Is Your Floor Clean Enough for Your Baby to Play On?

Babies in their scooting, crawling, and beginning to walk stages spend a lot of time on the floor. As long as our floor seems to be clean we don’t give much thought to letting our precious and youngest family members play to their heart’s content. Unless your floor is truly clean it can be harmful for baby to be spending so much time down there.  

How Is a Dirty Floor Potentially Harmful for a Baby? 

• Large debris; babies love to explore and find new and exciting things. Since most everything is new and exciting to a baby they will not hesitate to find small and large pieces of debris on the floor and pop them in their mouth. No one wants baby to eat something harmful or that could cause them to choke.  

• Germs: there are many different germs that come from several different sources that end up on your floor. Think about this: you put your shoes on to go out of the house and when you are out of the house you walk across city sidewalks, in parks where animals do their business, public restrooms, and more very yucky and germ filled areas. After your shoes touch those places they return home to deposit those nasty germs on your floors where your baby plays. Their hands come in contact with the same germs and then go into their mouths.  
• Harsh Chemicals: Not paying much attention to what we clean our floors with is also harmful to a baby. Now this one doesn’t stem from a dirty floor necessarily, but it is potentially harmful to baby and worth mentioning. We wash baby’s clothes in special soap so their skin is not irritated when it comes in contact with chemicals on fabric, but we forget that baby also comes in contact with chemicals on other surfaces they constantly touch like the floor.  Some of the chemicals in floor cleaners we use are harmful and not ideal for prolonged exposure, like when a baby is playing on a floor for long periods of time.  

Making Floors Ready for Baby to Play 

What can you do to ensure your floors are clean and safe for baby to enjoy playing on?  

• If you have carpet make sure you are vacuuming on a regular basis at least twice a week or even daily if you have a busy home with a lot of foot traffic.  
• Dust mop hard surface floors daily ( ideally you should do this even without a baby in the home)  
• Mop hard surface floors weekly with a microfiber mop that the mop head can be detached and put in the washing machine to truly sanitize it. (a dirty mop head only spreads more germs) 
• Have a no shoes in the home policy, this drastically reduces the amount of dirt and germs that are on your floors. This is a good rule to have for every home not just homes with infants as it keeps your floors in better shape and the entire house healthier. 

• Know what is in the cleaners you are using. Make sure you are using cleaners with safer chemicals that are not harmful for baby to be playing on the floor.  
• Don’t skip out on professional deep cleanings. With time dirt and germs build up in the deepest parts of your floors, hire a professional to come and deep clean. Make sure it is a cleaner that uses safe products.  

For professional floor cleaning in Arlington and surrounding areas make an appointment with All Kleen.