It is always a great idea to give your home and office space a thorough cleaning once in a while. You might be looking to disinfect every corner of your living and the workspace in order to get rid of the harmful bacteria.
Well, you are on the right track. But in order to be successful, you have to first understand the difference between cleaning and disinfecting any space.
It might be a question that you might not have thought about earlier, but now when you have, it is better to understand the difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting before you get out your mop and bucket.
What Do We Mean by Cleaning?
Cleaning a workspace or any living space essentially means removing dirt, germs, and all the clutter that has accumulated at any space over time.
What it means is that you pick all the important items and give them a good wash. We are talking about toys, dishes, carpets, upholstered furniture, and other important items in a house that can accumulate bacteria over a long period of usage.
Not just that, you will also have to swipe your floors and mop them. Wipe down your cabinets and make them more organized. The bottom line to cleaning is making your house dust-free and organized.
The good thing about cleaning is that you don’t have to wear a hazmat suit. You don’t even have to set up a decontaminant chamber.
Cleaning is very simple. All you have to do is scrub the surface with hot soapy water and rinse. Cleaning can be done on a regular basis in order to make your living and office space spotless.
What Do We Mean By Sanitizing and Disinfecting?
The question that we need to ask ourselves is whether regular cleaning is enough to maintain the health of your home? Is cleaning a strong measure to reduce the bacteria growth in your home? The answer to these questions is simple.
While cleaning does help make your living and office space look good, it doesn’t help you clean every nook and cranny that might have become a breeding space for bacteria and viruses. That is exactly where sanitizing and disinfecting plays a crucial role in making your home healthy.
But, sanitizing and disinfecting are two different things. Sanitizing is essentially reducing the microbial counts to a level that is safe for people living inside any space.
It is basically used to reduce the contamination to a safe level. However, when it comes to disinfection, your goal is to kill everything that is there on a particular surface.
While sanitization will lower the level of germs on a surface, disinfectant the surface will eventually kill all of them.
When Exactly Should You Sanitize or Disinfect?
Sanitization is required for services that don’t really come in contact with dangerous bacteria. These are surfaces that can be cleaned without the use of any powerful chemicals.
We are talking about utensils, surfaces where you prepare food, toys, and other surfaces that you don’t need to go hard on. However, when it comes to disinfecting, we are talking about cleaning services that are essentially big messes involving bodily fluids, blood, or human excretion.
You will want to disinfect toilets, sinks, or other areas in the house that are used regularly in medical contexts.
You will be using a much more powerful agent for disinfecting than what you will use for sanitizing a particular surface. Water and bleach solutions made with a lower concentration can be used as the sanitizer.
The same can be used as a disinfectant if you increase the concentration.
Over to You
Cleaning, sanitizing, disinfecting should be a part of your ‘make your home safe and healthy’ checklist. We hope you have understood the differences between the three terms we just discussed.
If you have questions, feel free to put them down in the comments section. We’d love to hear from you!
