How important is deep cleaning after Covid

[ScrunchedAndScrambled]

Name changed as I’m embarrassed - household isolating with Covid atm. My mental health has been v bad and everything is super cluttered and I’m horribly behind on cleaning - like it’ll take me months.

Are people expected to do a proper deep clean after Covid? I’m realising I have stuff for work in the room I’ve been spending most time with and don’t know if I need to do anything with fabric/papers etc. When I’m out of isolation, can I spread the virus on clothes/objects taken out of the house?

Likewise DS’s room is a horrific mess, fabrics and papers all over the place - he doesn’t like me to invade his privacy. He also has Covid atm

Don’t know where I’m going to start. V ill with anxiety and depression atm so please be gentle

We just carried on as usual. Didn't isolate from each other, ventilate or clean ( probably less than usual).
Please don't worry. You do not carry the burden of trying to be superhuman

Covid is an airborne disease.

Knowing what we know now, the concern about the risks of touching ‘contaminated’ surfaces & objects at the start of the pandemic was massively overstated. Good hand hygiene is still important for many other reasons, though.

Knowing what we know now, the benefits of ventilation and of opening windows was massively understated throughout the pandemic. The slogan should have been ‘Face, space, fresh air’ rather than ‘Hands, face, space’.

Not at all. It's not spread by contact with surfaces, or hardly at all, but by virus particles in the air. Open your windows.

Yes you're being ridiculous but understandable with how the media have ramped up the fear unnecessarily. Would you have previously fumigated the house after having the flu? No. Don't worry about it, we've all wasted enough of our lives.

I did nothing after we had Covid beyond what I normally do. I thought it was well established by now that transmission via surfaces is almost non existent.

@LIZS

Air the rooms, change bedding and towels and surface clean door handles, remotes, phones, bathroom etc. Just basic hygiene really.

Cleaning door handles is not "basic hygiene". No one I know does that.

Clearly in the minority but I did a massive deep clean after we all started testing negative. Probably one of those "all in my head" things too but it did make me feel better

We didn’t do anything extra- certainly didn’t have energy for extra cleaning after having covid …

It's completely understandable that someone would imagine they might need to do a deep clean after infection because of all the messaging.

However as several PPs have pointed out, that messaging was wrong, so you don't need to do anything OP.

I hope that eases your MH a little.

Thank you. I’ve been worrying about how much time I’ve been spending on my sofa. Some of my work is with quite elderly people so didn’t want to be irresponsible. A load of my friends did the quarantining mail/disinfecting shopping thing at the start of the pandemic which I never did as I thought it would make me more anxious. But then I was always more scared about spreading it than catching it...

Seriously not important!

I clean handles anyway as my dc's hand hygiene leaves a lot to be desired but I'm not planning on doing any special cleaning when I'm feeling better.

I've been more tyrannical than usual with the ventilation though.

I like the windows open all year round anyway, I didn’t do anything differently there either

Yeah, don't worry about this. It doesn't live on surfaces for anywhere near as long as they thought it might at the start of the pandemic. If you're over it yourself and safe to go out, there's not going to be loads of live virus still on your work clothes or anything like that.

I struggle with keeping the house tidy too, and I completely get the panic and shame of oh my god, my chronic overwhelm is about to cause a real problem what do I doooo. But in this case - you're fine. :)

"Air the rooms, change bedding and towels and surface clean door handles, remotes, phones, bathroom etc. Just basic hygiene really."

errr nope - just be normal.