Habits to help you avoid getting sick from cold and flu
Germs from others accumulate on highly touched surfaces. At home, you’ll find the most germs on light switches, remote controls, kitchen counters, and bathroom faucets. And, although you may not share your cellphone with others, it can be one of the most unclean surfaces in your house, and can even harbor more bacteria than toilet seats! This is because most people constantly touch their phones between washing their hands. Here’s the scary part: Flu viruses can survive on hard surfaces like counters or phones, for up to 2 days. Cold viruses last even longer, sometimes up to a week on surfaces like metal and plastic. (Smart Cleaning Routines to Reduce Cold and Flu Transmission at Home)
“Cleaning your cell phone is a far more effective preventative measure than something like wearing a face mask,” says Debra Goff, Pharm.D. According to Apple, the best way to clean your phone is to turn off the power, then use a microfiber cloth. Spray the cloth, not the phone, with your cleaning solution, then wash the cloth in your washing machine and hang it up to dry. Cleaning solutions should not contain any abrasive ingredients, vinegar, bleach, hydrogen peroxide, nor more than 70% alcohol, in order to prevent damage to the phone surfaces and seals. (How to Clean Your Cell Phone the Right Way, According to a Germ Expert)
As always, washing your hands with soap and water tops the list to reduce germ transfer! It’s good to wash them for at least 20 seconds (sing “Happy Birthday” twice).
And, making a daily routine of cleaning certain surfaces helps too, such as the kitchen counter, coffee maker handle/buttons (if you drink coffee), touchpoints on faucets, the refrigerator, light switches, door handles, and the TV remote and gaming controllers.
If you frequently drive and especially if you drop off and pick up kids from school, don’t forget your car! The door handles, steering wheel, gear shifter and navigation screen/audio controls are frequently loaded with germs.
In the kitchen, it’s especially important to remember to sanitize the items you use to clean dishes and surfaces–such as the kitchen sponge and any bottle-cleaning brushes. Sponges especially can be a breeding ground for bacteria. America’s Test Kitchen performed an experiment with 6 identical sponges. They used the sponges to clean dishes for 2 weeks, but the treatment afterward was different. For 3 sponges, they were careful to squeeze the water out and place them in a dish rack so they could air-dry. The other three sponges were left wet, sitting in open plastic bowls, mimicking sponges that had simply been dropped and left in a damp place such as the bottom of the sink. The sponges that had been left wet averaged more than 500,000 CFU/mL of bacteria, while the wrung-out sponges came in at just 20 CFU/mL. The lesson, of course, is to squeeze out the water from your sponge after using it and let it dry out! Next, sanitize the sponge often by either dampening and microwaving it for 2 minutes, or running it through your dishwasher on a setting that reaches at least 155 degrees and has a heated dry cycle (sometimes called sani-rinse, sani-wash, or sanitation cycle), preferably every time you run your dishwasher. (How to Clean a Kitchen Sponge) Also, change your dish towels frequently and launder them with sanitizer.
Laundering bedding and clothing more frequently can go a long way, too. Although most detergents nowadays advertise that they work just as well in cold water, when you’re aiming for killing germs, hot water cycles are best. Add a laundry disinfectant or sanitizer, especially to items of family members who’ve been sick, like bedding, towels and clothing. Although it’s technically not a “sanitizer” because it’s not listed with the EPA, EC3 Laundry Additive is a great non-toxic way to rinse mold spores and bacteria from your laundry. Its proprietary blend of tea tree and citrus oils are food grade ingredients and natural surfactants to clean away mold spores and foul odor-causing bacteria and yeast.
Photo by PlanetCare on Unsplash
