The dirtiest room in your house is not your bathroom
You track in grime on your shoes; your bed sheets and mattress are literally teeming with debris; and don't even get me started on how nasty your bath towel is.
But by far, the most disgusting room in your home is actually the one that you might expect to be the cleanest: Your kitchen.
Why? Because food is a vector of some of the most vile, putrid substances. Bacteria on raw poultry and red meat are by far the worst offenders here, and they're hiding everywhere in your kitchen.
"You have a drain that's there, you have counter tops, refrigerators, appliances - all of which have been cross-contaminated with debris," microbiologist Philip Tierno of the New York University School of Medicine told Tech Insider.
And the dirtiest object in not just your kitchen, but your entire home is - drum roll please - your kitchen sponge, according to Tierno.
"That thing is very dirty," Tierno said. "Mainly because you're cleaning up vegetables, carcasses of meat, and all sorts of food stuff that can potentially contain pathogenic [disease-causing] bacteria that will grow in numbers over time."
These food items include all kinds of nasty bacteria, including campylobacter, salmonella, staphylococcus, E. coli, and listeria - all of which can cause mild to severe gut and skin infections.
Most people don't realize this, but there's a right way and a wrong way to clean your sponge. According to Tierno, you should be soaking it in a simple bleach solution after every use (check out our guide on how to do that here). This kills all germs on contact, leaving little room for cross-contamination.
Aside from this, the most important thing you can do to keep your kitchen clean is to practice good food prep hygiene. Don't fondle your cabinets after you've been working on a raw chicken. Don't cut your vegetables on the same board that you've been forming patties of ground beef on.
And most important of all, according to Tierno, is to religiously wash your hands. Not surprisingly, there's an art to that, too.
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