Since the pandemic descended upon us in 2020, people have become more aware of the need to create and live in healthy spaces. Even as the pandemic winds down, our survival instincts tell us that cleaning and restoring our lived spaces is vital. If you wondered if you need to remain vigilant about cleanliness, here’s how keeping your floors clean helps you keep healthy.
Floors Are Breeding Grounds of Germs
We are constantly walking over our floors. Although during the height of the pandemic, the focus of cleaning was high-touch spaces within reach of our hands, floors should not be neglected. Indeed, a 2020 report found that appreciation of the risks of pathogen spread from floors was highly underappreciated. Diseases which are transmitted through aerosols can also be transmitted through high-touch floors as those aerosols fall to the floor. This is why we clean high-touch surfaces such as door handles, light switches, keyboards and faucets. Well, floors are high-touch surfaces too. Floors are the biggest source of contaminants, being picked up by shoes as well as socks, and spread from place to place. Cleaning your floors should be a part of any disinfection and sanitization protocols.
What Are the Best Products to Clean Floors?
Neutral cleaners are your best bet in most settings. The floor product you get should be the right one for your floor type. If you use the wrong floor type, it could damage your flooring and finishing.
Disinfection and sanitization are two different processes, so you should be clear as to which process you need. Each process calls for its own different products, which are used on different materials. If you are working with pre-cleaned, hard and non-porous surfaces such as terrazzo, vinyl and vinyl composition tile (VCT), then you need a disinfectant. You need to pre-clean the tiles to remove soil and dirt, so the disinfectant can get to its target. If you’re working with porous or semi-porous surfaces, such as wood or carpet surfaces then you will need to sanitize those floors.
In both cases, you should follow manufacturer instructions when using the relevant products. This is a must whether Full Coverage Residential Painting is being done to your house, or you’re sanitizing or disinfecting your floors. You should check for the best disinfecting or sanitizing products for your floor type, because products have different degrees of power.
You should also use the correct concentrations and dwell times stated by the manufacturer. Concentrations matter. More is not always better. If you go above or beyond stated concentrations, you adversely affect its ability to do what it’s supposed to do.
The dwell time is also important because it also determines how effective the product will be. If you do not stick to the dwell time, then the effectiveness of the product will also be affected. How the product is delivered affects the dwell time, so this has to be factored in, but should be stated in the label. If you follow these guidelines, then you will be able to effectively clean your floors.