From phones to bedding, what you touch while you’re sick can keep viruses alive long after the fever breaks, making thorough cleanup a key step in fully recovering.
You’ve finally kicked the flu or a nasty winter virus — but your house may still be full of germs. It is essential to clean up to reduce the risk of reinfestation.
Amanda Joy, who specializes in urgent care and emergency medicine at MedStar Health, told WTOP that it’s important to get evaluated to determine which illness you or members of your household have. That way, you can tailor your home cleaning to what is circulating in your environment.
“The first thing that we need to remember is how long each virus or bacteria can last on particular surfaces. That will guide you in how you clean and disinfect your house,” Joy said.
For example, flu-related germs typically hang around for 24 to 48 hours, depending on the surface. Viruses such as RSV have a “very short life” outside of the body, Joy said, lasting about six to 12 hours. Cold viruses and COVID-19 can persist on surfaces for a few hours to a few days.
When starting to disinfect your home, Joy recommends cleaning all hard surfaces and frequently touched household items with a diluted bleach solution or cleaner. To create a solution, use a tablespoon of bleach and mix it in warm water. Once fully diluted, you can use it to wipe down surfaces around your home.
While bleach-based cleaning products are adequate, Joy also recommends Lysol products. Some of their products have chemicals that can neutralize viruses.
“If you do your standard wipe downs a couple times throughout the virus — if you do it every day, that’s even better — that should be adequate to keep that from spreading,” Joy said.
Families with children who are sick should monitor the areas of the home where their child roams and wipe those places down every night. Joy also recommends cleaning any tablets, toys and remote controls they may touch.
Once you are fever-free for 24 hours without the need for medicines, wash your bedding and clothes in a hot cycle in your washer with detergent to kill any potential viruses or bacteria.
“The hot water is important to kill the viruses,” Joy said. “Any detergent should work. I always like to say ‘the solution to pollution is dilution.’ The more you can dilute out that virus, the better that you’re going to eliminate that on surfaces and especially bedding and clothing.”
One item Joy strongly recommends cleaning that gets overlooked is cellphones.
Most people spend their time on devices to pass the time when they’re sick, unaware that they are harboring the same bacteria on a hard surface. Once healthy, wipe down the phone. If it has a case, remove it from the device and clean it as well.
“That’s something that typically travels around with you and can cause more of a spread of infection,” Joy said.
If you have a bacterial infection like strep throat, Joy recommends tossing your toothbrush after taking antibiotics for 72 hours to reduce the risk of reinfection.
“If you’re having vomiting, something like the Norovirus that goes around every year, in those cases, I would probably disinfect everything that I’ve touched, including hairbrushes, combs, those sorts of things, because it’s very contagious and it can last so long,” she said.
Lastly, Joy said to check that you are up to date on your preventive vaccinations to avoid illnesses such as the seasonal flu. Other preventable measures include proper hand washing and coughing or sneezing into your elbow to prevent the “aerosolization of viruses into the environment.”
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