How to disinfect everything

Most people don’t know how to disinfect things. They think it means spraying Lysol on a surface and wiping it off right away. That’s not disinfecting. That’s just making it smell like cleaning.

To actually disinfect something, you have to leave the disinfectant on the surface for a while. This is called dwell time, and it’s usually printed in tiny letters on the back of the bottle. It’s almost always longer than you think—often around 10 minutes.

The hard part isn’t spraying things. It’s waiting. You have to let the disinfectant sit there and do nothing. That’s when it’s working. You can’t rush it by scrubbing harder or using more of it. If anything, using too much just makes more mess.

You don’t have to disinfect everything, just the things people touch a lot. Door handles. Faucet handles. Light switches. The fridge handle. Your phone. Your remote. Basically anything that sounds boring.

It’s easy to clean a counter. It’s harder to remember to clean the light switch near it.

The simplest system is to walk through a space once a week with a disinfectant and a cloth, and just tap all the spots people touch. Like painting, but with less precision.

If something looks clean, that doesn’t mean it’s disinfected. And if something’s disinfected, that doesn’t mean it’s safe forever. Someone just has to touch it again.

The point isn’t to sterilize the world. It’s to interrupt the chain. That’s enough.