Say you’ve got a big mess on your hands. You’ve had some food spill in your kitchen, and you need to decide on a product and method to clean up so you get rid of any potentially hazardous germs. Should you sanitize or disinfect? What’s the difference between the two anyway?
When you’re faced with a tough cleaning job, it’s easy to get frustrated — and tempting to get creative with how you combat it. But before you reach for every cleaning product under your sink and start playing chemist, please just don’t.
“People often think that if one product works, mixing it with another one will make it even better,” says Carolyn Forte, director of the Cleaning Lab at the Good Housekeeping Institute.