It’s crucial to upkeep good cleaning habits to keep your home sanitary. After all, neglecting your cleaning can lead to all kinds of health issues.

But keeping things clean can be trickier than you may realize. There are many habits you may have that leave your Long Beach home less than sanitary. There are also habits that you potentially don’t have that make a real difference. Overall, your home might be dirtier than you know.

You understand all the basic cleaning strategies – vacuum your carpet regularly, wash your sheets, scrub your toilets, etc. But there are other ways that you’re making your home dirty. This kind of dirt often gets neglected and can turn into a real problem before you become aware of it.

Here are some common ways people make their spaces dirtier without knowing that they’re doing so.

Habits That Can Leave Grime

A few common habits leave quite a bit of grime in your home.

Believe it or not, opening your windows can significantly dirty things up. Open windows bring dust from dirt, nearby construction, and wildfires all across Long Beach. They also introduce pollen and mold spores into your home.

Turning on air conditioning is an effective alternative to opening windows, but be careful with that too. If you’ve had remodeling done or sanded parts of your home and did not block your air registers, there’s dust throughout your air ducts. When you turn the system on, this will spread dust around your home.

Having a pet is one way to get your home dirty very fast. Pets can track in dirt and leave their waste, of course, but their fur can also be home to bacteria and dust mites.

Be careful where you eat as well. Even if you clean everything up, eating in bed, over a carpet, or on a couch will leave microscopic crumbs that attract bacteria and other pests. Then you’ll need a good Long Beach steam cleaning to get rid of them.

Habits You’re Neglecting

Many people forget to do some types of regular maintenance, leaving them with dirtier Long Beach homes.

Take your shoes off when entering your house, particularly before walking on your carpet. You’d be surprised at how dirty you can make things just by keeping your shoes on.

Some people neglect to dust their houses, leaving skin cells, hair, and pollen to accumulate everywhere. Always dust before vacuuming, or you’ll spread contaminants, and cleaning your Long Beach home won’t amount to much.

Wash your hands regularly, both after you use the bathroom and before you eat. Your hands touch a lot and are fantastic vectors for disease. Wash with soap and water for 20 seconds to kill most bacteria.

It’s easy to let dirty things sit out for a little longer than they should, giving bacteria plenty of time to grow and even drawing bugs. Specifically, don’t let your trash sit out for too long, and don’t let dirty dishes pile in the sink. Take the garbage out before it becomes a real problem, and wash your dishes immediately after eating.

Things You’re Not Cleaning

You clean your carpets and wash your sheets, but what else are you forgetting? There are several areas of your home that many people neglect to clean.

Be sure to wipe down your light switches and door knobs with a disinfectant regularly. These tend to be full of bacteria.

Don’t ever forget to clean your cleaning tools. You’re not getting much cleaning done if your brooms, mops, and brushes are full of grime, after all.

Every once in a while, wipe down your walls. Wipe down your lampshades while you’re at it, and throw your curtains in the wash. All of these accumulate dust and dirt slower than other parts of the house, but that doesn’t mean you should never clean them.

Clutter can easily hide messes that you don’t see. Clean up clutter when you can, and keep organized. So you don’t get uncontrollable bacteria growth down where you don’t notice.

Wipe down your fridge every once in a while. Food, particularly rotting food, are effective vectors for bacteria and mold.

Clean your bathroom grout, which can get discolored quite easily. Never neglect grout cleaning in favor of your regular Long Beach tile cleaning.

FAQs

Does leaving windows open cause dust?

There are many causes of dust, including skin cells naturally shed from the human body and pet dander. But yes, one potential source of dust is leaving windows open. Windows generate dust from dirt, pollen, mold spores, ash from wildfires, and dust from construction. But if you leave your windows closed, you’ll still get dust, just less of it.

How often should your house be cleaned?

This depends on what part of your house you’re cleaning. Vacuum and dust once a week and wash sheets about that frequently. Get a Long Beach deep cleaning for rugs, mattresses, upholstery, and tiles once a year, and have your dryer vent cleaned out once a year too.

What happens if you don’t clean your house?

If you never clean your Long Beach home, bacteria and other contaminants will grow. You’ll get a mold problem that can cause serious health issues, and pests will come to your house too. These pests include dust mites, ants, cockroaches, and even rats and mice.

Conclusion

Your home is likely dirtier than you think due to certain bad habits that you may have picked up. Many of these habits are very common, and some people don’t even know that they result in dirt.

But you don’t need to continue in ignorance. Many of these behaviors are very easy to correct, and having a cleaner home is achievable.

Don’t forget all the areas you may be failing to clean, and pick up some new habits along the way. After all that, you should have reduced the grime in your home.

If you need to clean the dirt already there, you can call us for a professional Long Beach carpet cleaning. Our Long Beach technicians can help you in your first step to having a cleaner home.