Colds and flu are a part of life in the winter, but that doesn’t mean that you should just accept them without a fight. Proper home hygiene, and a few basic precautions, can slow the spread of most winter bugs. Here are a few tips to help you fight off common bugs.
The Golden Rule: Wash Your Hands
This is the most basic tip, but it’s one that is often overlooked. Wash your hands regularly – not just after going to the bathroom, but also when you get home from work, when you come in from gardening, and before you handle food. Frequent hand washing is probably the most important step towards preventing the spread of bugs.
Deep cleaning is the process of removing every possible trace of dirt or bacteria from an area. It’s normally done if there’s an outbreak of a serious illness; such as the norovirus bug that broke out at Balgreen Primary school in the UK, earlier this month. The norovirus causes some rather unpleasant illnesses, with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea.
Just as sneezing on someone is a great way to spread a cold, vomiting is a great way to spread the norovirus. Balgreen Primary school was closed for several days while the council deep-cleaned every surface to insure the infection didn’t spread.
Deep cleaning is a little too intensive to be made a part of a normal cleaning routine, but a festive “deep clean” is a nice take on the traditional spring-cleaning process. Here’s a quick check-list to help you get started:
- Thoroughly clean your carpets – don’t just vacuum them, give them a good going over with a vax Powermax or similar carpet cleaner.
- Clean any soft furnishings – try using your vax powermax cleaner on those too. This will get rid of any dust mites, which can aggravate asthma.
- Clean the bathroom – disinfect every single thing in the bathroom. Don’t just wipe down the bath and the sink; thoroughly clean the floor, the toilet, the shower curtain, and every other part of the room.
- Disinfect the kitchen – clean out your cupboards and throw out any old food. Wipe down the cupboards (inside and out), clean your counter tops, and disinfect your sink.
- Wash all your linen – your sheets, duvet covers, pillow cases, and even your curtains. Use as high a temperature as the materials can handle.
You don’t need to do a full deep clean every time you tidy the house, but it’s a good idea to do one at the start of winter. If someone in your family gets sick, be as fastidious as possible when it comes to hygiene, so that you don’t spread the virus within your home.
If you know you’re sick, try to stay at home as much as possible. Sending a sick child to school, or going to work yourself when you know you’re ill, isn’t a very nice thing to do. Unless there’s no way to avoid it, try not to spread colds, flu, and other bugs by going out in public while you’re contagious.
This article was written by Amy Fowler on behalf of The Original Factory Shop, who sell discounted household goods such as the Vax Powermax.