The Difference between Cleaning, Sanitizing and Disinfecting
It is important to give our living and work spaces from top to bottom cleaning almost everyday, most especially during a virus outbreak. Oftentimes, you are confused as to what cleaning process is needed to do in a certain situation, whether you have to sanitize or disinfect them.
Keeping your home or office environment clean will reduce the spread of illness and gives an overall experience, and in order to do that, right knowledge in cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting are really important to understand.
What does Cleaning mean?
Cleaning is the process of physically removing dirt, dust, debris and grime from the areas around your house and should always comes first. It plays an important role since you cannot sanitize or disinfect effectively if cleaning is not done first. You can actually clean without sanitizing or disinfecting but you can’t do either of them without cleaning.
In order to clean, you can use an all purpose cleaner agent and a microfiber cloth to lift the soils away. Cleaning only removes germs and debris from the surface but it doesn’t kill them. Be careful on removing all of them because if germs are not totally removed, it will continue reproducing and spreading.
The common cleaning products include:
Glass Cleaners
Soaps and Detergents
Dusters and Degreasers
What does Sanitizing really mean?
Sanitizing is about reducing the microbial counts (number of bacteria, viruses and fungi) to a safe level particularly in to food preparation (areas that come into contact with food) in order to avoid making people sick. For example, you will sanitize the dishes and utensils after using them and toys that children may put in their mouths. The goal of this process is to eliminate pathogens or germs that can cause disease.
Here are the common items that requires sanitation in your kitchen to prevent cross-contamination that can cause food poisoning.
Cutting board
Worktables
Utensils and dishes
Countertops
Pots and Pans
And all other cooking equipment
Steam Cleaning is another way of sanitizing your home. The extremely high temperature of steam vapor helps to kill bacteria, viruses, mold, mildew, bed bugs, dust mites — their eggs and many other allergy causing pathogens.
Maid Share offers Steam Cleaning in any surfaces even carpet cleaning. Click here to book an appointment.
What about Disinfecting?
On the other hand, disinfecting requires a stronger solution to kill specific germs and viruses rather than simply reducing them. Using a disinfectant can kill 100% of germs when of course used properly. This process can be achieved with EPA- approved chemicals and products, including disinfecting wipes that contains 60% alcohol, bleach and alcohol solutions.
Here are some items that should be regularly disinfected:
Door handles
Light switches
Faucet handles
Chair handles
Bathrooms surfaces
Gadgets / TV remote / Appliances buttons
Always remember that all sanitizing and disinfecting products are needed to remain on a surface for 4-10 minutes or they call it dwell time, to effectively kill all germs, bacteria and viruses. Apply a sufficient amount of the solution to keep the surface wet the entire time and then allow it to air dry. Surfaces that are not properly sanitized or disinfected increase the chance of spreading the virus that can cause disease or illness. So, you need to make sure of that and put a lot of extra care.
Final thought
Giving you a summary about this topic, when you’re cleaning a surface using an all purpose cleaner or any of your chosen cleaners, you are only removing 97% of germs only if correct procedures are followed. And sanitizing or sanitizer can kill 99% of pathogens while disinfecting or a disinfectant kills 100% of bacteria and viruses. In order to completely meet their powerful uses, you should follow the correct procedure and the dwell time to sit in the surface.
Now that we know the difference between cleaning, sanitizing and disinfecting, we can now protect our family from getting sick and avoid exposure to any type of pathogens that can cause illnesses and diseases.
Check our other blog about disinfecting your groceries and other blogs here to prevent us from getting Coronavirus.