What’s Your Sanitizing/Decon Routine?

Off-topic Chatter
1

So what are you doing to keep the cooties away?

Over on the thread about a hospital visit,

leftye mentioned sanitizing routines.
I thought that might be worth a new thread.

We live in a small city of about125K. As of middle May we have 116(?) Covid cases in the county. More than half in a single senior center. 9 died there so far. With a total of 16 deaths total.
Only a few ended up in the hospital while I was there for infusions.
They are being treated on separate floor in a different wing from where I was.

Since I’m one of the at risk people, I mostly stay home unless I’m really needed to fix up a clients system. Then I get them to bring it to my office so I don’t have to mix with the public.

I’m a one person shop so nobody comes in my place except me or who I let in.
When touching doors, in public places, I reach way up and push the door where no one else is likely to have touched it (I’m largeish).
When I’m doing infusions at the hospital, I push open the bathroom door with my butt, then use one knuckle to close and push the lock.
After doing my business, I wash my gloved hands in the bathroom sink. Use a paper towel to open the door. After I get back to my room, I hit my gloved hands with the sanitizer goop that’s on the wall in the room.
I also bring a Clorox wipe with me and first thing wipe down anything I think I might contact during the day. Like the table, table levers, bed controls, TV remote, IV stand, doorknob…

To minimize my wifes exposure, at her office they rotate days so only one person is in the office at a time. The rest of the time they work from home.

We both wear gloves and mask when contact with outside objects or meeting others is possible.
Our masks are well fitted and made from 99.97 HEPA cloth.
Gloves are a great reminder not to touch our faces.
Gloves are also way easier to wash than hands are.
We both wear glasses.

My wife does all the shopping.
We both keep a set of outside shoes in the garage. They never come inside.
Clothes that have been worn outside are considered contaminated and get shed in the garage. They stay there to be re-worn or wait for enough to run through the wash.

I’ve got a small box where all the stuff from my pockets get’s placed.
My wife keeps an outside purse there too.
Phones, if they have been used in unsafe areas, are given a wipe with Clorox solution or sprayed down with 70% alcohol.
Exam gloves are shed out here too. We have enough to rotate through different sets.
The same for home-made masks.
Once inside, it’s straight to sink for hand and arm washing. Then to the shower for a full wash.

Hair is a really good place for cooties to accumulate. All that nice oil and surface area to cling to.
What good is it to wash your hands if you run your fingers through you hair then touch your face?

A hat with a brim also keeps particulates from drifting behind glasses. This has been a trick in kitchens for years to keep cooking grease out.
And speaking of glasses, if I didn’t wear prescription, I think I would wear a set of shooting glasses or something else that gave good coverage and looked stylish.

When mail gets picked up at the PO box, it sits for 24 hours before coming inside.
When my wife gets home from the market, she gets the stuff from the car to the garage.
I’ll have made up a 2000ppm bleach solution before hand.
Anything that can be wiped down – gets wiped down.
This gets transferred inside to the laundry room where it sits on a towel to dry.
Produce get washed in the sink.

Link to Bleach mix calculator

That’s about all I can think of that we do to keep the cooties at bay,
Keep Safe,
All the Best,
Jeff

2

When going to grocery store, office or anywhere out of the house other than just walking around the neighborhood I wear:

  • N95 mask - this is a 3M disposable mask from a hardware store purchased well before the pandemic, originally intended for painting or sanding. It’s not a medical one. I used a hotglue gun to glue a piece of dense thin fabric (from a dust mite pillow cover) over the exhalation valve. The mask is very tightly fitted and I take special care not to touch anything above the neck once I exit my car at my destination.
  • Disposable Gloves
  • Safety glasses

Upon returning from my trip:

  • Gloves are removed and discarded in trash, taking care not to touch outside of gloves
  • Mask and goggles go in a homemade decontamination box. This is a shoebox lined with aluminum foil. On top is an old plug-in UVC light (not an LED) that was originally designed for erasing EEPROMs. It’s connected to a timer, so I put them in the box and set the timer for 15 minutes.
  • Then using a Clorox disinfectant wipe, disinfect, all controls on interior of car, plus seatbelt buckle, door handle and trunk release. Then backtrack and disinfect any door handles or light switches I may have touched.
  • Before coming inside, remove shoes. Disinfect all sides and bottoms. Shoes are not put back on to give time for the disinfectant to take effect. Also disinfect hands.
  • Once inside, remove personal items and disinfect each one: wallet, any cards I may have touched, keys, flashlight (yes I always carry a flashlight :sunglasses: … but these days when I go out the only one I’m taking is my copper FW3C), belt and belt buckle.
  • Wash Hands (2 happy birthdays)
  • Remove clothing and get it ready to be washed.
  • Take shower. Taking special attention to any areas that were not covered by cloth (head and hair, back of neck, ears, arms, etc.)

My local grocery store has a dispenser of free disinfectant wipes at the entrance. When I enter the store, I disinfect the grocery cart’s handle and my gloves. I get a second wipe on the way out and repeat the process.

To add extra protection, I’m planning on adding a packet of 75% alcohol wipes to my car. That way I can disinfect my gloves and reduce the chances of N95 contaminating my car when I go to other locations besides the grocery store.

One thing I’m not doing, but would provide extra protection: I strip down in the bathroom before my shower. Contaminated clothes go in a designated corner of the floor. However, I have read that Covid-19 doesn’t stick securely to fibrous surfaces. If there is any virus on them it might fall off my clothes and drift into the air while taking them off. Safest option would be to strip down outside, but I’m not doing that.

That’s my process for disinfecting myself after going out. Any groceries or deliveries go through their own rather time consuming disinfection routine.

I also find I’m carrying much less in my pockets than before. This means less to disinfect:

Pre-pandemic pocket-stuffing:

  • wallet
  • comb
  • eye drops
  • kleenix
  • 2 pens
  • pocketknife
  • flashlight
  • lip balm
  • keys

Pandemic pocket-stuffing:

  • wallet
  • keys
  • flashlight
3

I go out a couple times a week for work to retail stores.
I’m basically in the middle of corona virus capital of the world (NY-LI)
Haven’t noticed any real decrease in activity :frowning:

I open doors with my feet when possible and either wash or sanitize my hands after each visit and wear a mask which forces me to wear contacts instead of my glasses.
Very aware of not touching my face, which is another thing basically impossible if wearing glasses.
Stay away from people as much as possible and get in and out quickly, luckily everyone is usually wearing masks i encounter.
my wife disinfects my carry gear when i get home. She also has her own routine with the groceries mail and boxes.

4

I work at a place where I’ve seen/heard someone have a doozy of a twosie, then walk right out without even going near the sinks.

I act accordingly.

Wash hands, dry with paper-towels, open door with said PTs, toss in bin on the way out and slink out fast before the door slams on me.

Go through the hallway and get to the inner door (card-lock), open it, head into the kitchen, wash again once inside.

Working from home now, I don’t have to deal with that. Just desperation-trips to the supermarket, etc. Most people are now masked-bandits, so I’m not terribly worried. Still, I’ll hold off on showering/changing (haha) ’til after I get back.

That’s pretty much it.

I’m a bit Seinfeldian anyway, so I didn’t need to modify my usual routines much.

5

The method that I use to keep myself sanitized physically and mentally is shown in my signature. How I keep myself sanitized spiritually is mostly beyond the scope of this forum.

6

I make the kids lick everything. I wait a week. If they don’t get sick then I’ll use it.

In the last few months they have licked every package received from China. They are in surprisingly good health still.

7

8

`I work at a place where I’ve seen/heard someone have a doozy of a twosie, then walk right out without even going near the sinks`
Ewww!
I sympathize as quite a few guys will walk into the bathroom while I`m meditating on the porcelain God and walk out without washing their hands as well.

9

I see this all the time, half of the time its a store employee.
I wonder why the mens room door is always open but womens is always closed?
Then i realize at some of these stores you have to pull the door open to get out (horrible design) and they’ve removed paper towels in favor of hand dryers so what do you do … use TP?
and then how do you get it sanitarily? lol :weary:

10

Doozy of a twozie!! I just coughed grape slushie from Sonic thru my respiratory system!

11

I wash my hands as usual. Don’t care about masks or gloves, having fun watching all brainwashed lemmings walking around.
Mike

12

I wash my hands when they are dirty. I wash my hands after going to the bathroom only if, I pee or poop on them.

13

My routine is to do what I’ve always done before people went insane and assumed they could beat the principles evolution and herd immunity—wipe down my phone every other day with alcohol and just live my life.

14

My sister has stage 4 lung cancer, and her doctor said getting this would kill her, so we’re being extra cautious.

When we come in, masks go into a dehydrator in the garage. Our hands already get hand sanitizer before getting back into the car, and we’ll wash hands with soap when we get home. If we go somewhere risky, like the ER the other day, then clothes go straight into the washer.

For large scale sanitation, we have the highest grade filters that claim to filter out viruses. An ozone generator is on the way, which isn’t really necessary for home, but will be nice for disinfecting rental cars and hotel rooms. It’d be better not to travel, but I’ve lost that battle, and I can’t resist much since time with my sister is much shorter than it should be. We also have a portable UVC light, and a large UVC light is in the mail.