We are careful to be clean. We wash our hands often. We cover our mouths when we cough. We never sit on a public toilet seat. Yet we think nothing of grabbing a telephone at the office. Telephones carry more germs and bacteria than a public toilet.
People grab telephones with anything on their hands from the sandwich they were eating to the tissue they were coughing into all morning. It is as if we think they are safe because phones are immune. They are not. You grab this germ infested device and put it right up to your face. We press the device against our ear, near our nasal passage and against our mouths and we breathe in everything that everyone who has touched it has deposited.
Even when we think to wash our hands after using the telephone, we rarely wash our face at the office. It is easy to clean a telephone. Anti-bacterial wipes are easy to store at the desk. They kill 99.9% of the germs and bacteria on the phone. If you do not have one handy, a little hand sanitizer on a tissue will do the trick.
Your computer keyboard is the next dirtiest surface you touch on a regular basis. General cleaning of a keyboard is easy.
- Disconnect the keyboard from the computer (if not an USB connect, power off first.)
- Turn the keyboard upside down and spray with compressed air inside all the air openings
- Gently shake to remove any dust you dislodged.
- Turn the keyboard back over and spray with compressed air around all the keys.
- If you need to remove the space bar and keys to wash with soapy water, use a small screw driver to gently pry them off. Dry well before reinstalling them.
- A cotton swab dipped in rubbing alcohol is great for cleaning around the edges of the keys.
- An anti-bacteria wipe for a general wipe down is a great finish to the process.
Cleaning your iPhone, Tablet or iPhone is something people need to be very careful with. Rubbing too hard (and pushing down too hard) can permanently damage the screen. If the smallest amount of moisture gets in the ports it could cause damage.
- Unplug and POWER OFF your device
- Using a micro-fiber cloth (one came with the device when new or you can purchase one at any department store) gently rub the screen with circular motions.
- If the screen needs to be cleaned further, put a few drops of CLEAN WATER, (not solution) on the cloth (not the screen) and squeeze out the excess. Using the damp cloth, rub again with circular motions until clean.
- Be careful not to get water into the portals
- Allow to air dry and when dry, power back on.
Keeping these basic supplies handy at your office and using them to clean your equipment daily will reduce the germs and bacteria you are exposed to and stop you from spreading the germs.