If this season of coughing, sneezing, and sick days has you looking for a primer on how to disinfect your home, we have the answers you need. After all, with snow on the ground in Phoenix, it’s no wonder that many of us are getting sick. But a clean home can be one more weapon in your arsenal to fight sickness. Why not take advantage and stay ahead of the curve?

Kill the Germs Where They Live the Longest

For your “sick season” cleaning routine, focus on hard-surface hot spots where cold and flu germs tend to live the longest. Did you know these nasty germs can live up to eight hours?! Don’t mess around with them; get rid of them.

Here are the areas where you’ll find the most germs around your house. Put your energy here first and you’ll be in the know on how to disinfect your home.

Faucets May Make Clean Hands but They Hold Germs Too

We want to wash our hands often during cold and flu season, and that’s a good thing. But what about those faucets that get touched by germy hands? Germs can stay around for the next person to pick up. What started as a great idea has now become a home for the germs you were trying to avoid!

Be sure to disinfect faucets to prevent germ sharing. Faucets can get especially icky in shared bathrooms when someone is sick. Blow your nose, wash your hands…repeat. This keeps the germs lingering for everyone to share. Yuck.

How to Disinfect Your Home by Cleaning Family Areas

Protecting your family and keeping them well during the winter can be a challenge. Knowing how to disinfect your home—and the areas where germs linger—helps. Family areas, such as kitchens and living rooms, are germ hangouts. Sick family members are drinking lots of water, eating chicken soup, and resting on the couch cuddled under a throw with the TV remote in their hands. All of those places need to be disinfected.

It’s good practice year round to clean these shared surfaces, but it becomes even more important to fight illness. Wipe down surfaces frequently, including kitchen counters and handles on the fridge, microwave, and oven. Clean off remote controls and game controllers as well. And after the sickness passes, be sure to wash throws, pillows, and slipcovers. If you have leather furniture, wipe those areas down too.

Knobs and Switches: Harbingers of Germs

Take a moment and think about all of the surfaces you touch on a regular day. It’s a lot, right? If you’re focused on how to disinfect your home, you need to consider everywhere germs will linger. Some of the places we overlook, even during routine cleaning, are door knobs and light switches. Multiple times each day, someone is flipping lights on and off or going through a door—especially the bathroom and front door.

Bacteria and viruses can live on these surfaces for as long as 48 hours, so pay some attention to them when you have sick people at home. In addition to door knobs and switches, look to kitchen cabinet knobs and handles as well.

Toilets Hold Lots of Germs

Colds and flus aren’t the only types of sicknesses that hit our homes during the winter season. How about stomach bugs? Those are what keep us in the bathroom either sitting on or hugging the toilet. Therefore, both the inside and outside of your toilets are holding onto a number of bugs.

When considering how to disinfect your home, consider all parts of the bathrooms. You already know about the faucets, but the toilets need to be cleaned too. Clean the inside and outside of the bowl, as well as the seat, lid, and handle. And if your family isn’t in the habit of putting the lid down before flushing, remember that germs actually spray out of the toilet bowl and land on surfaces when you flush. Train everyone to put the lid down first, and take precautions by cleaning all bathroom surfaces (including the floor) to fight illness.

Stay Ahead of Flu Seasons with a Clean Home

If you’re the primary housecleaner and you’re sick, much of these tips for how to disinfect your home probably aren’t getting done. That’s why you should keep Carnation Home Cleaning in your back pocket. We will clean your home regularly using only eco-friendly products that are safe for your family (including pets!) and the environment. Contact us to get a free estimate and help fight illness with a clean home.