Here we go, another scary "germs!" advert.

I am such a lazy slut. Owned one bottle of dettol in my life which got chucked years afterwards (was playing wifey when we started living together in 1985 and set up a medicine shelf). I do use wipes sometimes (good for the screens on laptops, tablets, etc.), but they're bog standard ones. Dishcloths gets washed or changed as necessary according to how it looks. Don't know how we survived this long.

Phoenix Please stop! I have already had many rants about Dettol and it's wipe everything that might have a few little bits of bacteria on.

I do quite like telling some of these Dettol fans just how much bacteria is in their guts and on their skin and are beneficial.

I did hunt out the spray bottle of Dettol this evening because there was a big splat of what looked like bird poo (dried in the heat) on the conservatory floor.

No sign of a bird anywhere!

I don't think it contained any beneficial bacteria though Nelliemoser, although I suppose I could have scraped it up and put it on the garden as manure.

Oh Deedaa, our cat loved the smell of bleach and used to see wherever we'd used it!

Sorry, should be wee, stupid predictive text!

Hot soapy water is good enough for getting rid of most household germs! Does nobody use old underpants any more as cloths? My grandma did

My MIL used her old (aertex?) knickers as dishcloths!

The one that annoys me is the Dyson fan/air filter.......making out the average home is full of deadly pollutants that you must not breathe in. If we make our environments any 'cleaner' our immune systems will either pack up altogether....or more likely go into over drive and increase the number of auto immune illnesses that are about.

Dishcloth user here too, got a drawer full of them and chuck them in the washing machine, usually one a day. Dont use dettol, use the lovely smelling Method spray on worksurfaces.

I use method spray too. Wash surface cloth regularly in the washing machine and just put a clean one out. Don't use detox wipes, do use baby wipes for all sorts of things

When I trained as an Infection Control Nurse we were taught that a huge number of studies had shown that surfaces should be cleaned with a general purpose detergent (washing up liquid) and a paper towel or if cloths were used they should be laundered at high temperatures. The important thing is to remove all organic matter (food, dirt etc) which then will remove bacteria. We were also taught that flushing is the best method if cleaning a loo, never use loo brushes and only use paper towels to wipe round- I do this plus some bleach if needed (!).

Do I do this now - NO! I use CIF as my work tops look and feel sticky if just washing up liquid used, I do use a lot of paper towels and launder the microfibre cloths a few times then discard to the shed/garage for car cleaning.

And nobody ever dies of sepsis these days, do they?

I always feel sorry for dogs living in these disinfected households. Their sense of smell is so strong they can't be happy surrounded by such unnatural smells.
I use a dish cloth and I wipe over surfaces with it. DD2 the biologist says a lot of bacteria doesn't live forever anyway and she uses dishcloths!
Most bacteria is not harmful for us otherwise we wouldn't have survived so long. Throw the Dettol away and stop buying it. Go green,, care for the environment.