Cleaning High Touch Points
Bacteria and viruses need food and a supportive environment to survive and multiply. Given the right conditions, some bacteria like MRSA and C. Diff can multiply to as many as 64,000,000 in twelve hours or less.
And we’re not talking about a full meal set for bacteria to feast upon. In some instances, the “food” that bacteria feeds on can be as simple as a smudge or a fingerprint on a door handle. Just because we can’t see the proper conditions for germ growth, doesn’t mean bacteria, viruses, and other illness-causing microbes aren’t lurking in plain sight.
These spots that we touch often—the ones that can contribute to the spread of illness—are referred to as high touch points, and they need regular disinfection to keep the spread of sickness at bay.
At home and in the workplace, these surfaces need your attention. Here’s what you need to know about all the places that require regular disinfection.
What Frequently-Touched Surfaces Need Attention at Home?
Every 30 minutes, we touch over 300 surfaces. Think about your first thirty minutes home from work. You touch things like the doorknob, lightswitch, keys, mailbox, mail, cabinets, closet door handles, kitchen chairs and countertops, the fridge, and more.
Just what kinds of surfaces should you clean in your home? Every room will have its own high-touch surfaces, but by room, they should include things like:
Living room: Remotes, the surface of your coffee table, phones, exercise equipment, gaming controllers, toys
Dining room: Table surfaces and edges and chair rails
Kitchen: Fridges handles and drawer pulls, contents of the fridge that are used frequently (like the milk jug handle), countertops, appliance buttons and panels, faucet handles, stove controls
Bedrooms: Nightstands, lamp switches, remotes, phone chargers, hairbrushes, headboard, waste bins, book and magazine covers, tablets, wallet trays, hangers
Bathrooms: Faucet handles, toilet handles, toilet brush handles, towel racks, toothpaste, soap dispenser, medicine bottles, toilet paper dispensers
Vehicles: Steering wheel, seat belt buckles, gear shifts, glove box handles, door handles, sun visors, audio controls, car seats and buckles, light/door button
Most of your intensive cleaning should happen in the bathroom, where the room can often be hot and humid, with water sitting in drains where bacteria can grow, and where used tissues are tossed in the trash, those use nasal treatments, and where the toilet is. Soap is also a prime source of nutrients for many microorganisms. This means that your bathrooms need the most attention. Use disinfectants to clean everything: the floors, walls, cabinets, sinks, faucets, toilets, and more.
Touch Points that Need Your Focus at Work
Workplaces are brimming with germs. In fact, there are more than 10 million bacteria on the average office desk, which is over 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat. In one study involving volunteers who were artificially inoculated with a benign virus in a workplace environment, researchers discovered that these “infected” co-workers spread the virus to 50 percent of all workplace surfaces within 4 hours. Since these surfaces were shared by their non-infected coworkers, half of the non-inoculated co-workers also tested positive for the benign virus.
Disinfecting frequently-touched surfaces in the workplace is essential to help prevent the spread of illness. Which surfaces need your attention?
Employee desks and workspaces
Desktops
Monitors
Each keyboard and computer mouse
Phones
Doorknobs
Elevator buttons
Vending machine buttons
Coffeepots
Microwaves
Refrigerators
Light switches
Breakroom tables and countertops
Shared equipment
Each of these surfaces should be disinfected daily. Additionally, proper handwashing and hand sanitizer can help employees kill the germs that they pick up from these touch points every day.
Which Cleaning Products Should You Use?
If you are concerned about the spread of COVID-19 and want to disinfect your space, you should ensure that the cleaning products you’ve chosen are listed on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) List of Disinfectants for Coronavirus (COVID-19). This is a comprehensive list of all cleaning and disinfecting products that are proven to be effective against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Most importantly, you should follow the manufacturer’s recommendations for dwell time, also known as contact time. Before wiping away wet cleaning products, these chemical cleaning agents need time to kill any illness-causing pathogens on your surfaces. To accomplish this, be sure to adhere to the recommended contact time.
But what if these products aren’t available in your local store?
You may also use a dilution of bleach and water for most non-porous surfaces. Most household bleach cleaning agents contain between 5 and 9 percent sodium hypochlorite. If your bleach is not within this range, it should not be used for disinfecting purposes. This includes some laundry bleach and splashless bleach, so be sure to read the label.
When diluting your bleach mixture for cleaning and disinfecting, you should follow all directions on the bottle. If the bottle does not have any directions for dilution, you can make a bleach disinfectant solution by combining:
5 tablespoons (⅓ cup) bleach per gallon of room temperature water
OR
4 teaspoons of bleach per quart of room temperature water
Each bleach label should have a listed contact time for surface application. If not, leave the diluted bleach solution for at least 1 minute before wiping away or drying. During this time, the surface should remain visibly wet.
Ensure proper ventilation while cleaning with bleach.
Do not mix bleach or any other disinfectants with other cleaners. This can create harmful vapors, like the potentially deadly combination of bleach and ammonia.
Bleach solutions lost some of their strength after being mixed with water for over 24 hours, so make a new cleaning solution each day.
Cleaning these touch points takes time and attention to detail. Miss a day of cleaning or skip a door handle, and your home or office could be contributing to the spread of the flu, a common cold, or much worse. While there are limited instances of spreading COVID-19 through touch points, it does happen and for this reason, it’s wise to err on the side of caution.
At Custom Maid, we are here to provide the cleaning strategies you need to keep your family and employees as safe as possible. But when it’s just too much to handle on your own, we’re here to provide the residential and commercial deep cleaning services you need for your home or small business. Want to learn more about how we can help keep your high touch surfaces clean and your space gleaming? Contact us today!