When we think of dirty houses, we never stop to think of our own. We have this idea of people on TV with their bottles everywhere and piles of clothes on every corner. We like to think we’re not that bad. You can rest easy, by all accounts, most of us are not that bad. But our homes are not as clean as we think. There are bacteria and nasties lurking on every surface, just waiting for the right time and the right place to latch on. Of course, this isn’t something to drastically change your behavior over. Extra hand washing and a wipe-down will do, but it’s still there. It’s also not where you think it is. 

Front Door Handle 

The dirtiest place by far is the front door handle. That’s the worst. It’s not the door handles on the inside– not at all. Those are cleaned regularly. When you go on a serious weekend scrub-down of the entire house, do you clean the outside? Probably not. That’s left for another day, and that includes the front door handle. Everyone touches it, yet nobody cleans it. It may as well have its own little ecosystem there. Luckily for us, the kinds of pathogens that can stay on the front door are often washed away when we wash our hands. When we use the bathroom or eat something, assuming we wash our hands, we prevent pathogens from the most obvious points of entry: the alimentary canal. 

Sink

The inside of our sink is not the nicest place. We pour all sorts of things down there, from food to oil (you’re not supposed to do that, but the way) to dirt. It’s the place where we make things disappear. Unfortunately, things grow down there. Things grow and they grow to the size that can affect the use of your sink. You need the right kind of cleaner for that kind of mess. If you take a look at this post, you’ll see that there’s always the right tool for the job. Beware, there are some catch-all cleaners that claim they’ll clean out your drain. Most of them are for minor inconveniences, not for heavy-duty clog removal. 

Silverware Tray

The dirtiest places are always the ones you think about the least. Just like the sink and the front door handle, the silverware tray is often totally forgotten. It’s often inside a drawer, we look at it for maybe 2 seconds at most before getting the fork and shutting the drawer. The fact of the matter is, when we clean and store silverware, not all of it may be completely dry. That extra moisture is enough to get things growing you wouldn’t want on a fork or a knife. It’s best to pull it out once a week, during your weekly general cleaning and give it a good scrub.

The places we think are the dirtiest are often far from it. The toilet is (hopefully) cleaned regularly with bleach and sheets (hopefully) are washed about once a week. It really is those blind spots that gather the most gunk and germs. Now that you know, what other areas might have gone under your radar?