It's always an unsettling feeling whenever I think about germs. It makes my skin itch and goosebumps rise. However, germs are everywhere, especially in your dorm room, despite the negative connotation associated with it.
There are good germs and bad germs, but we need germs to survive and be okay when we step out into the world. It also seems like college students have to deal with germs a little more, especially when you live by yourself in a dorm and don't have your mother cleaning up after you.
Here are some of the most germ-y places in your dorm kitchen to look out for. It never hurts to keep clean, especially when it comes to pesky ants and tiny critters.
Your Kitchen Sink
Your kitchen sink is one of the primary places for germs. You do most of your cleaning and washing here. However, when you leave your dishes in the sink overnight, food particles can become a breeding ground for the bad kind of bacteria where you can get sick from the exposure. These particles can travel to your hands then to your foods.
Not many people clean their kitchen sinks regularly, so it might be a good idea to sanitize your kitchen sink with dish soup, bleach, and water. A couple times a week should help prevent the spread of illness causing bacteria.
Your Mini Fridge
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You might not think of your fridge as a dirty place because it's where you keep your foods in store-quality condition, but the fridge has the potential to store 7,850 bacteria colony-forming units per square centimetre. Most students never clean their fridge, so the germs stay present and cause problems to your health throughout the duration of the year.
One of the easiest ways to fight fridge germs is to wipe the fridge and its handle with a cleaning agent and water. It's important to clean the inside and outside of the fridge often.
Your Microwave
Microwaves can get really yucky, especially the shared communal ones on campus. However, if you're lucky enough to have your own private microwave in your dorm room, it's extremely crucial to clean it as much as possible. You wouldn't want to microwave your food in a place that looks like a food vomit explosion, right?
Keep in mind that it's also really important to clean the outside of the microwave, where all the touch screen buttons are. Sometimes you're cooking with raw foods and you might contaminate that area on the microwave, so it's best to wipe your microwave with some soap and water.
There is also an incredibly easy hack for cleaning your microwave with a lemon that takes less than five minutes, so give that a try.
Your Beer Pong Cups
This might not necessarily be in your dorm kitchen all the time, but when there are Friday night parties happening, you're bound to see these cups lying around all over your kitchen and dorm room.
Beer pong cups are essential for most college parties, but they also spread germs around whether you realize it or not. Most likely at that part of the night, everyone is a little too drunk to realize that the ping pong balls contaminate the cups.
When ping pong balls are dropped onto the ground by mistake, they are picked up and reused for the next round until they get into the cups. After a couple of rounds, the cups are filled with bacteria, E. coli, salmonella, and pneumonia, from the ping pong balls.
It's tough to keep these areas clean and bacteria-free, but if you change the cups frequently, it can prevent the amount of bacteria going into your body to make you feel less worse the next day.
It's been said so many times, but it's really true that these germ-y places have less effect on you if you keep the spaces clean. Protect yourself against these evils because finals season is coming and you'll be too busy fighting against another evil then.