Disinfecting

How to Safely Disinfect Your Phone and Electronics

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In recent weeks, the Coronavirus Pandemic has brought a lot of attention to the importance of cleanliness and the prevention of spreading germs. From wearing masks in public to sanitizing our groceries, we are doing more and more to eliminate our chances of potentially spreading or contracting this disease. You may be surprised to learn that one of the biggest germ distributors is, actually, our phones. Did you know that studies show that your phone is approximately seven times dirtier than a toilet on any given day?

When you think about it, it does make sense. We are constantly checking it and taking it everywhere we go. The germs on every surface we touch are ultimately shared on our devices when we check the time, a notification, or make a phone call.

During this pandemic, the CDC suggests that we disinfect our daily used items, such as our phones and electronics, regularly. Corvus Janitorial Systems would like to share some of our tips to safely disinfect your high-touch, everyday devices.

Follow Manufacturer’s Guidelines

First and foremost, make sure that you are following your specific devices’ manufacturer’s recommendation. For example, Apple specifically says for its users to not use any type of cleaning products on its devices’ surfaces.

Utilize a Wipeable Cover

If the specific phone or electronic that you have does not allow any types of soaps or cleaners to be used, the next best option is to get a cover that does.

If you cannot afford a phone cover that will allow you to disinfect your phone properly, we’d suggest placing your device in a sandwich bag if you are going out of the house. Let’s say you are going to the grocery store. Before leaving your home, you can put your phone in a resealable sandwich bag. While you are at the store, you can still use your phone, but the germs from your hands will not be transferred to it. Then, when you arrive back home, wash your hands thoroughly, then retrieve the phone from the bag. It’ll be like you never left!

Wipes and Sprays

If your device’s manufacturer’s guideline allows you to utilize disinfectant or a cleaner (or if you have a wipeable cover), then the CDC suggests that the safest way to keep your phone and electronics disinfected is to use wipes or sprays that have a minimum of 70% alcohol.

Fears of spreading COVID-19 have led to a shortage of disinfectant wipes. If you can’t get your hand on any of those, here are some other suggestions:

● Use a damp paper towel with gentle soap
● Try a damp paper towel with rubbing alcohol and water
● Dampen a paper towel with any disinfectant spray cleaner

Use the paper towel or wipe to disinfect all surfaces of your device or phone. Make sure you are careful not to get any on the open surfaces (headphone jack, etc.). Once you have finished, dry devices thoroughly.

In Conclusion…

The thought of potentially spreading or contracting COVID-19 can be really scary. These are unprecedented times that have us taking unprecedented measures. Keeping your phone and devices clean can truly make a huge impact on the spreading of germs. Ultimately, this will bring us one step closer to flattening the curve and getting us through this difficult time. While this isn’t a comprehensive list of all the ways to disinfect your phone and electronics, we hope we’ve provided you with a great starting point for keeping germs at bay.

This piece is meant simply to inform, not to provide any legal or medical advice.

About Corvus Janitorial Systems

Founded in 2004 to make people’s lives better, Corvus is a full-service commercial cleaning franchisor that offers cleaning services through reputable local Franchisees. Corvus has been guided by its mission to transform people and transform places by consistently delivering independence, security, and freedom to Franchisees who deliver high-quality cleaning to offices, educational buildings, medical buildings/offices, recreational centers, industrial parks, and other spaces. The company has 17 regional support offices across the United States with nearly 900 Franchisees. For more information regarding Corvus, visit www.corvusjanitorial.com or www.corvusjanitorial.com/franchise for franchise information.

How to Safely Bring Groceries into Your Home

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With social distancing and stay-at-home orders keeping most of us in one place, there are still a few necessities we need to get to. Prescription medications, toiletries, and groceries are things that we’ll always need, no matter what’s going on outside. But as we move into the peak of the pandemic, we need to be more cautious than ever. The CDC is even recommending that we all start to wear cloth face coverings in public settings to enhance the effects of social distancing measures that are harder to control in these settings.

Keeping six feet away from others, washing your hands more frequently, and having groceries delivered or only going to the grocery store when you absolutely have to are all very helpful. The only problem is, we may need to do more. What we do with those groceries and prescriptions once we pick them up or have them delivered is also important.

Corvus Janitorial Systems is here with recommendations on how to safely bring your groceries into your home once you have them:

Set Some Items Aside for Now

The COVID-19 virus can live on plastic and metal for up to three days and cardboard for up to 24 hours. In order to truly be as safe as we can be, it may be best to leave your groceries and the bags or boxes they were carried in somewhere that you can come back to later. This might be your garage, the back porch, or your doorstep if you trust your neighbors.

Any of the groceries that you can live without for the next few days, set them aside until they’re a bit safer to handle. Boxes of pasta, canned fruits and vegetables, and all other non-perishable items will be waiting there for you when the day (or three) has passed. We’ll talk about what to do with the refrigerated and frozen items next.

Sanitize and Organize All of the Items You Need to Bring Inside

Use your preferred disinfecting wipe, or make one with a paper towel and a disinfecting spray, to wipe down the plastic bags, cans, and cardboard packaging that your food came in. For things like cereals, granola bars, snacks, and meats, you can transfer them to other containers like bowls with lids, Ziploc containers, and snack bags. Once you’ve moved them, you can dispose of the packaging right away and wash your hands thoroughly for at least 20 seconds.

You can also thoroughly rinse all of your produce after removing it from the plastic bags, dispose of the bags, and move it to another container. If you’re short on storage items, this sanitize and organize technique will still work. Things like frozen pizzas, breakfast bars, and cereals come with a second layer of packing inside, so just get rid of the outside layer and move on to the next item.

Clean Your Cloth/Reusable Bags

If possible, leave them out for a day or two first, and then clean your reusable grocery bags so they’re ready for your next trip. Some reusable bags are sturdy and durable enough to be thrown into the washer with similar items, but most will be fine with just a quick wipe down with a Clorox wipe or diluted bleach solution on a paper towel.

Each of these precautions is incredibly useful in the fight against the coronavirus. While it might seem like overkill to some, small changes often make big differences, and following through on simple precautionary measures may make all of the difference in the end. After taking each of these steps, be sure to wash your hands and any surfaces that you touched, too. And on that note, we have one more measure to recommend: when you have your groceries delivered, pay and tip through the website or app (use a debit or credit card in stores) so you don’t have to handle any cash and take advantage of their “leave at the door” delivery option. These additional steps are not only meant to protect you and your family but your delivery person, too.

For more information and resources relating to COVID-19, visit our coronavirus response page here.

This piece is meant simply to inform, not to provide any legal or medical advice.

About Corvus Janitorial Systems

Founded in 2004 to make people’s lives better, Corvus is a full-service commercial cleaning franchisor that offers cleaning services through reputable local Franchisees. Corvus has been guided by its mission to transform people and transform places by consistently delivering independence, security, and freedom to Franchisees who deliver high-quality cleaning to offices, educational buildings, medical buildings/offices, recreational centers, industrial parks, and other spaces. The company has 17 regional support offices across the United States with nearly 900 Franchisees. For more information regarding Corvus, visit www.corvusjanitorial.com or www.corvusjanitorial.com/franchise for franchise information.

Disinfecting the Home: Best Practices & Homemade Disinfectant Remedies

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While we know that the coronavirus is most frequently passed from person to person, we also know that the virus can live on surfaces for up to a few days. With that in mind, keeping up on cleaning and sanitizing can lower the chance that we get sick or that we get someone else sick. But where do we start? Corvus Janitorial Systems is here to provide answers. Here’s everything you need to know about disinfecting your home from best practices to homemade disinfectant remedies:

Wash Your Hands and Be Extra Careful About What You Touch

We get it, we’re all starting to sound like broken records already, but this really can’t be stressed enough. The most common transmission is person-to-person, so the best way to stop the spread is for all of us to be extra cautious and hygienic. When you cough or sneeze, aim for your shoulder or the crook of your elbow instead of out into open air or in your palm. If your hand is your only option, wash with soap and water for at least 20 seconds after.

Wash your hands after you use the restroom, avoid touching your face, and keep a distance of at least six feet from others when you’re out in public. If you’re out and you can’t wash your hands after touching something, use hand sanitizer for now. The CDC recommends alcohol-based hand sanitizers with more than 60% ethanol or 70% isopropanol.

Clean and Disinfect, Even if No One at Home is Sick

The words cleaning and disinfecting are often used interchangeably, but they do have different meanings. When you clean, you’re often just removing the contaminants (like dust and dirt and crumbs) from the surface. This is what we all often focus on during normal circumstances, but disinfecting is the part that kills the pathogens, so it’s even more important right now.

Use approved disinfectant sprays, wipes, or solutions you’ve concocted at home to disinfect after you’ve wiped everything down with soapy water or a general cleaning spray. If you or anyone else you live with is still coming and going or has had any contact with outside individuals, it’s important to clean and disinfect at least once per day. And don’t forget to wipe your phone and laptop with a disinfectant wipe, too.

Pay Extra Attention to Shared High-Touch Surfaces

By now you know that the coronavirus can live on various surfaces. New research has revealed that it can survive on cardboard for one day and plastic, metal, and stainless steel for up to three. To keep your home’s surfaces safe and virus-free, clean and disinfect things that everyone touches. In the kitchen, high-touch surfaces would be doorknobs (clean and disinfect the ones in other rooms, too), the counter, the faucet, and the refrigerator handle.

High-touch surfaces in other rooms might include tables, desks, dining room chairs, the counter in the bathroom, all other faucets, toilet components, remotes, and light switches. This list might look slightly different for everyone. Use your best judgment to identify high-touch surfaces in your home and then clean and disinfect it accordingly. If you’re moving in and out of the house regularly, you may want to increase how often you wash your clothes.

Use the Right Disinfectants

The Environmental Protection Agency has come out with a full list of disinfectants that are known to effectively kill coronavirus germs. Most will come with information on the label that tells you what it works for and COVID-19 is often included but in a slightly less direct away. Generally speaking, if a product says that it effectively kills influenza, SARS, or RSB, it should work for the novel coronavirus, too.

Clorox, Lysol, and Purell are a few of the more common names on the list, but many store name brands are also approved. Once you’ve picked your product, follow the instructions on the label to get the best results. No disinfectant work immediately. Each requires being left on the surface for a certain amount of time (dwell time) before they’re wiped away.

Make Your Own Disinfectants

The only problem with traditional disinfectant products is that they may be hard to come by right now. If you don’t have any at home, you can’t wait weeks for an online order. Your local store is likely out. You need to disinfect your home now; homemade remedies can help. The CDC recently released a simple and handy diluted bleach solution recipe for all of us to take advantage of.

All you need is four teaspoons of household bleach and one quart of water. Pour these ingredients into a bottle, shake, and spray. Leave the solution to work for 10 minutes before wiping away with a wet cloth. When you’re working with bleach, it’s important to remember to wear gloves, be cautious with materials that may be damaged, never mix it with other chemicals, and take advantage of ventilation. Isopropyl alcohol and hydrogen peroxide are two other common household disinfectants.

How Disinfectants Work

Before the coronavirus outbreak, many of us just knew that we had disinfectants on hand whenever we needed them. They sat under the sink or in a closet or cabinet and they’ve never been valued as much as they are right now. But most of us still don’t know the science behind common disinfectants or how they kill germs. We just know that they do.

Disinfectants are chemical agents that can either inhibit microbial activities and growth or are lethal to microorganisms. Disinfectants work to kill germs and viruses by destroying the cell wall of microbes or interfering with their metabolism.

In man’s struggle to control the microbes responsible for disease and illness many organic and inorganic chemicals have been found to be toxic to microorganisms. In case you’re wondering, here are some of the active ingredients in disinfectants and how they work:

Alcohol – causes cell proteins to glob together, which disrupts and collapses their structure (denaturation)

Chlorine – targets certain metabolic enzymes in the bacterial cell and destroys them

Peroxygen – collapses bacterial cell components like the membrane

Phenol – disrupts the wall of the bacterial cell, damaging it to the point that it can no longer ward off an attack

Quaternary ammonium compounds – denature the bacterial cell’s proteins and cause a leak of vital substances that leads to death

 

For more information and resources relating to COVID-19, visit our coronavirus response page here.

This piece is meant simply to inform, not to provide any legal or medical advice.

About Corvus Janitorial Systems

Founded in 2004 to make people’s lives better, Corvus is a full-service commercial cleaning franchisor that offers cleaning services through reputable local Franchisees. Corvus has been guided by its mission to transform people and transform places by consistently delivering independence, security, and freedom to Franchisees who deliver high-quality cleaning to offices, educational buildings, medical buildings/offices, recreational centers, industrial parks, and other spaces. The company has 17 regional support offices across the United States with nearly 900 Franchisees. For more information regarding Corvus, visit corvusjanitorial.com or corvusjanitorial.com/franchise/ for franchise information.

Home Cleaning and Disinfecting: 6 Overlooked Touchpoints

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As a result of the rapid and unsettling spread of COVID-19, Corvus Janitorial Systems – a national franchisor of office and workplace cleaning services – will be making an effort to pivot towards providing tips and best practices on how to ensure a safe, clean and sanitized home office area. Because so many Americans are working from home, obeying shelter-in-place requirements, all while doing their best to make America run, we aim to repurpose office and workspace cleaning and disinfecting tips to use in home offices and general home cleaning purposes.

In this post, we highlight often overlooked but critical TOUCHPOINTS that families and home office workers should ensure become a part of their cleaning regimes. Corvus of Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas teammate Justin Simmering shared his own insights on keeping the home office clean in this short video.

1. Refrigerator Doors

Now that we are all quarantined at home, we’re eating our meals at home, snacking and generally putting our hands on the home refrigerator far more than ever before. And yet how often do we wipe down and disinfect the refrigerator door handle? Stationing disinfecting wipes or some other visual queue by the refrigerator door handle is a great and effective way to remind yourself and members of your family to disinfect and clean frequently handled doors and handles.

2. Dumpster Handles or Trash Cans

You’ve done a great job disinfecting and cleaning the indoor parts of your home and the high touchpoints, but when we step outside do we get complacent or find a false sense of security? Essential services like trash collection are still operating, and every time your trash collector picks up or handles your refuse, he or she might be leaving germs or worse behind. Make a habit of disinfecting and sanitizing the lids and handles of trash bins.

3. Car Door Handles and Steering Wheel

This is an often-overlooked touchpoint; however, it is a critical one to address during the coronavirus pandemic. Whether you are under state, county, or city-mandated shelter-in-place or stay-at-home orders, or simply practicing your own social distancing measures, individuals and families still need essential items that require a ride in the car. High traffic locations such as grocery stores and gas stations can potentially carry the virus. Because of this, it is imperative to clean and disinfect your car door handles as well as your steering wheel. Doing so can help prevent the virus from entering your household from outside sources and keep your family safe.

4. Remotes, Gadgets, Chargers, and Toys

With a majority of Americans staying home, devices are being used at a rate never seen before. From binge-watching Netflix to tuning into daily state and national briefings to video chatting with friends and coworkers on our cellphones, we are more attached to our electronics and toys than ever before. Due to this, keeping frequently touched items in our homes germ-free is more important than ever. Make it part of your daily cleaning routine to wipe down and disinfect any TV remotes, game console controllers, chargers, cellphones, children’s toys, and any other devices or objects that are being frequently handled in the home.

5. Light Switches, Keys Doorknobs, and Door Handles

These specific touchpoints are unavoidable in daily life at home. Therefore, they require cleaning and disinfecting on a consistent and frequent cadence. If you can, avoid directly touching these surfaces. Use a sleeve, a napkin, or another method to create a barrier between your skin and the touchpoint you are interacting with. Even if all direct skin contact can be avoided, you should still frequently clean and disinfect these touchpoints as a precautionary action.

6. Computers, Keyboards, and Mouse

With many people working from home, either for their job or for school, home desktops and laptops are critical to the continued productivity of our society during this prolonged period of shelter-in-place. With that said, make sure that you are routinely wiping down and disinfecting your keyboard, mouse, and computer screen.

Disinfecting and Cleaning Protocols

It is important to highlight the difference between general cleaning and disinfecting. During a general clean the intent is to remove dirt and dust. This step must be completed before disinfection because germs can lurk in grime and soiled areas. Once an area is clean, it can then be disinfected. Typically, disinfecting happens only in restrooms and dining areas, but with COVID-19, disinfection of all areas using EPA approved commercial-grade chemicals is a critical factor in helping to curb the spread of the virus in our communities. The EPA recently released List N: Disinfectants for Use Against SARS-CoV-2, which can be found here.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the critical touchpoints in your home. However, we believe it is a good starting point for individuals and families looking to ensure their homes are clean and safe during the novel coronavirus pandemic. For more information and resources relating to COVID-19, visit our coronavirus response page here.

This piece is meant simply to inform, not to provide any legal or medical advice.

Are your household cleaning products working to fight coronavirus?

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By Katherine Rosenberg-Douglas
Chicago Tribune
Apr 02, 2020

click to read article on Chicago Tribune website

With Americans more focused than ever on keeping their homes safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a key to success is knowing the difference between cleaning and disinfecting.

The words aren’t synonymous, rather, they’re more akin to two steps in one process, such as sweeping your floor before mopping it, explained Justin Douglas, CEO of Corvus Janitorial Systems.

“That’s how I explain it when we train new employees,” Douglas said. “Or, I use the example of picking up the clothes off the floor of your kid’s room before you can do anything else. Cleaning and disinfecting aren’t interchangeable words.”

It’s easy to think there’s no wrong way to clean. And while it doesn’t take a microbiologist to do it correctly, a basic understanding of something referred to as “dwell time,” also sometimes called “contact time” or “kill time,” is necessary, Douglas and other experts say.

Luckily, information about contact time is available on every cleaning product mass-produced in the United States. To achieve the efficacy of claims such as “kills 99.9% of germs,” just one frequently overlooked step is crucial: Read the instructions, said Todd Clements, chief operating officer for UNX Industries, a chemical manufacturer that supplies nursing homes and hotels with cleaning products.

“All of us are guilty of not reading the backs of the labels,” Clements said.

“As far as I know, there’s no EPA-registered product with specific kill claims against COVID-19 because it’s so new, but it falls under human coronaviruses, so look for the contact time listed for those,” he said.

Clements and Travis FormyDuval, also with UNX, said people may be surprised to learn just how long many top cleaning products must sit — five or 10 minutes is not uncommon. But consumers should be reassured that if they allow a chemical to sit according to instructions, the claim on the front of a product bottle should be achieved. Each product is tested by the Environmental Protection Agency to ensure it does what it says and the instructions have been vetted for accuracy.

“We can’t even change the font on the label unless the EPA approves it,” Clements said.

Joe Rubino, a microbiologist and the director of research and development for Reckitt Benckiser, the parent company of the brand that makes Lysol products, said “sanitize” is another term people also often use incorrectly.

“Cleaning is basically removing dirt and soil. You’re going to remove some of the bacteria but not all of them,” he said. “Disinfecting is a very high level of germ kill, or greater than 99.99%, and you’d really need a few more 9s. Sanitization is another level, the somewhat lower level of 99.9%.”

FormyDuval, who teaches hotel housekeepers best practices, said people can wrongly assume if they use a product for any length of time, they’re going to achieve the efficacy advertised.

When teaching, FormyDuval said he talks about the elements needed to disinfect, which include time, agitation and heat. Agitation is how hard a person must scrub to remove soap stains or grime from surfaces.

“I tell them that just by changing up the routine a little, starting by spraying your chemicals in the bathroom, you can move on to the living portion of the room while you let it sit. When you come back to the shower, it takes less elbow grease, less physical activity to remove any scum, so you’re actually saving time,” FormyDuval said.

Using the same principle at home, he suggested residents spray a chemical in the kitchen, then spray a chemical in the bathroom, select separate towels for each space and head back to the kitchen, leaving each product to sit for the appropriate time. The different rags are so you don’t introduce bathroom germs into the kitchen, or vice versa. Likewise, in the bathroom, it’s best to start at the top and work your way down to the floor.

Erica Marie Hartmann, an assistant professor at Northwestern University, said not every surface needs to be disinfected every time, but it’s a good idea for frequently touched spaces, particularly if sharing a home with someone displaying COVID-19 symptoms.

“People who are symptomatic, if they’re touching things or coughing on things, those are the things that you want to disinfect more regularly, such as the nightstand, the door handle or whatever they’re commonly interacting with,” Hartmann said. “There are, depending on the surface, tens of billions of microbes.”

When they’re done using cleaning chemicals, people may be tempted to “wipe away” residue with a wet rag, which is unnecessary because the EPA has determined the chemical is safe to leave behind. But it also won’t prevent or undo disinfection, Rubino said.

“There are a lot of additives to cleaners that can be harmful to health, including endocrine disruptors,” said Dr. Susan Buchanan, a University of Illinois at Chicago environmental medicine specialist. “At this time when we’re trying to fight an outbreak, though, those concerns tend to take a back burner.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has a list of recommended products to disinfect against COVID-19, as well as the necessary contact time for each product.

kdouglas@chicagotribune.com

How to Keep Your Home Clean During the Coronavirus Outbreak

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By now, we’re all well aware of the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines. We’re all washing our hands more frequently, avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people, and not touching our faces, especially when we’re out in public. Many of us are taking a step further by avoiding anyone other than the people we live with, having groceries delivered, and working from home. When we’re facing something this treacherous, you can’t be too careful.

But with updates and articles flying at us left and right at all hours of the day and night, information overload is nearly impossible to avoid. So, how do we know that we’re doing everything we need to, without having to scour the internet’s thousands of available resources? Let the experts at Corvus Janitorial clear things up for you right here.

Here are some important tips on how to keep your home clean during the coronavirus outbreak:

Sanitize shared surfaces each day

While the most common types of transmission are airborne (sneeze or cough) and through person-to-person contact (handshake, hug, or kiss), health experts have found evidence that the virus can also be transmitted through contact with a contaminated surface. This is where the avoid touching your face rule comes in.

On top of refraining from touching your face, you can also decrease the risk of contaminated surface transmission by sanitizing shared surfaces. Use a Clorox wipe or another disinfectant to wipe down doorknobs, sink handles and faucets, countertops, refrigerator handles, and desks. Any other shared surfaces, like toilet and shower handles and light switches, should be sanitized, too. If anyone in your home is sick, sanitizing becomes even more essential.

Clean your reusable bags and grocery boxes

Whether you’re still cautiously making grocery store runs, or you’re having food delivered, the virus may live on cardboard boxes and reusable bags for up to 24 hours, so it’s important to clean these, too. When you’re home from the grocery store, or you’ve carried in your purchases from your driveway drop-off, use a sanitizing solution or wipe to clean the inside of your grocery bag or the outside of the delivery box.

Once you’re done with the packaging, it couldn’t hurt to wipe down your purchases the same way. Many foods like cereal, granola bars, and coffee pods come in cardboard packaging that can hold on to the coronavirus germs. Depending on your preference, you can wipe the boxes down or open them up and transfer the foods to clean containers in your home and get rid of the packaging altogether. When you’re done, wash your hands and wipe down the surfaces they touched.

Analyze your cleaning style

If you can see that a surface is dirty, don’t just jump right to the disinfecting wipes or solutions. Clean these surfaces with soap and water first so your disinfecting efforts will be more effective. If you have them, wear disposable gloves while you clean and sanitize surfaces and objects that may be infected. If you don’t, continue to wash your hands frequently for at least 20 seconds at a time. And don’t forget about your clothes. If you’re cleaning shared surfaces, making grocery trips, caring for a sick individual, or going to work each day, it would be good to change and wash your clothes a bit more frequently than you normally would.

The best cleaning products for this particular outbreak are diluted household bleach solutions or ones that are alcohol-based and contain a minimum of 70% alcohol. If you’re wondering if your cleaning products are effective enough, the EPA has released a list of common disinfectants that meet their criteria for use against the novel coronavirus.

Your disinfectant may not be on their list yet, but the packaging may provide more information about its uses that will help you determine its effectiveness. While you’re checking labels, make sure your cleaning supplies aren’t expired so you know you’re getting the most out of your efforts.

About Corvus Janitorial Systems

Founded in 2004 to make people’s lives better, Corvus is a full-service commercial cleaning franchisor that offers cleaning services through reputable local Franchisees. Corvus has been guided by its mission to transform people and transform places by consistently delivering independence, security, and freedom to Franchisees who deliver high-quality cleaning to offices, educational buildings, medical buildings/offices, recreational centers, industrial parks, and other spaces. The company has 17 regional support offices across the United States with nearly 900 Franchisees. For more information regarding Corvus, visit www.corvusjanitorial.com or www.corvusjanitorial.com/franchise for franchise information.