Germ Hot Spots You Didn’t Know About

We all know the obvious places where you expect to find germs and bacteria. The floor, door handles, and the toilet seat are all an easy guess, but we have listed some more unexpected areas that you might be surprised aren’t as clean as you might think.

1. Your mobile
Chances are that you take your mobile phone with you everywhere you go, some people can’t even go to the toilet without taking their phone. All of the germs on the things we touch throughout the day such as door handles, shopping trolleys, and fuel pumps – get transferred to our phones the instant we pick them up. We use our phones while eating on our lunch break, meaning food residue can get on our phones. We might wash our hands after we eat, but we pick up the same dirty mobile phone!
We suggest wiping down your phone on a regular basis!

2. Your belt buckle
This is not your typical item that is considered to contain a lot of germs. However, your belt is usually the first thing that you touch when you go to the bathroom! So make sure that, much like your mobile phone, you give your belt a regular wipe down, especially the buckle.

3. Your water bottle
Refilling your plastic water bottle might seem like the convenient thing to do. Reusing a plastic water bottle can do much more harm than good. Reusing plastic bottles once or twice can be okay given that the bottle is washed after every use with warm soapy water. However, overuse can cause build-up of various bacteria

4. Your office kitchen

It is really important that everyone cleans up after themselves in the office. Communal kitchens can be a breeding ground for bacteria. Simple things like resealing food in containers, checking the fridge for food that is going off, covering food in the microwave and wiping down the benches can make a huge difference in maintaining the hygiene standards in your office kitchen.

5. The office water cooler
Many offices have water coolers, but can they make you sick? Studies show that shared water coolers can be an easy way for germs & bacteria to spread across the office. That means that an annoying cough your co-worker is experiencing could soon become your cough! To prevent this from happening, it is a good idea to wipe down the tap at the end of each day.

6. Your handbag

Your handbag is another offender for gathering germs and bacteria. If you take the bus or train to work every day, you probably place your bag on the bench next to you. Handbags are also often placed on floors and chairs in public areas.

Instead of placing your bag on floors try to use a hook whenever there is one available. If there are none available and you are traveling, it might be better to keep your handbag on your lap.