A better approach to cleaning is less about appearance and more about cleaning for health.That means completely eliminating microbes and soil while maintaining a healthy indoor air quality.
When you think about something being clean, what comes to mind? Is it the scent of lemon cleaners or the more chemical smell of bleach? Or maybe it’s a dust-free coffee table or a shiny kitchen floor.
We tend to have an ideas in our heads about what is – and what isn’t – clean. But just how valid are the common perceptions of a germ-free kitchen and a bleached bathroom? And with the trend toward “green cleaning,” how well do vinegar solutions actually work in killing dirt and germs?
A better approach to cleaning is less about appearance and more about cleaning for health. That means completely eliminating microbes and soil while maintaining a healthy indoor air quality.
You may swear your home is completely clean after you spent Saturday morning scrubbing each surface with bleach, but how polluted is the air quality in your home? You and family inhaled plenty of bleach fumes.
Cleaning for health requires careful selection of cleaning products and equipment as well as the proper use of those items. Most people probably don’t realize you need to clean a surface, apply a disinfectant cleaner, wait 10 minutes and then wipe the surface again. Disinfectants don’t clean a surface, they disinfect; that means they only work on clean surfaces.
Using a cotton cloth to clean the bathroom sink or dust the living room end tables simply spreads the dirt around and doesn’t do an adequate job of trapping and removing soil. A microfiber cloth – our company uses the PerfectClean brand – has 300 miles of fibers in 1 square foot of material. Because the fibers are so small, these cloths pick up any microbial material and trap it in the cloth, keeping you from transferring microbes from one surface to another.
Looks can be deceiving when it comes to cleaning. The next time you grab your bucket of supplies, think about cleaning for health, instead of cleaning just for appearance or just to achieve that lemony fresh smell.
