How to disinfect clothes and shoes to prevent coronavirus

We give you some advice on how to disinfect your clothes and shoes when you get home to avoid catching coronavirus.

With the arrival of the long-awaited Phase 1 and the "new normalcy" there are many questions we ask ourselves about what to do with our clothes, shoes, and accessories when we get home. But, above all, remember that the most important thing is to wash our hands for at least 20 seconds as soon as we arrive and, after each action, to wash our hands again.

Tips for disinfecting your clothes

The ideal thing to do if we have been in an enclosed space with more people is to wash them, as soon as we get home, at 60 degrees at least, as long as the garments admit it.
If the garments do not admit so high a temperature, in addition to the detergent, we can use some sort of disinfectant wash supplement that we can find in the supermarket.
After washing, it is advisable to hang them out in the sun or put them in the dryer. The heat will help to kill any kind of germ.
On the contrary, if we plan to reuse the clothes, we must put them in a bag and close it until they are used again.
Clothes that cannot be washed can be disinfected with alcohol-based solutions or textile disinfectants. We can steam the garments and let them air until they have dried well.
What we should never do is shake the garments to avoid spreading the virus to other areas in case our clothes are contaminated.
We must also never forget about household linen. We should change bedding, towels, and kitchen cloths much more often and take extra care with hygiene. Here we can apply higher wash temperatures.

Tips for disinfecting your shoes when you get home

We should avoid going around the house with the shoes we wear on the street, so it is advisable to:

Take off our shoes as soon as we enter the house and leave them in the hall.
If you have a terrace or balcony, once you have taken off your shoes in the hall, you can put them outside, always reserving a space to leave them in the same place. And we will wash the floor with water and bleach to avoid stepping on that space with other shoes we use at home.
We can also wipe the soles with a cloth using a solution of cold water and bleach, leaving them to dry outdoors, and we can store them in a shoe box or on a shoe rack.