As the holiday season approaches, you’re probably trying to think of how you can celebrate while staying safe. While a lot of people have cancelled plans or replaced in-person gatherings with virtual ones, many others are moving forward with family gatherings. With limitations on group sizes, the holidays are going to look different and you won’t have as many guests as before. Regardless of whether you’re having one person visit or five, it’s important that you do everything you can to stay safe. To make sure that you’re minimizing risks, take some time to learn how to disinfect your home before the holidays.
Things to Consider Before Hosting
While it is possible to increase the safety of small gatherings, we’d be remiss if we didn’t say this. If your state or local municipality has prohibited household gatherings of any size outside of those currently living in a residence, avoid having others over for the holidays. We understand that this is unfortunate and drastically changes how the holidays are celebrated, but you still need to adhere to safety regulations. It’s important that we all follow the laws and mandates of our area for the health and safety of our communities. Plus, as fines are increasing with more enforcement, there’s no better way to ruin a celebration. A few other things to consider are:
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Current COVID-19 Levels – double check the COVID-19 cases that are actively present in your community and the community where your guests are coming from. There is a direct correlation of risk and number of cases. If you’re in a high-risk area, or have guests coming from a high-risk area, make sure that you undergo testing, isolation, and adhere to the CDC guidelines to reduce transmission.
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Event Parameters – determine the size, location, and length of the event. Limit the number of people attending, try to hold events outside or with adequate ventilation, and keep things short. All of these actions will greatly reduce your risk of transmission.
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Traveling – if you have guests who need to use public transportation to attend, consider the risks that are associated. Airports, train stations, and even gas stations get markedly busier during the holiday and can lead to higher rates of exposure.
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Safety Measures – when having friends or family over, try to follow safety measures as best as possible. Avoid hugs or close contact and stay six feet apart, wash your hands frequently and avoid touching your face, and, when possible, wear a mask. If you’re planning a meal, consider having people bring their own plates so that you avoid cross-contamination through potluck style dinners.
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Pre-Gathering Safety – another way to help improve the safety of your holiday gatherings is to ask those who are attending to limit risky behavior beforehand. If you know certain people haven’t been following the CDC protocol, mention that you’re not comfortable with them attending.
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Cleanliness – when moving forward with holiday plans, it’s absolutely crucial that you take the time to properly disinfect your home before the holidays. This eliminates any lingering germs and helps to reduce contact transmission.
How to Disinfect Your Home Before the Holidays
While hosting has always caused a lot of pre-event work, things are even more intense with COVID-19. When hosting a gathering during the pandemic, you need to go above and beyond your usual cleaning routine. Here are a few of the best ways to disinfect before your guests arrive.
1. Declutter Your Home
Before anything else, take some time to declutter your home—especially the areas that you’ll have guests. The less items that are out and easily handled, the better. If you won’t be using things, either move them to a different room or consider tossing them altogether. While most people wait until spring to purge, now is as good of a time as any. When you’re decluttering, pay special attention to countertops, coffee tables, and any other area you’ll use to entertain.
2. Regularly Check the Fridge
During the holidays, the refrigerator gets a lot of use. Nothing ruins a clean house like spoilt milk or rotting broccoli, so make sure that you’re regularly checking the fridge and throwing things out as needed. If you can’t seem to get rid of a lingering odor, add a carton of baking soda or wipe down surfaces with lemon juice.
3. Maintain a Cleaning Schedule
If you have little ones or pets in your family, you understand how quickly a serene room turns chaotic. To stay on top of cleanliness, try to maintain a schedule. By taking time to put in small efforts every day, you’ll avoid becoming overloaded when it’s time to disinfect.
4. Disinfect High-Touch Areas
Next, start cleaning and disinfecting the hard surfaces in your home. This includes any high-touch areas like doorknobs, remotes, keyboards, phones, light switches, tables, sinks, faucets, toys, toilets, etc. Spend a day keeping track of everywhere you touch and include those too. Every family’s routine is different, making high-touch areas unique. Keep in mind that this step is not a “one and done” occurrence. You’ll need to regularly disinfect high-touch areas throughout your home if you want to be effective in reducing the transmission of COVID-19. To make this easier, keep your disinfecting products easily available and include it in your daily cleaning schedule.
5. Launder Soft Items
When’s the last time you washed your carpet, cleaned your upholstery, or laundered your blankets? Consider doing a deep clean and getting these things done prior to the holidays. While experts don’t fully understand virus capability on adhering to soft surfaces, it’s always a good idea to be safe.
6. Hire a Professional
While you can spend hours cleaning and disinfecting your home, chances are that you’re not going to do as thorough of a job as a professional cleaning company. To make sure that your family is staying as safe as possible, consider hiring a reputable residential cleaner. To find the right company, check to see that they have specialized coronavirus disinfectant services, the proper credentials, ongoing employee training, and strict adherence to professional safety.
When searching for a residential cleaning company to make sure that your home is disinfecting for the holidays, turn to Bee Line. Bee Line is one of the only certified, medical-grade cleaning companies in the region that offers professional residential disinfection. Our residential service includes pre-wiping large surfaces in the home to prepare for misting, then a full disinfectant misting of the space. The emphasis of this service is applying a powerful (and completely safe) disinfectant throughout your home.
In an effort to target coronavirus during the holidays, we offer coronavirus disinfection misting to make sure that your home is as safe as possible for your gatherings. Using EPA-approved disinfectants that have been shown to kill COVID-19, we’ll leave your space spotless. Take advantage of our misting services and stay on top of pathogen prevention at a time when it matters most. To continue to keep your home safe after the holidays are over, we offer a full year of COVID-19 disinfecting services with monthly medical-grade cleaning and disinfecting. Due to heightened demand, please call Bee Line as soon as possible to schedule cleaning services in a timely manner. Call Bee Line at 312-BEE-LINE or message us today to get started on the path to cleanliness!
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