Honestly, getting rid of germs in your own house is not a huge deal unless you have someone exceptionally sick or frail lying around.
But if you are cleaning for other people, especially if you are doing more than one client in a day, and especially if you are cleaning businesses that are open to the public, effective disinfection is a must, and that is simply not the norm in the cleaning business.
Watching cleaners rub germs all over clients' homes and businesses is another main reason I went into business for myself. I have seen companies specializing in medical offices and hospital cleaners both spread more germs than they clean. There are some very basic rules for ensuring that surfaces are properly disinfected, but virtually no homemakers or professional cleaners follow them.
Rule #1: Do No Harm
The first rule of getting rid of germs -- and that is what I mean when I say "disinfecting" -- is to clean them up where you find them without spreading them around.
That means using clean equipment and fresh rags in every room. If you are scrubbing the tub, wash and sanitize the brush before you use it on the kitchen sink. For me, that means washing my brushes and buckets and wiping off my bottles with bleach water every night after work. And wiping them off with sanitizing wipes or disinfectant if I am going to use the same equipment for more than one client. (Of course I bring fresh brushes, rags and scrubby pads for each client. And if I need to use my own toilet brush, I bring a new one and leave it there.)
The other big germ-spreader is the mop bucket. Cleaners typically make a beeline from the front door to the bathrooms because those are the hardest rooms to clean. But it is rare to find a maid or janitor who will change the mop water and use a new mop for the rest of the floors. That means they are painting the rest of your house with the pee drips and other dirty stuff mopped up from your bathroom floor. You know you are in an establishment that cares about infection control if you see separate red equipment for bathroom cleaning in the janitor's closet. That is above and beyond what I do, but you will see me cleaning the bathroom last or using a separate mop and cleaning my bucket out afterward if I can't.
The same kind of care should go into cleaning the kitchen, which is typically the germiest place in the house. Yes, even moreso than the bathroom. Food preparation surfaces and countertops can carry all kinds of bacteria from meat and produce and must be disinfected thoroughly without spreading germs to new corners of the house. When you are cleaning the kitchen, you use a clean rag or three. NEVER use the dish rag or sponge that you keep next to your sink.
Rule #2: Use the Right Stuff
This being the case, mild disinfectants like vinegar, borax water, tea tree oil and many store-bought cleaners are sufficient for cleaning your own germs in your own home, though I would follow professional standards for cleaning up after raw food and body wastes.
"Following professional standards" starts with using what is known as a registered disinfectant. Those are commercially prepared cleaners that have data showing what germs they kill and how fast they kill them and have been registered with the US Envonmental Protection Agency.
Disinfectants kill things, namely microbes, so disinfectants by definition do not meet "green" standards. Any company that says it does green cleaning exclusively while performing institutional-quality disinfection is lying -- or at least misinformed. It is a technicality based on the definitions of disinfection and green, but, under current standards, disinfectants cannot be green.
Most of today's common disinfectants are pretty harsh and hazardous to humans, but there are a few benign bug-killers out there. Ones made with accelerated hydrogen peroxide or silver dihydrogen citrate have been shown to be very safe.
My favorite, and the kind that you can pick up in the grocery or health food store, are cleaners made with thymol, derived from the herb thyme. Seventh Generation has a thymol disinfectant that I have seen at the university Publix and Manna Grocery here. Clorox has come up with some peroxide-based cleaners for home use, but I haven't studied up on them. I have used the wipes before, and one thing I can say is that they smell nice.
Rule #3: Clean, then Disinfect
That's right. Disinfecting is not the same thing as cleaning. Using a disinfectant is a two-step process, three steps if you count finding other things to clean while allowing the disinfectant enough time to work.
First you have to clean the thing you want to disinfect, meaning you have to wipe the dirt off the outside of the toilet, scrape the toothpaste off the sink and scrub the soap scum out of the tub. If you try using a disinfectant on a visibly dirty surface, it is not going to kill germs like it is supposed to. Only after a surface is clean should you apply a disinfectant if actual disinfection is your goal.
And, once you spray everything down with disinfectant, you have to let it set a spell. Every disinfectant has a "dwell time," a specific number of minutes it needs to kill the number and kind of germs it says it does. Most cleaners, even bleach, require a dwell time of about 10 minutes to do their job. So if a cleaner gets in and out of your restroom in 5 minutes, the room is guaranteed to have not been disinfected.
If you don't believe me or the company explainers I linked to, go ahead and look at the directions on a bottle of disinfectant. If you have a product that calls itself a disinfectant and says it kills a certain percent of certain germs, the directions will tell you to apply it to a clean surface. They will also tell you how long you have to wait before wiping to make sure the disinfectant does its job. (Aerosol sprays like the ones made by Lysol and Clorox may not have dwell times on the labels, but that is because they are designed to be sprayed in the air and on surfaces without wiping off.)
