To properly clean and sanitize your kitchen, follow these steps:
The kitchen is one of the most high-traffic areas of your home, so it’s vital to keep it clean and fresh.
The National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) conducted a study which showed that the kitchen, and not the bathroom, is the germiest area of the home.
They found harmful coliform bacteria like E. Coli and salmonella on:
They also conducted a study on the germiest items in the kitchen – the most common contaminated surfaces include the refrigerator vegetable door, meat drawer, and can openers.
Are you eager to start cleaning? If so, here’s a detailed step-by-step guide just for you.
Related: How To Disinfect Your Home Naturally (Room By Room)
Note: You can find Clorox wipes on Amazon here.
Table of Contents
Sanitizing your kitchen involves two processes: 1) disinfecting counters, cabinets, stovetops, and other surfaces and 2) disinfecting appliances, dishware, cooking utensils, and other objects.
Before cleaning your kitchen, the first step is to clear everything off all surfaces. This way, you can clean the kitchen in its entirety.
When choosing your disinfectant, avoid abrasive cleaners with bleach or other harsh chemicals.
As you clean the surfaces, spray everything first and wipe it after a few minutes. This gives the chemicals in your disinfectant more time to kill germs on the surface.
Keep reading for a more detailed breakdown of how to sanitize specific areas of your kitchen.
To clean and sanitize kitchen cabinets, dish soap and water is your safest bet. Fill a medium-sized bowl with lukewarm water and a few squirts of soap.
One of the biggest fears with wooden cabinets is that the cleaner will damage the finish. For this reason, avoid bleach and rubbing alcohol.
Instead, all-natural cleaners work effectively.
Rubbing alcohol and water is an effective solution to sanitize your countertops.
The CDC recommends no less than a 50/50 ratio – a 60 to 90 percent diluted solution is ideal.
Diluted bleach and water work well, too.
Depending on the strength you want, the CDC recommends mixing ¼ to ⅓ cup of bleach per gallon of water for your disinfectant.
Never use bleach at full strength for sanitization; it is highly corrosive!
The best way to get rid of bacteria and germs in the air is to disinfect every surface in your home.
The University of Illinois found that heat can help kill germs. So, you can use hot water for your disinfectant to help accelerate the germ-killing process.
Be cautious with hot water, though, especially if you are sanitizing a finished surface, such as wooden cabinets.
If you prefer to use a household disinfectant, Lysol is incredibly popular and effective.
Also, you can wash your dishes with warm water and soap. Vinegar works wonders too!
Vinegar is an effective all-purpose disinfectant. You can use it on your appliances, floors, countertops, sink, and dishware.
Keep in mind that a group of epidemiologists found that vinegar was slightly less effective than Lysol or Clorox products at sanitizing surfaces and eliminating harmful bacteria.
To sanitize your dishes with vinegar:
If the vinegar smell is strong, you can rinse the dish with warm water to alleviate it.
After you rinse the dishes, let them air-dry.
To completely sterilize your room, you can follow the same process above to disinfect a kitchen.
Here’s what you need to clean:
Your walls will take you the most time to disinfect. It’s probably the area of your home that you clean the least often. Over time, airborne grease and dirt will build up on the walls, and every time someone touches the wall, germs begin to accumulate.
The floors are one of the easier parts of your home to clean. To clean your floor:
Before you clean your wood floor, keep this in mind: a common general-purpose cleaner like Pledge will not kill bacteria.
For tile floors, the solution in your mop will work great, but you also can’t go wrong scrubbing them with dish soap and water for an extra thorough clean.
To kill bacteria on wood floors, you can use a heavily diluted vinegar solution – one cup of vinegar per gallon of water – or an all-natural cleaner.
The ceiling will be time-consuming to clean, but because it doesn’t get touched and stained often, it should be the least of your worries. Feel free to use any solution that we’ve discussed in this article to sanitize your ceiling.
You’ll probably need a step stool or handheld ladder to reach your ceiling – or you can purchase an extendable pole to clean your ceiling from afar. This pole is also great for dusting in hard-to-reach areas.
Anything you touch several times a day will have the most germs on it: keyboards, laptops, lamps, and desks, for example.
Take these items out of the room before sanitizing everything else.
Thanks for reading our guide on how to keep your kitchen clean and bacteria-free. We’ll leave you with these two final tips.
As you may already know, most people simply don’t wash their hands often enough. Make it a habit to wash your hands every time you enter and leave a room, before you sit down for food, and after you eat too.
You can keep your floors clean and reduce the germs they gather if you take your shoes off before entering your home.
After a long day, who knows what you’ve stepped on?
Consider buying a welcome mat or maybe a fun ‘Please take your shoes off’ sign to encourage people to be sanitary.
That’s it for now. If you’re on a cleaning spree, don’t miss our How to Clean articles.
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Sanitizing your kitchen involves two processes: 1) disinfecting counters, cabinets, stovetops, and other surfaces and 2) disinfecting appliances, dishware, cooking utensils, and other objects.
Before cleaning your kitchen, the first step is to clear everything off all surfaces. This way, you can clean the kitchen in its entirety.
When choosing your disinfectant, avoid abrasive cleaners with bleach or other harsh chemicals.
As you clean the surfaces, spray everything first and wipe it after a few minutes. This gives the chemicals in your disinfectant more time to kill germs on the surface.
To clean and sanitize kitchen cabinets, dish soap and water is your safest bet. Fill a medium-sized bowl with lukewarm water and a few squirts of soap.
One of the biggest fears with wooden cabinets is that the cleaner will damage the finish. For this reason, avoid bleach and rubbing alcohol.
Instead, all-natural cleaners work effectively.
Rubbing alcohol and water is an effective solution to sanitize your countertops.
The CDC recommends no less than a 50/50 ratio – a 60 to 90 percent diluted solution is ideal.
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