Keeping your home neat and clean throughout the year is important but especially so during the flu season. Making sure that your living space stays spick-and-span during the colder part of the year is not only about appearances and comfort, it’s also about health. Regular cleaning will reduce the amount of contaminants in the air and various surfaces and keep your home an oasis of health.
The best way to do this is to establish a regular house cleaning schedule with a dependable cleaning company in Houston and let professionals take care of your residential sanitation. However, sometimes this is not an option so in today’s article we delve deeper into a home cleaning checklist designed to stop seasonal flu in its tracks.
How do you clean during flu season?
Alongside plenty of sleep, hot beverages, a balanced diet, and keeping warm, residential sanitation is a key part of staying healthy while the seasonal flu is raging. Cleaning helps eliminate germs from surfaces and keeps your indoor air free of contaminants. Here are 7 important things you should focus on to avoid coming down with the flu or any other seasonal virus that is doing the rounds.
1. Personal hygiene is key
First things first, and in the case of cleaning during the flu season, that means starting with yourself. Handwashing takes less than a minute of your time but plays a crucial role in reducing the amount of germs that enter your home. While it’s always advisable to wash your hands as soon as you come home, during the flu season it truly becomes a matter of health and sickness.
2. Keep a close watch on high-touch surfaces
Much like other germs, the influenza virus can survive on surfaces for a very long time, especially in beneficial residential conditions. That’s why it’s crucial to disinfect high-touch areas at least once a day to break the chain of infection. From doorknobs, light switches, remote controls, and mobile phones, to handles, pulls, faucets, and countertops, go through your home and disinfect all those surfaces that you touch every day.
3. Don’t underestimate soft surfaces
While high-touch surfaces act as a perfect resting place for germs, it’s also important not to ignore soft surfaces. Things like shades and drapes, rugs and carpets, and upholstered furniture don’t have the same reputation as high-touch areas, but they can also act as a repository of contagious microorganisms.
4. Take heed of indoor air quality
While flu sticks to various surfaces and survives for hours and even days, it’s also known to strike from the air. To make sure that your indoor air stays fresh, it’s important to concentrate on two things. The first is cleaning and the second is daily ventilation. While the latter will depend on the weather, the former just requires elbow grease. If it gets too cold or rainy to ventilate, intensify your house cleaning routine to keep your air fresh and germ-free.
5. Designate a ‘sick room’
Sometimes no matter how hard you try to eliminate the microbes from your home, the disease will walk through the door straight from the workplace or school. It may be smart to set up a ‘sick room’ where you can isolate the affected person for a couple of days and reduce exposure to other members of the household. When the person gets back at their feet and starts mingling again, remember to thoroughly sanitize the ‘sick room’ to prevent germs from escaping.
6. Keep vigilant & spread the word
It’s important to let in other members of the household on the importance of hygiene and cleanliness while the contagion is threatening. Prioritize regular hand washing, proper coughing and sneezing etiquette, and encourage everyone to do their bit to keep the family circle healthy.
7. Turn to pros for help
If all this seems like too much information to keep in mind or too much work with your busy schedule, you can always enlist the support of specialists and let them take care of the hard part of your seasonal flu-cleaning routine. With a proven and consistent team of maids at your beck and call, all you’ll have to focus on is your personal hygiene and professionals will take care of the rest.
Which is the leading professional cleaning company in Houston, TX & the vicinity?
Backed by 5 decades of success, thousands of content customers and outstanding reviews, and 100% satisfaction on each visit, Maids and Moore is the best cleaning service in Houston and beyond. Lean on our professionals to turn trick-or-treating into fun housekeeping, deep clean your home after a fun party, give someone a Black Friday cleaning voucher, or put in place a convenient plan for regular maid services.
Feel free to spend a day at the Children’s Museum of Houston with your toddlers while we do what we do best and thoroughly clean your home. We have the tools, the personnel, and the methods to keep your home healthy, fresh, and inviting no matter the season so give us a call today!