With the current global health crisis forcing us to adopt new health practices, such as wearing masks in public place and, social distancing, home cleaning and hygiene have never felt more important. Although the virus is most often transmitted from person-to-person, keeping a clean bathroom and kitchen is a vital practice that stops these areas playing host to many different kinds of bacteria.
One of the biggest risks of home cleaning is cross-contamination. If you're cleaning the bathroom with a particular type of cloth or sponge, you're often cleaning the sink with a similar product, likely from a multipack. Naturally, there's a risk of getting these two mixed up.
A study in the International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health found cross contamination from "reservoirs" of bacteria such as the kitchen sink and toilet was the single biggest factor when it comes to the risk of infections within the home.
It just goes to show when cleaning in the house, good organisation is as important as the cleaning itself in order to prevent disasters like wiping down surfaces with a cloth usually reserved for sinks or toilets, which typically face a greater concentration of bacteria than the rest of the house.
Which is where this new range of Addis cleaning products from Lynsey Crombie, TV's "Queen of Clean", comes in. Crombie's new range is build around a colour coded system: pink for sink, blue for loo, green for clean, yellow for washing up and wiping down & grey for stainless steel. This is an easy way to ensure the right product is being used for the right area and no cross-contamination is taking place.
The new range, which contains bamboo sponges, bamboo microfibre cloths and scrub & wipe multipacks, are designed to be used in the same way as skincare regimes, with different products suited for different stages of the cleaning process.
Crombie says: "When it comes to keeping our skin clean, we cleanse and tone to make sure we remove all unseen dirt from our faces, and it is vital we also adopt this method in our household cleaning.
"High traffic areas in the home that get a lot of touch, need to be cleaned thoroughly and need detailed attention."
Crombie's simple, multi-step process for preventing cross-contamination recommends first using the right colour sponge with a detergent-based product, which will work to lift away dirt and grime smears rather than push them around the surface.
Leave it a few minutes and use a microfibre cloth to wipe everything clean. Rinsing your cloth under hot water, repeat the process using a disinfectant based product such as Dettol's Antibacterial Surface Cleaning Spray.
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