Although cleanliness in most public spaces is kept up by janitorial staff or maid services, the CDC recommends that you also take preventative measures of your own.

The Center for Disease and Control Prevention has created an extensive list of preventative measures for public places to consider when reopening to minimize contact and contamination. It’s quite extensive, so being able to quickly give a shorter list of quick behaviors to look out for both at home and out and about are important.

1. Watch the staff at a restaurant.

Keeping an eye on how they move around if they wear gloves or not, and how thoroughly they clean off surfaces could keep both yourself and others safe. Ensure that they space tables out carefully, are wiped down carefully if/when you have the chance. They should wear masks consistently, and there’s a possibility they were told to also wear gloves. While their individual cleaning habits cannot be tracked, making sure your server keeps to the guidelines can keep both yourself and others safe.

2. See how they handle other customers.

It’s not a restaurants’ responsibility to keep everyone happy, but it is their responsibility to keep everyone safe. If a customer is unwilling to wear their mask or follow the CDC guidelines for dining safely, that is their own fault. However, if the restaurant continues to cater to this individual, regardless of their dangerous behavior, the restaurant would be at fault. They are not only putting their own employees but other patrons in the restaurant in possible harm, regardless if they are dining inside or outside.

3. Make sure Inside/outside dining areas are clean, and spaced out accordingly

Inside dining has been recently allowed by Los Angeles County, but outside dining is still provided as an option. While outside dining was a way for restaurants to cope with the ban on inside dining, both are now open to the public in almost any restaurant you can think of. Some have welcomed inside dining with open arms, some less so. But the rules and needs of outside dining should still be followed in the restaurant to the best of the staff’s ability. Open windows and large/empty spaces between tables could still be upheld. Cleaning should still be done meticulously, and masks and gloves should still be worn.

4. If you can, watch how they make food

While some cooking is done in the background, or as passive entertainment with a small view, some diner-style restaurants have large openings where you can see into the kitchen area if you’re sitting at the right tables or booths. Get one of these, if you can, and while you wouldn’t be able to tell what each dish the workers in the kitchen are making, see if you can pick out how they make food if they’re wearing gloves while doing so, and how often they may or may not clean the counters or their hands, and if the chefs themselves wear masks. While kitchen cleanliness has always been an important part of restaurant hygiene, it’s even more important now.

5. Don’t allow your own cleanliness habits to slip

When in public, the first person you need to look out for is yourself, especially in restaurants, while keeping an eye on the environment around you, make sure you don’t put yourself or those around you in danger. Always wear a mask unless eating, ensure that you can stay a safe distance away from others, clean up after yourself, and ensure you’re touching as few surfaces as possible. 

Now, however, there are dangers to having a less-than-suitable cleaning routine, either inside your home or out with others. Having a less than reliable cleaning staff could get your entire business shut down, and not cleaning your home properly, with parents and students now going back to work or school, could cause one or more people in the household to get sick, or worse. Weekly, routine cleaning is needed to keep everyone in a restaurant or at home safe. 

1. Clean yourself off once you get home

A quick and easy way to make sure possible hazards don’t enter your home is by tossing your clothes in the washer once you get home and putting on new, clean clothes. It’s possible that airborne and contact germs found their way onto your clothes and yourself, taking a shower and getting into clean clothes once you get home would be the best way to minimize germs entering your household.

2. Make sure you have a regular cleaning schedule

As entering and leaving your home becomes more commonplace, it’s important that you keep the spaces you frequent the cleanest. Having a reliable cleaning routine when you return home is a good thing, but germs can always enter your home, and cleaning your home often and with good disinfectant would be an easy way to keep your home and everyone in it safe.

3. Make sure to clean any packages that come to your doorstep

Home delivery before the quarantine was a common practice but became almost necessary when stuck at home and in need of quickly delivered, commonly used necessities. However, being able to know where exactly packages you order have been, or how well they’ve been handled is impossible. Along with yourself, and your home, clean the boxes that you bring into your home before opening them, and ensure anything your order is cleaned before being brought into your home. 

4. Minimize the guests in your home

Much like at the beginning of lockdown, being able to stay home and isolated with your roommates and family are the easiest ways to stay safe, but with the slowly loosening restrictions on dining, outings, and visitors, having a person or two in your home wouldn’t be a terrible idea. However, that doesn’t mean you allow them to easter through your home, forgo watching their hands, or minimizing the time they stay with you. It would be a safe bet to meet on your lawn, porch, or outside your home, and if you do allow them into your home, make sure to clean up after them, and any surfaces they touched.

5. Always have cleaning supplies on standby

Being able to keep yourself and your home clean isn’t a new idea, but with the dangers, we could still face, even with the slowly lifting precautions of the lockdown, having a small stock of cleaning supplies tucked away in a bathroom or closet could be necessary in case something worrying happens, and the harsher lockdown is put back into place. Cleaning supplies were a bit hard to come by in the beginning, and if there were to be a second lockdown, finding cleaning supplies would be near impossible.