Clean, sanitise or disinfect? Know what your home actually needs

You have wiped the kitchen counter, cleaned the dining table and sprayed something on the bathroom tap. But was the surface cleaned, sanitised or disinfected? They may sound like three ways of saying the same thing, but they are not.
Here’s the thing: for most healthy households, routine cleaning is enough for day-to-day home care. Disinfection becomes more important when someone in the household is sick, when there has been a specific contamination event, or when someone at home has a weakened immune system and faces a higher risk of infection. According to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cleaning with soap, detergent, and water removes most germs and impurities from household surfaces. In most situations, that is enough, and sanitising and disinfecting are additional steps used for different purposes. So, what is the actual difference? Think of it this way: you have just chopped raw chicken on the kitchen counter, and before reaching for a sanitising or disinfecting spray, the visible residue needs to go. Cleaning physically removes dirt, food particles and many germs from a surface. You scrub, wash or wipe them away using soap, detergent and water. It does not necessarily kill every germ, but it reduces the number of germs that can potentially spread, and that is exactly why cleaning comes first.
The CDC says dirt and other impurities can make it more difficult for sanitise or disinfect chemicals to reach and kill germs. So spraying a disinfectant directly onto a greasy or visibly dirty counter and immediately wiping it off may not do what you think it does. Clean first, and then decide what the surface actually needs.
Here is where the confusion begins. Sanitising reduces bacteria on surfaces to levels that are generally considered safe under public health standards, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Surface sanitisers are not intended to kill viruses. Disinfectants, on the other hand, are tested to kill both bacteria and viruses on hard surfaces, and are subject to more rigorous effectiveness testing than sanitisers.
Now, that does not mean disinfecting is automatically better, since it depends on the situation. For example, the CDC says sanitising may be useful for food-contact surfaces after they have been cleaned, especially if they have been contaminated by raw meat, poultry or their juices. Certain objects that go into a baby’s mouth, such as infant feeding items, may also need to be sanitised using an appropriate method. Disinfecting becomes more relevant when someone at home is sick or when a person in the household has a weakened immune system and is at a higher risk of infection. For example, if your kitchen counter is dirty after dinner, clean it first. On the other hand, if someone in the house has been sick and has touched the bathroom tap and flushed the handle repeatedly, clean the surfaces first, then disinfect the high-touch areas using a product suitable for that purpose. That’s the main difference.