Last Updated on February 12, 2025 by Share My Kitchen
It is so important to keep our home as free from germs as possible. If you want to minimize your risk of getting sick and spreading germs to friends and family members, then follow these tips to reduce germs in your home.
Make Handwashing a Priority
The first step toward having a germ free home is to make sure that everyone is washing their hands. Stress the importance of proper handwashing to your kids and to any kids who visit you. If you can get them to wash their hands before they eat, as soon as they come inside the house, and after they have used the restroom, you will minimize the spread of germs.
What we do with our hands is not always clean and sanitary, and they need to be washed regularly and completely to keep germs from spreading so easily. If you and others in your house can make good use of soap and water at key points throughout the day, the risk of getting sick will be greatly reduced. This is especially important for kids since they tend to get dirty more easily and they tend to touch their face more often.
Clean High Touch Areas
If you want your home to be a place where germs are not quite as prevalent and easily spread, then you should focus on cleaning those areas that people touch most frequently. Think about how germs can easily spread from hands to doorknobs and then to someone else’s hands when they touch the same doorknob.
It is very important to clean and sanitize any areas for the home where people are putting their hands frequently, and that includes door knobs, handles, faucets, countertops, and tools. All the appliance handles will be touched frequently and not everyone will have clean hands when they touch them. Consider how easily germs spread onto the refrigerator door or the microwave door, not to mention the front door of the house.
The germs can stay active and alive on those surfaces for hours and even days, which is why you should be cleaning those spots with sanitizing wipes or sprays. Make sure you do a good, thorough job of cleaning these areas so that you effectively kill all the germs. If you are thorough, you won’t have as many sicknesses to deal with- for yourself or for your family.
Have Your Entire Home Cleaned
Don’t just stop at the doorknobs, though. You should have your whole house cleaned. It may not all need to be sanitized, but a good cleaning will do wonderful things for you when it comes to making the place as germ free as possible. A deep cleaning is really helpful when you want to make everyone healthier and spend less time being sick.
One excellent way to ensure that your home is cleaned like it should be without a lot of stress for you is to hire San Antonio cleaners to help out. Professional cleaners can make it easy to keep a clean home, as they can do the chores that you are not able to get to. Rely on them for a full house cleaning and save yourself some work.
Change Out Towels Often
Here is one area that you might be failing in when it comes to germ control, because a lot of people make the same mistake. How often do you change out hand towels and bath towels? These need to be changed frequently since they collect so many germs and so much bacteria. You should switch out hand towels and kitchen towels once every few days, and bath towels can be changed out less frequently- about once a week.
Hand towels tend to collect the most germs of these three towel types, because some people will not clean their hands very well before using them. Some people will also wash part of their faces and then use these towels to dry their faces off, adding a whole lot of germs, dirt, dust, and bacteria to the towels. Changing them more frequently reduces the risk of sickness.
Use Air Purifiers
One effective way to cut down on germs in the home is to use air purifiers in key areas. You can set these up in bedrooms to keep the air quality high there, and make sure the purifiers are working properly and are cleaned out frequently. You should notice an improvement in the air quality and in how clean and sanitary the rooms are that you use them in.
You can help the purifiers out by keeping rooms clean where they are in use. Make sure you have swept, vacuumed, and scrubbed in those rooms so that you are not circulating a lot of dust and germs with the purifiers.
Focus on Key Areas
There will be some parts of the house that collect germs more easily than others. These will be the parts of the house where people spend the most time- like the kitchen, bedrooms, and living rom. Also, you should focus cleaning in the bathroom as well since it will produce more germs than any other space in the house.
These are all areas that should be cleaned daily and weekly, with more intensive and comprehensive cleaning down every week and lighter cleaning down each day. If you can keep up with that kind of cleaning schedule and do some sanitizing in areas where people touch the most, you will have a tidy home that is even clean at the microscopic level. This eliminates many germs and prevents the spread of germs, making for a far more hygienic space.
If you know of problem areas in your home where germs tend to be spread often, then focus some cleaning time on those areas as well. In some homes, these may be a basement, entry room, or laundry room, as well as specific spots like a shoe rack, laundry basket, or trash can. We hope these tips help you maintain a cleaner home and experience fewer illnesses.