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  • Spring cleaning has taken a whole new meaning as millions of people stay in to curb the spread of the coronavirus and realize just how dirty everything in their home is.

  • But with so much misinformation floating around about what works and what doesn't, what can you do?

  • I got a little help over Skype from Mikhail Varshavski, better known as Doctor Mike, to get the facts about how to keep our stuff clean.

  • Well, the first thing you need to do is when you walk inside from the outdoors, you need to disinfect your body.

  • It doesn't mean taking a full shower.

  • It means washing your hands very thoroughly, taking your shoes off, leaving them by the door, because that's the easiest way to bring in those germs from the outside in.

  • We don't want that to happen.

  • How do we fight it?

  • Washing our hands, and then the things that our hands touch most, especially nowadays, are our cellphones.

  • So we need to disinfect these bad boys when we come from the outdoors as well.

  • Because we wash our hands, but we were just touching this, so all the viruses, all the bacteria, is still alive on the cellphone.

  • In fact, Apple just put out a great release on how to clean your cellphones properly so you don't damage them.

  • Looking at Apple's guidelines for how to clean my iPhone, I'm 100 percent okay doing what I have been doing, but probably should be doing more often, which is using a wipe and just gently wiping the exterior surfaces.

  • Now I just need to know which of these cleaning products to actually use on other things around the house.

  • Well, if you're going to be using any kind of bleach product, it is recommended that you do it in an open-air environment.

  • So either you open up a window or you do it in a well ventilated room, because the bleach can aerosolize and irritate your eyes.

  • There are products that can disinfect without bleach.

  • That being said, there is no miracle product that's better than the other.

  • Read the labels very carefully.

  • They'll tell you which one is a truly disinfecting product.

  • In fact, if you look on some of the products you'll see that coronavirus is on the list of things that these disinfectants treat because this novel coronavirus is not the first coronavirus we've seen.

  • Coronavirus is simply a strain of viruses that cause all sorts of respiratory conditions.

  • I've never noticed this on products before, so I went looking at some of the disinfecting products that I have around my house.

  • And these handy wipes explicitly say "the human coronavirus."

  • I've also been using these wipes on a lot of other surfaces around my house like doorknobs, light switches, faucets, remote controls.

  • There's been a couple of research articles that came out testing how long this virus survives in different temperatures, humidities, on different surfaces, even in the air.

  • And copper seems to be one of those surfaces that the virus lives a very short amount of time on when you compare it to something like plastic or steel.

  • Why is that problematic?

  • Well, the majority of our household products, our mice, our keyboards, they're made of plastic.

  • So it's easy, that if your hands are dirty, to have it live for a long period of time on these products.

  • So my wipes are going to be a permanent addition to my work-from-home setup.

  • Also because my "coworkers" like to walk on my keyboard and interact with me at my dining table slash desk.

  • At least I don't have to worry about taking these two out for a walk and bringing the coronavirus back in.

  • There's been a lot of talk about pets being carriers of this virus.

  • While we haven't seen evidence of them truly being sickened by this virus and then getting their owners sick, what we have seen is pets acting like a surface contaminant.

  • So if your walking outside and someone asks to pet your dog, respectfully ask them to practice proper social distancing so that they don't leave the virus on your dog's hair....

  • ...so that when you come in and start petting it now the virus is on your hands.

  • That's a strong recommendation.

  • Also, very simple, when you're coming in from the outdoors, wipe your dogs' or cats' paws so that they don't bring the virus indoors.

  • The virus does live a much shorter time on surfaces in the environment where there's sun because the sun is nature's disinfectant with its UV rays.

  • But that being said, there's still a possibility that someone could have sneezed, your dog or cat could have stepped on that and then they bring it inside the house.

  • So practice proper social distancing.

  • Clean them just like you're cleaning yourself, and you'll be able to be safe.

Spring cleaning has taken a whole new meaning as millions of people stay in to curb the spread of the coronavirus and realize just how dirty everything in their home is.

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