Dinner time, Now everyone to the bathroom to eat. Moses Lake and Quincy Home Inspection

Sounds crazy does it not.  But your toilet seat may much cleaner than many items in your kitchen and you may not even know it.

                                                                      
As a home inspector and former HazMat responder to chemical, radiological and bacterial incidents I cannot help but think about these things.

The big bacterial playgrounds in your home reside on the cutting board, the sponge, and yes your sink. Yeah the very things you clean everything else in or with.

Cross contamination of food borne pathogens in the kitchen is thought to create an estimated 76,000,000 cases of food borne illness every year in the US.

Think about this, if you are a “clean” person you actually may have the dirtiest, most unhealthy kitchen because you have spread the germs all around?  The lonely bachelor who may never clean might have the cleaner kitchen from a germ standpoint.

                                                           
 
For cleaning your kitchen rather than using the sponge and pushing the germs around you are much better off using an antibacterial spray and paper towels.

So with this entire bacterial bonanza going one, what’s a germaphobe to do?

First, sanitize sponges and cutting boards. These are the bacterial zoological society; they’re the items most likely responsible for spreading bacteria around.

To sterilize a sponge, you can boil it in hot water for a few minutes, run it through a dishwasher drying cycle, or the easiest solution soak it lightly and then pop it in the microwave and give it a zap.

For the cutting board, scrub it with a light bleach solution (1 tablespoon of bleach to a quart of water). You should also consider using a separate cutting board for meats, and then replace the cutting board when it becomes heavily scored. Those cuts in the board become a bacterial love nest.

Now for the sink, give it a thorough and regular cleaning. You should dry it thoroughly after the cleaning. That’s because a moist environment encourages any lingering bacteria to reproduce.

And whatever you do, don’t eat something you’ve dropped into your sink unless you cook it first.

Lastly wash your hands properly. With a world of bacteria around you, you must assume that your hands harbor some unwanted friends. Clean your hands before you handle food and before you sit down to eat. Soap and warm water does the trick.

Oh yeah, antibacterial soap isn’t much help, either. The active germ-killing ingredient, triclosan, works only if you leave the soap on your hands for several minutes before rinsing, which no one does.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Albert Einstein

NCW Home Inspections, LLC  is a Licensed Washington State Home Inspection service located in Wenatchee Washington serving Chelan County, Douglas County, Kittitas County, Okanogan County and Grant County Washington and the cities of Wenatchee, Leavenworth, Cashmere, Orville, Cle Elum, East Wenatchee, Quincy and many more…  
    
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