If you’re not taking the proper precautions and you’re not cleaning your kitchen well, you are at risk of making yourself or your family members ill. To reduce the risk of disease and food poisoning, and to keep food from becoming easily spoiled, follow these sanitation guidelines for your kitchen.
Clean with Disinfectants
The method you use to clean your kitchen has a huge impact on how sanitary it is. Simply wiping down counters with a cloth may get rid of visible particles, but it’s not going to kill germs and prevent foodborne illnesses. For a truly sanitary kitchen, you should be cleaning countertops, sinks, and dishes with disinfecting cleaners. Make sure you use cleaners that are not harsh on your skin or your senses. However, you should use cleaners that are powerful enough to kill germs and prevent the spread of disease.
Most cleaners will list on their product packaging whether they have disinfecting capabilities or not. Look for that descriptor if you want more effective cleaning in your kitchen.
Contain the Trash
If you are going to have a trash receptacle in the kitchen, you should ensure that it is properly covered and out of the way. Either place a lid on top of the trash receptacle or use a slide-away trash bin that goes under a counter or your kitchen island. Covering the trash receptacle ensures that it doesn’t release noxious, unpleasant fumes throughout the kitchen. It also makes your trash less enticing to pests, minimizing the presence of insects and vermin in your kitchen. An open trash receptacle in the kitchen does more than just spread nasty smells around. The fumes can cause illness and affect the quality and flavor of the food. In addition, spores and particles from the trash receptacle can more easily get onto food.
Change Out Your Cleaning Tools
If you are hoping to keep your kitchen clean, then take a minute to look at what you are using to clean with. That sponge you use to clean your dishes might not have been changed out in a while. The cloth you use to wipe down counters may be looking old and grungy. The longer you keep disposable cleaning tools like these around, the more likely they are to collect germs and then spread those germs to your food preparation surfaces, dishes, and food. To keep the kitchen sanitary, you should be tossing these items and replacing them when they are no longer in good shape. You should also disinfect them regularly. For exceptional sanitation, you can soak the sponges and cleaning rags in a solution of hot water and disinfectant after each use. Just change out that solution regularly to keep things clean there as well.
Beware How You Clean up Meat Juice
Most of us know that the juices from uncooked meats can be dangerous to our health, possibly containing contaminants that need to be cooked out so they are no longer harmful. You should be very careful about how you clean up meat juices in your kitchen, then. If you wipe away uncooked meat juices with the same cloth or scrubbing pad you use to clean dishes, then you are spreading bacteria like salmonella and e. coli onto the dishes. That can make you really sick.
It is best to never use your sponge, scrubbing pad or reusable cloths to clean up meat juices. Instead, you can use paper towels to dry up the juices and then spray the surface with disinfectant to kill any bacteria. Never try to spray down surfaces that have uncooked meat juices on them. You could splatter the juices and bacteria onto other surfaces that might not get cleaned properly.
Clean the Kitchen Frequently
How often should you clean your kitchen if you want to keep it sanitary? To keep the pests away and minimize the spread of bacteria, you should be doing some minor cleaning every time you use the kitchen. If you dirty a countertop, tidy it up right away. Clean up spills immediately, and clean dishes after every meal. This will make it easier to keep the kitchen clean.
A thorough cleaning of the kitchen – floors, countertops, appliances, should be done about once a week. You may need to do that more frequently if you use your kitchen a lot or if there are a lot of people in your home. Usage determines the frequency of cleaning.
If you can’t keep up with the cleaning yourself, you can always hire someone to do the cleaning for you. Professional Phoenix cleaners can make your kitchen tidy quickly and ensure it is sanitary when by the time they are done. This can save you precious time and help you out when you feel overwhelmed.
A final tip for cleaning frequency in your kitchen- if it looks dirty, then clean it, as you want your kitchen to be the cleanest room in your house. That’s just good advice if you would like to prevent illness and the spread of bacteria.
Avoid Cross Contamination
The phrase cross contamination is really important when it comes to kitchen cleanliness and food safety. It refers to how bacteria or contaminants from one item can pass over to another item. So, your fresh produce could be infected by the juices from your raw chicken, if you are not careful.
To prevent cross contamination, you should use one cutting board for raw meats, and another cutting board for everything else. You should clean off all knives and other instruments used in cutting meat after you cut the meat. You should also clean off all surfaces that raw meat comes into contact with before you put any other food items on the same surface.
If you observe these cross-contamination rules, you will keep your food cleaner and safe from bacterial contamination.
The guidelines we have given you don’t cover absolutely everything, but they are very important if you hope to minimize foodborne illness risk and you want to keep your kitchen sanitary.