampoo so that you can give your dog or cat a bath.
Source: Homeaddict
