Cleaning & Hygiene Tips To Help Keep Your House Safe From COVID-19
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As the coronavirus ravages the world, the best thing you can do is monitor yourself for the seven main symptoms of COVID-19 and self-isolate whenever possible. And for most of us, that involves spending a lot of time within our house.
How, though, can you know that your house is actually safe from the coronavirus? To maximize your safety, there are cleaning and hygiene tips that your whole family needs to embrace. With these tips, you give your health and your family a real fighting chance against COVID-19.
Stay six feet away from people outside
Some of the best hygiene tips are nice and simple. For example, you should keep your distance from people outside your household whenever possible. The CDC recommends six feet of distance between you and others.
To avoid bringing any infection home, be extra careful around anyone who is sneezing or coughing. Sure, they may just be suffering from seasonal allergies. Then again, they might be infected with COVID-19.
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Stop coughing and sneezing into your hands
What do you do in order to contain a sneeze or cough? Many people were raised to sneeze and cough into their hands. But while this helps protect the area from your initial sneeze or cough, you’re actually putting far more people in danger.
Remember, you may not know if you’re infected or not, as some people with COVID-19 are asymptomatic. Transferring that infection to your hand by sneezing or coughing can be catastrophic. Anything (or anyone) that hand touches later on may become a vector for your own illness.
Instead of using your hand, try sneezing or coughing into your inner elbow instead. If anyone looks at you funny, just tell them that you’re dabbing!
Stop touching your face
By now, you’re figuring out that there are certain childhood habits that you have to unlearn in the age of COVID-19. One great example of this is how you react to an itchy face.
For most of us, it’s second nature to touch our face when it itches. This may range from scratching at an itch on your cheek to rubbing your eyes when they feel dry and painful.
However, this is like the sneeze/hand thing all over again. You don’t know what your hands have come into contact with throughout the day. By touching your face with dirty hands, you seriously increase the chances that you’ll get infected with the coronavirus.
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Frequently wash your hands
Speaking of unclean hands, one of the most important things you can do to protect your family is to wash your hands. However, you need to wash very thoroughly for maximum protection.
For example, you should wash your hands with soap and water for a good 20 seconds. A good rule of thumb is to hum the entire “Happy Birthday to You” song twice to ensure 20 seconds have passed.
Make sure to wash your hands right away if they get dirty. For example, if you just sneezed into a tissue, you should wash your hands right after you throw the tissue away.
Try to get into a regular routine of washing right before you leave the house and right after you get back. Also, your parents were right — you should wash your hands before you eat a meal.
By the way, it’s fine to supplement traditional handwashing with hand sanitizer, especially when you’re on the go. Just make sure it has at least 60% alcohol and that you rub your hands for a minimum of 20 seconds.
Use disinfectant around the house
It’s important to disinfect your house often. But which areas should you focus on? It’s best to focus on “high-touch” surfaces.
That means areas that many people are likely to touch each day. Areas like chairs, tables, door handles, toilets, light switches, and so on. Don’t forget to disinfect electronics like keyboards, cell phones, remote controls, and video game controllers.
This obviously isn’t a comprehensive list. If you can imagine any other objects or areas your family touches very often, be sure to bust out the disinfectant!
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How to remove the coronavirus from clothes
Your clothes may or may not be a vector for coronavirus (especially if someone unmasked sneezes near you). To increase your safety, here are a few extra tips you can follow when doing your laundry.
First, avoid jostling or shaking the dirty clothing whenever possible. If anything is infected, moving clothing around like this could move the coronavirus into the air.
Second, use a combination of warm water and either soap or detergent when washing your clothes. This fights the coronavirus and also makes your clothes that much cleaner.
Finally, wash your hands after washing the clothes, and don’t forget to disinfect your hamper, laundry bag, and anything else that touched the dirty clothing.
How to keep food safe from the coronavirus
Worried about getting COVID-19 from your food? Whether it’s groceries or takeout, there are a few steps you can take to eat with peace of mind.
If your food is packaged, you can disinfect the package before handling it. This applies to everything from canned food to takeout boxes.
Speaking of takeout, don’t eat directly from the box. Put your food onto a clean plate and get rid of the box right away.
If you have unpackaged food, including any kind of produce, be sure to wash it under running water before storing it or eating it. You should really be doing this anyway, COVID-19 or no COVID-19.
Don’t forget to wash your hands before you prepare food or eat food. Otherwise, follow all of the hygiene and safety warnings regarding your food. The last thing you want to do is get food poisoning when you were trying to avoid COVID-19!
Following these tips can help keep you and your family safe from the coronavirus!
