How to Clean, Sanitize and Disinfect your Places

There are major distinctions between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting your home, though some methods are constantly interchangeable.

Cleaning is to organizing and wiping down surfaces, like countertops, furniture, shelves and also some hard to reach places so that they appear neat and spotless. Many surface cleaners are built to lift and remove visible smudges, spots, stains, and debris from surfaces. Cleaning products can potentially remove germs from surfaces (along with dirt and other organic material) and wash them away, but the goal of cleaning is about the look and feel. While cleaners will help make your surfaces look nice and shiny, there are some places at home (like your kitchen counters, faucet handles, and doorknobs) where you want to follow up your cleaning with a sanitizer or a disinfectant. Cleaning by itself won’t kill germs like bacteria, viruses, or fungi.

What is Sanitization and Disinfection?

The difference between sanitization and disinfection comes down to semantics. Both sanitizing and disinfecting aim to reduce the amount of contamination present on a surface by killing germs, but disinfection, by definition means to kill more germs than when it is done through sanitization.  Many product manufacturers and agencies which manufacture cleaning solvents use the word sanitizing to refer to a solution or device that reduces the amount of germs on a surface by 99.9 percent or more. A level that’s considered safe by public health standards. They use the word disinfecting for chemical products that are designed to kill everything on a surface.

When should you sanitize your place?

Sanitizing is necessary for surfaces that come in contact with food. Created with pathogens that reduce germs and fungi, sanitizing sprays will make your surfaces safe to touch again. Sanitizing can also be done without chemicals, by an appliance like a dishwasher or laundry machine (if they have “sanitize” cycle), or a steam cleaner, which bring contaminated surfaces into contact with extreme heat (more than 170 degrees) to kill bacteria and other germs. Steam cleaning is especially useful for removing germs from porous surfaces such as fabric, carpets and upholstery, which cannot be disinfected with chemical products made for hard surfaces. If the washer you’re using doesn’t have a sanitize cycle, a product like liquid laundry sanitizer can work alongside your normal liquid soap to help remove and kill germs from your clothes. You can add laundry sanitizer to your machine’s fabric softener dosing cup, or directly into the rinse cycle.

When should you disinfect your place?

Now in the times of Covid-19, when you absolutely need to remove every last bit of contamination in a space, you’ll need a good disinfectant spray to get the job done. A quality disinfectant spray should remove 100 percent of the microscopic organisms on your surfaces. While it may not be that helpful in the stain removing, it will effectively stop the spread of diseases and coronavirus wherever you use it.

You may consider reaching for a disinfectant to treat high-touch areas like doorknobs, light switches, and bathroom faucets, especially when a member of the household has been sick. To be effective, disinfecting solutions need to remain in contact with the surface for a specified length of time. For example, you could wipe the surfaces using enough wipes for the treated surface to remain visibly wet for 4 to 5 minutes.

You should not skip the step of cleaning before you disinfect. Dirt and organic material can make some disinfectants less effective, so cleaning is necessary before disinfecting in most cases. Using any antibacterial cleaners isn’t enough to disinfect unless you first remove visible dirt from the surface (basically, you have to clean everything twice).

Things to Know Before You Disinfect Around Your Home

Many environmentalists warn that the overuse of disinfectants is a growing public health concern and you should only use them when you absolutely need to, for that specific task. Studies have found that the use of some disinfectant products is creating microbes that can mutate into forms that are resistant to particular disinfectants or that become superbugs according to a fact sheet. These resistant germs are also harder to kill with antibiotics.

Household bleach can be used as a sanitizer or a disinfectant, depending on how much it’s diluted. But because concentrations of bleach can be inconsistent and home dilution is often not exact, if you need to be absolutely sure you’re disinfecting a surface or your place, we are here for you within a call away. If you’re looking for a cleaning / sanitizing companies in Dubai, reach out to us for best home maintenance services in Dubai.