Is Your Messy House Making You Sick? Here’s What You Need to Know

A messy house is embarrassing, hard to find things in and can make your head spin… but is your messy house making you and your family sick? It’s a possibility, especially if you or someone in your family regularly experiences allergy symptoms. Certain areas of your home are much more likely culprits than others. At Signature Maids, we know which parts of your home pose the biggest threats and we work hard to eliminate dust, debris and other contaminants that commonly make people sick.

Bath Mats

Your bath mat offers a squishy surface to step onto post-shower or bath but in the process you drip water all over it. This moisture becomes trapped in mats and creates the perfect environment for bacteria, mold and dust mites to flourish.  Try drying off in your shower before stepping onto the bathmat and wash your bathmat once a week or several times per month.

Pet Hair

A buildup of pet hair on the furniture, carpets and ceiling fans can increase allergies and potentially make you sick. Pet dander is a common culprit of allergies. The best way to reduce allergies is to remove pet hair as often as possible with deep cleaning. That’s where a regular cleaning service really comes in handy.

The Refrigerator

You stock your fridge with food and trust it to keep your perishables safe for consumption… but how often do you disinfect the inside of your refrigerator? Even if your refrigerator looks clean, that doesn’t mean it’s free of dangerous bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella.  USA Today reports that the bacteria commonly found in refrigerators can lead to upset stomachs or even kidney failure in extreme cases.

The drawers, doors and shelves of your refrigerator should be emptied and deep cleaned once a month. Even then, any food that touches the fridge should be thoroughly washed before it’s consumed.

Your Bed Sheets

Perhaps your favorite part of the day is crawling into bed at night and hiding away under the comfort of your sheets. But you’re not alone. Your mattress, pillows and bed sheets are likely teeming with dust mites and other microscopic organisms. If you were to weigh your pillows when you first bought them and again one year later, they’d be heavier due to a buildup of dust mites and their feces. It’s your skin cells they are after. After all, you produce around half an ounce of dead skin every week which stays in your bed and serves as food for dust mites.

You can’t see these little creepy crawlers but their feces can cause eczema, allergies, skin irritations and so forth. To reduce the number of bed mites you sleep with each night, wash your sheets in warm water at least once a week.

Your Vacuum

There’s a reason we clean our vacuums with the same attention to detail we clean houses. Otherwise, vacuums can become transporters of bacteria as opposed to destroyers of it. One study released in the journal Environmental Science & Technology reported that after testing 21 different vacuums of varying price points, ages and brands, every single one released dust, bacteria and allergies when in use. The worst vacuums were older models lacking the latest filtration systems.

You could run out and buy a high-priced vacuum with a highly efficient particulate air HEPA filter and regularly clean your vacuum to prevent the problem. Or, you could hire Signature Maids to take care of the task with our regularly cleaned state of the art vacuums.