Hitchhiker’s Guide: How Germs Travel From Public to Private Spaces

We call them “germs.” 

Of late, we have learned to protect ourselves from the grime, oils, liquids, stickiness and slime left on surfaces that people touch, lick, laugh toward, sweated on, or salivated onto. We have learned to protect one another from aerosolized liquid droplets from breath, speech, laughter, singing, doing heavy work or exercise.

Nonetheless, as we get smarter, we find new ways that microbial nasties can insinuate themselves into the clean setting that you work so diligently to maintain. 

If you were a germ, how would you survive? 

Think through all your normal routines. Retrace your steps. Notice where your activities intersect with the pathway of folks who have been out, away from the house. Because humans are the biggest dirtiers of the indoor environment.

Just by way of example, let’s consider public spaces, such as schools. 

In a school, adults and children come together to teach and learn. Along the way, they share coughs and sneezes and interact over a range of high touch sticky-ish, grimy-ish surfaces. 

Staff and administrators are doing their best to clean and disinfect surfaces and to require mask-wearing, social distancing and other preventative measures.

But let’s look at these shared spaces from a microbial perspective.

Teachers, staff and students sit at desks or tables, sit on chairs or benches. They lean on walls or counters, use the restroom, plunder through storage, and meander back and forth to the waste disposal station. They go to the lunchroom, the library, and all points in between. When they must, they share supplies or travel in busses.

On each step of the journey, each person’s clothes and shoes, bags and carrying cases are picking up the nasties we call “germs.”

The germs are pretty much everywhere. Because each person brought a selection of germs with them into that setting. Their clothes carry germs from their homes, from the car. 

After going to pick up or drop off, do you remember to disinfect the car door handles and steering wheel?

Back at home, we hand sort through the laundry to be washed and the shoes and sacks to be put away. As we work, our hands are picking up all sorts of germs. We’re transferring those microbes to and from every item that we’re touching.

Laundry baskets are functional repositories for each day’s dirty clothes and collection of germs. 

Then, the task of doing the laundry. We handle the lid of the washing machine. The clothes and shoes have been in the baskets or lying on the floor. They drape over the side of the machine when we’re loading … and unloading. We close the lid, and the door behind us. We turn off the light.

We use the handrail and we go back upstairs, turn off the stairwell light, and turn on the light in the kitchen. We pull out the chair at the kitchen table. Then, remembering, we finally go over to the kitchen sink to wash our hands. We turn on the water, lather to the tune of the ABCs, and touch the knob again to turn the water off.

And so it goes.

Now, the object of this exercise isn’t to cause panic about how hard it is to live a clean life on Planet Earth. But, in terms of home healthiness, it’s often helpful to reflect on the adaptive abilities of the critters with whom we co-exist.  

Such ponderings might help us identify some simple adjustments. 

When we become more aware, we have the ability to make the small changes that return big healthiness benefits. We can disinfect more high touch surfaces more frequently. We can change the way we manage laundry or bring in groceries. We can leave our shoes on the porch instead of wearing them into the house. 

What simple things might you consider changing to reduce public-private crossover?

At the end of the day, understanding how germs operate can help us keep our loved ones safe and healthy at home.