Cold and Flu Season Cleaning: Touch Point Disinfection
Cold and Flu Season Is Here. Here’s Where Germs Hide in Your Home.
By October in central Iowa, the backpacks are piled by the door again, the furnace has kicked on, and somebody in the house has started to sniffle. A cold rarely stays with one person for long, and a big part of the reason is the handful of surfaces everyone in the family touches every day without thinking about it.
The faucet problem
Start with the kitchen faucet. Someone comes in from school or work, turns the handle on with dirty hands, and washes up. Then they shut the water off with their freshly clean hands, touching the same spot they grabbed a minute earlier. The faucet handle is one of the most-touched surfaces in your home, and it quietly undoes a good hand wash many times a day.
Germs can survive on surfaces anywhere from several hours to many days, depending on the germ. Every hand that lands on that surface afterward can pick them up and carry them somewhere new.
The spots your family touches most
Once you start looking, the touch points are everywhere. In the kitchen, they include the fridge and microwave handles, the touch pads and stove knobs, the toaster lever, the cabinet knobs, the soap dispenser pump, and the counters where food gets made. In the bathroom, they’re the flush handle, the toilet seat and lid, the faucet, and the sink bowl. Around the rest of the house, it’s the light switches and plates, the door handles, the patio door pull, the banister, and the post at the top of the stairs that everyone grabs on the way down. Add in the TV remote, the keyboard, and the mouse.
The spot almost everyone misses is the back of a handle, where fingers curl around the fridge door. It rarely gets wiped, and it gets touched every time someone opens the door.
What Touch Point Disinfection adds to a clean
A regular phClean visit already cleans many of these areas. Touch Point Disinfection goes further by targeting every touch point in your home, with extra time set aside so our technician can be even more detailed.
Our technicians use medical-grade disinfecting wipes and leave the surface wet for a full minute, which is the sit time that particular disinfectant needs to do its job.
Spraying a handle with Lysol and then wiping it off does nothing, and if you read the instructions closely, you will see what I mean. Touch point work is always the last thing we do in your home, so nothing gets handled again after it’s finished. Your preferences go into the notes on your home’s work order. If you’d rather we use a disinfectant you already trust, tell us and we’ll use it. Phones, keyboards, and other electronics are only wiped when they’re turned off or when you ask us to include them.
You can add Touch Point Disinfection to a recurring clean or a deep clean, or book it on its own.
After a sick week
The time families call us most is right after someone in the house has been sick. The fever breaks, the tissues finally make it to the trash, and the last thing a worn-out parent wants to do is walk the house wiping every handle their sick kid touched. That’s exactly the job this service was built for. We focus on the areas the sick person touched most, so you can get back to the rest of your week.
It’s also a good fit before a house fills up for the holidays, or when a grandparent is coming to stay and you want the shared spaces ready for them.
We can’t promise the next cold will skip your house, and no cleaning company can. What we can do is take the most-touched surfaces off your list during the months when that list feels longest, and give you one less thing to worry about while you take care of everyone else.
Adding it to your next clean
If you’re a current phClean client, call your office and ask to add Touch Point Disinfection to an upcoming visit. If you’re new to phClean, we’d love to hear from you at phclean.net or at 515-715-4389.
