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Your kitchen isn’t just the place where you make all the food you and your family eats. It is also a home for lots of germs and illnesses. Do you want to keep your home safe for yourself and for your family? Then you need to know what kind of cleaning habits are right to adapt to keep a clean kitchen that is as free from germs as possible.

We have put together a list of excellent cleaning habits that will help make your kitchen cleaner and reduce the number of sicknesses and illnesses that your family experiences. Photo by Liliana Drew

Sanitize Key Areas

There are places in your kitchen that are more likely to have germs on them, and then there are also places in the kitchen that you're more likely to catch germs from. These may not be the same areas, so let's talk about what you need to do to target these areas, sanitize them, and keep them from being trouble spots for germs.

Any place in the kitchen where you chop vegetables or meat can be a place that houses germs. Raw meat can easily contain bacteria that you wouldn't find in cooked meat. Many types of bacteria are attracted to raw meat, like E coli. Once you cook the meat, the bacteria will be cooked out and no longer harmful, but the bacteria can remain behind on the food preparation surfaces. That's just one example, but you should understand that anywhere you prepare food is a place that can house germs, and it is also a place that needs to be sanitized regularly.

In fact, we recommend that you sanitize your food preparation areas after using them. You should sanitize them as well as your hands and any utensils you're using before you move on to a different kind of food. So, if you're handling raw meat, clean the area, clean your hands, and clean all kitchen utensils before you start to prepare fruits or veggies in that same area.

There are also areas of the kitchen where you tend to place your hands often. These will be areas where germs are left behind and where they are easily picked up again. This typically includes door handles, handles on appliances, taps, and countertops. These surfaces should be sanitized frequently to prevent the spread of germs.

Perform a Deep Cleaning

Deep cleaning is a pretty intensive type of cleaning that gets in all those areas that might not be regularly cleaned. So, if you're deep cleaning the kitchen, to clean under and behind appliances, and even inside the oven and microwave. A deep cleaning helps to get rid of crumbs and other food debris that could be left behind and could attract pests which carry germs of their own.

Maybe you can't do deep cleaning as often as you ought to in order to keep a clean kitchen, but you could find affordable home cleaning near you in Los Angeles that could handle that work. Hiring professionals to do the deep cleaning can be very helpful, as this ensures that the work is done properly, and saves you a lot of time and energy.

We recommend that you do a deep cleaning in your kitchen every three to four months. This helps keep the food debris to a minimum, gets rid of germs and helps your kitchen to smell and feel cleaner.

Keep a Clean Garbage Can

The garbage can in the kitchen may be convenient, but it is also something that attracts pests and creates bad smells. Even if you keep the garbage can closed you may have unpleasant odors in the kitchen, and that could be because the garbage can is not kept clean. Not every time you empty a plate of food in the garbage can you manage to get all of the food into the can, right? Some will tend to spill on the side a little at times.

Sometimes when we are making food quickly in the kitchen, we can be careless with what we place into the garbage can, dropping some beside the can and others on top of the lid. That makes for a messy garbage can area, and that needs to be addressed.

Untidy garbage cans don’t just small bad. They also draw in pests and make it easy for bacteria to grow. Those bits of food that fell onto the garbage can rather than in it will prove to be breeding grounds of all sorts of spores and germs, and it is important that garbage can and the surrounding area be cleaned regularly.

Keep Sick People Away

If anyone in your family is sick, they ought to be confined to a single room and not be allowed to wander around the house. You don't want them to spread germs to other people and make others sick. You especially don't want them in the kitchen where they can interact with food items and spread germs into the food that other people are eating.

If they do get into the kitchen, you should sanitize the areas that they come into contact with. If you have to bring your food back into the kitchen to wash it, make sure that it is cleaned with hot water and germ-killing soap. Take every precaution to make sure that the germs do not spread to other items in the kitchen.

Get Rid of Spills Fast

When you make a mess in your kitchen, you want to clean it up immediately. The longer any food items are allowed to remain open, the more likely they are to attract germs and pests.

A lot of harmful organisms tend to grow in biological matter, like food. All living things need food in order to survive. Many of the same items that you eat are eaten by pests, bacteria, and viruses. If you want to minimize these intruders in your kitchen, you need to clean up spills as soon as possible. Don't even wait until the end of the day to clean your kitchen. Get rid of food spills as soon as you can.