What do shopping cleaners do with the insides of packets?

[Floatyboat]

Just wondering how people that like to clean their shopping deal with things inside the packaging.

Obviously you'd presume tins and cereal etc would not have been contaminated in the last 72 hours but what about other stuff, short shelf life items. Some fruit and veg can be from farm to fork in 48 hours. Bread as well won't have been in the bag for long.

Do you just leave it before opening, cook it all before eating or wash it? But you can't really wash bread.

This has also got me thinking about other things that may have recently touched in non obvious ways.

Well said fluffiphlox......I'm off to boil 2 sliced loaves - in their packets.

We put food away then pack bags into the garage, wash down surfaces with dettol spray and wash hands with soap. Non-perishables (tins etc) go into a store box and won't be touched again for a few days anyway. If we're touching packets that day we might make more hand washing effort, and in a moment of madness I considered if we should wipe frozen food packets as the virus could live 2 years in there. However the way I see it:

1. The risks of virus on packets on remaining bread, freezer and fridge food has to be pretty low.
2. We'd drive ourselves crazy wiping every packet and
3. The tiny amount of virus we could potentially pick up would be fine actually as we'd get such a mild form of the illness. So no, we don't wash the packets.

I use weak bleach solution on the outside of packages.
I'm buying bread such as Warburtons which will have only been touched by a machine.
Fruit and veg is peelable in most cases and I'm buying pre packaged so the shop worker doesn't have to pick it for me.

I'm not bleaching shopping.
Not much I'm doing now is normal tbh. Our first minister mentioned cleaning shopping in one of her briefings so it's not exactly unheard of advice.

Not much I'm doing now is normal tbh. Our first minister mentioned cleaning shopping in one of her briefings so it's not exactly unheard of advice.

Presumably you're not in England?

No, I think Scottish people are allowed on here too!

I never said they weren't

But that's never been advice in England.

Hi OP,

I have diagnosed OCD with one aspect of it being a fear of contagious illness but I don't wipe the inside of the packet. The outside of the bread packet gets wiped with Milton Wipes (which have ethanol as the active ingredient) and then we just hope that the bread inside doesn't have Covid-19 on it.

For fruit and veg, I wipe the packet and then rinse and mostly cook the contents. I don't eat raw fruit personally but other members of my household just wash it for 20 seconds before eating it (which in my opinion probably is a bit risky but then it is impossible to eliminate all risk and Covid in particular (as opposed to Norovirus and other viruses) is mostly passed by droplets and not ingested in the faecal-oral route).

Ok well I'm sharing another perspective then. But to all of us who heard that advice, it seems odd to hear that others think we're on the road to madness.

But to all of us who heard that advice, it seems odd to hear that others think we're on the road to madness.

That's understandable.

But to me (and I think a lot of others) it just seems very extreme. Unless you go around licking your packaging, what does bleaching it do to protect you that washing your hands after touching it doesn't?

For me, it's also about how damaging bleach can be. It's awful for the environment and can exacerbate conditions such as asthma. The amount some people must be using is shocking.

Very dilute bleach solutions are not really a problem (although obviously people could potentially be using the wrong concentration)- that's why people use Milton (bleach) solution for baby's bottles.

There is a slightly greater risk from not wiping packaging because even with the best intentions people tend to forget to wash their hands after touching packaging and to rub their eyes/nose/mouth and then potentially causing infection.

If you live in a household of healthy under 60s then it might be unnecessary to wipe shopping; if you live with a vulnerable person or are extremely vulnerable yourself then it's probably worth it to reduce the risk.

How dilute should they be? Is there a level that is too dilute?

Cleaning doesn't have to involve bleach! Though i know some people are using that.
Anything with soap like properties (surficants?) can help to kill the virus. I have children who are not as good as me at washing hands, and none of us are good at not touching our faces. So I'm happy to give things (like a milk bottle) a wipe down and take stuff out of its outer packet if I can.

I'm just boiling my packetsin bleach. Thought everyone was doing that?

What a wag.

Why do people who don't clean their shopping even wash their hands after putting the shopping away? Presumably because they think there's a risk there was something on it. In which case, why leave it on there and rely on remembering to wash your hands again after handling it later, opening it to take something out and before eating that thing? It's fine to make that your choice, but other people might prefer not to rely on remembering to do that again later, but would rather put things away knowing they've already dealt with that risk by a quick clean in soapy water (or whatever method they prefer).

I don't think the OCD risk is a major concern right now except for people who already have it, or have had it, and they have a much more difficult decision to make and might well see the virus risk as the lesser of two evils, which is fair enough. Even in normal everyday life dealing with OCD means dealing with some things that actually do need to be cleaned (toilets, hands and chopping boards after handling raw meat, ...). You don't manage OCD by never cleaning things that have a genuine risk of contamination, you deal with it by trying to find ways of cleaning things enough but not over and over again in a ritualistic, superstitious way. I can understand being more terrified of not managing that than of the virus, for a tiny tiny minority of people.

The issue here seems to be that some people believe the shopping has no genuine risk of contamination and so anyone wiping it is by definition displaying OCD type behaviour. Others see a genuine risk of contamination. Amongst those, some see the risk as trivial or aren't really worried about catching the virus anyway. Some see the risk as non-trivial or have reasons to be particularly afraid of catching it.

People who are cleaning shopping are really only doing that in the same way we'd clean other everyday things that need cleaning to avoid illness (like the chopping board example or toilets) - it's just that until the pandemic, shopping coming into the house didn't fall into that category. Now, temporarily, it does. It won't last forever though.

Why do people who don't clean their shopping even wash their hands after putting the shopping away? Presumably because they think there's a risk there was something on it. In which case, why leave it on there and rely on remembering to wash your hands again after handling it later, opening it to take something out and before eating that thing?

Yes, I rely on my ability to wash my hands. I always wash my hands between opening packaging and touching the contents though, that's nothing new.

So if you open the butter, say, and spread it on toast, you'd always then wash your hands before eating the toast? That is a different habit that I can see might lead to different decisions.

So if you open the butter, say, and spread it on toast, you'd always then wash your hands before eating the toast?

Yes, I always wash my hands before eating.

That is a different habit that I can see might lead to different decisions.

I thought it was rather normal tbh.

Been buying part-baked bread rolls and popping them in the oven.

On groceries that can stay out of fridge or freezer I have been spraying isopropyl alcohol (99.9%) on it and leaving it out in our 'quarantine room' for a couple of days. For fridge and freezer items I have been doing the same, wiping it down and putting away,

People washing their shopping aren't harming others, if they find it reassuring then good for them. As others have said it doesn't seem to have been official advice but why not do it, it can't hurt? As for washing the inside of packets, I suppose what shopping washers are doing is limiting their chances of catching the virus, it would be impossible to prevent it altogether.

I clean outside of all packaging, either with soapy water or spraying quickly with dettol spray. Anything where there is outer packaging just take this off and put away as normal. Generally things in tins, bottles I'm putting in shed for a few days before I bring them in.

Fruit and veg - only buying packaged and throwing away packaging before putting away. I would wash before use anyway, veg will be cooked before eating, don't use a lot of salad and have bought frozen berries.

I haven't bought bakery bread for a while, ready sliced and it's normally a couple of days before a new one is opened anyway.

Somebody mentioned part baked bread - where are you buying this? I haven't seen this around for weeks.

I wash my fruit that I can’t or don’t want to quarantine in Milton . If it’s safe to use on babies then it’s safe on grown ups.
My neighbour is a doc in infectious diseases and said that was fine.