Disinfecting: The Basics You Should Know

Disinfecting is an important step of any cleaning routine especially during Flu Season. There are different types of disinfectants as well as different methods for disinfecting. We’ll get to those later, because no matter your disinfectant method the first step is to clean.

What’s the difference between cleaning and disinfecting?
Cleaning refers to the removal of dirt and grime from a surface. With cleaning tools such as sponges or cloths, cleaning simply moves germs and bacteria around a surface or from one surface to another. Disinfecting refers to the killing of a high percentage of germs and/or rendering them incapable of reproducing.

Therefore, a surface can look clean and still be covered in dangerous bacteria. However, cleaning is still an important step to properly disinfecting a surface. Prior to disinfecting, a person should remove all visible soils from the area they wish to disinfect. Skipping this could affect the success of disinfection because the organic matter on a surface can interfere with microbial inactivation.​

​There are many disinfectant cleaners on the market today that have the cleaning abilities you need along with being a disinfectant. Essentially you are getting two products in one (great!). However, that does not equate to cleaning and disinfecting being done in one step necessarily. Instructions may vary, but for most disinfectant cleaners the user will need to use a technique the industry refers to as spray-wipe-spray. Meaning if a surface is visibly soiled, you would want to spray the disinfectant cleaner, wipe away the soil and then spray again and follow disinfecting instructions and dwell times listed on the label.

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