I suspect you may be overthinking this. I've read lots of advice on what to do with groceries, and it is pretty consistent: the chance of picking up Covid19 from food is very small because it's a respiratory, not a food-borne, disease. So, don't go overboard with storing food outside (where it may get contaminated with other pathogens) and definitely do not wash vegetables and fruit with soap and water (soap is not approved for human consumption). The expert advice I've read is just to rinse with water as you would normally do. At the moment, I do all of this in the kitchen, but I'm thinking of switching to doing it in the laundry, which is beside the kitchen but not in it, and has a decent sized sink.

I do rinse of all my grocery bags and store them outside after use, and I obviously wipe down all surface the bags, or the food, might have come in touch with, and boy do I wash my hands.

I haven't bothered to wash mail ( we don't get much anyway) but I do dispose of the envelopes in the recycle bin outside pretty quickly (and then wash my hands again).

The hand washing and avoiding touching one's face is the most important thing we can do. And of course, social distancing while in the supermarket.

I don't disinfect anything brought into the house. We just wash our hands after putting away the groceries or whatever. That was routine for us normally. Most groceries are stored downstairs or fridge in the garage and the few bags that do come into the kitchen are placed in the sink to be put away. The only thing I do differently is clean my hands and the door handle with
a alcohol wipe in the car after shopping. My mask is put in the laundry and hubby's n95 is baked.

Lets see:

I live in a multi dwelling building. Common entry, common laundry , common trash room. I can't control a neighbor, or who that neighbor has for family, friend or activities. I can't control a single thing other than my own space and me.

I' m a bit neurotic on tidiness and cleanliness long before ANY virus. ....I keep the trash room neat!! I go in there every day, consolidate and break down cardboard. Have I stopped ? No. I swab the laundry. Have I stopped ? No. You may ask, why was I EVER doing this? Any of it? Because.............people are slobs. Because the belief is "someone else" will deal with the mess I just left. Someone else will deal with the communal mail drop with the fliers and catalogues ( nobody takes them ) so I deal with them like this: I toss ALL OF THEM in recycle the day of delivery. Mine, and everyone's.

The only change to all above? Immediate and incessant hand washing. Like THE second after.

Am I doomed to get" it", to die? Who knows? ( I do think I already had it actually, in January) Am I cavalier? No, but I don't like the common cold, either. Hence, I would sneeze directly into a five hundred dollar cashmere sweater, before I would touch my face. I never liked "close talkers" or the faux huggie kiis kiss thing, have been known to put out an arm with "three feet please!" , and now that is six or eight.

My point?

At some point, everyone will get it, or a version of it. MOST will not die. SOME will not know they even had it. Some, will in fact, die. Just as they do from flu and a host of other illnesses. What we're doing now, is "preventing" ( attempting it ) all the people from getting sick, at all. Can we keep it up? No we can not. We can't because it goes against the nature of humanity. We are going to impoverish a country and our way of life. The impoverish aspect? Hugely important, as poverty does lead to poor health, poor living conditions, many times. We are going to exhaust ourselves , thinking about nothing else, other than this invisible germ. Boys and girls will not meet, and then kiss ? You won't go to a wedding again or everyone including the bride will wear a mask?

How long you can "live" with anything, depends that thing you are living with. There is no cure for population density, no control of the habits of others, no control for any life other than your own. ......and even that has limits.

Wash your groceries if you like. Wash every knob. surface , you touch. Don a mask if you like,

Me? I'm going to keep the six feet as much as possible. My hands, will remain immaculate and often raw, and I will go broke on moisturizer. I will NEVER EVER touch my face, ( unless washing it with hands already washed ) but that is nothing new. The rest is prayer, and scientists. Really, really, soon. Along with the fact, that we are going to have to allow folks to get it.................and count on most of them to live.

Do not touch your face. Take a lesson from granny. tuck a tissue up your sleeve. That thing in your eye? .......tissue around a finger, or suffer until you have immaculate hands and nails. On average, people touch 16 times PER HOUR. Your face, and its five entry points, are the ONLY way this virus gets into you.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-to-not-touch-your-face

Clarity for the sake of the hypothetical:

-I wasn't proposing disinfecting the actual food; just the packaging, basically, plastic, metal, and cardboard.

-20-second (at least) hand washing is a given.

Fact: virulence and fatality of COVID 19 are not remotely comparable to the flu bug that comes around every year.

Our grocery stores do not allow reusable bags right now so every bag is brand new off a roll that a cashier wearing gloves handles and then me to the car. IMO you can get very paranoid and drive yourself crazy. I use the sanitizing station at the store on my way in and on my way out. I wash my fruit and veggies like I always did and wash my hands for 20 sec with soap and water. Our grocery stores have direction signs in the aisles so you do not pass too close and markers on the floors to keep us 6 ‘ apart. If you want to wear a mask do so it is only protecting other people not you since you should just be wearing a mask that is not a medical mask at all they are for the acyual people taking care of the sick. If you are sick saty home.

My husband still has to work. There's no way we can keep everything out of the house, even if I kept *him* out of the house..but he can't live at the department or in his squad car, so I'm kinda stuck w/the big lug. On a FB group, the wives are discussing their ways of handling it. Which involves Clorox wipes containers everywhere, sanitizer, Lysol spray, spouses completely disrobing in the garage, spraying their clothes, putting them in plastic bags, washing clothes immediately, streaking thru the house to shower immediately, and spraying Lysol/using wipes like they're the last bastion of health and safety..sanitizing hands, then getting a wipe to wipe down the wipe container, new wipe to open the door, new wipe to shut the door..one husband calls his wife, she meets him at the door, masked and gloved up, and they go thru this whole rigamarole, and the kids are not allowed out of their rooms until he's done showering. We're doing what we can, following the recommendations.

I have a UV light if the sun isn’t out, I lay out everything and let the photons take care of what the Lysol and Clorox didn’t get. I have a shallow bleach pan for shoes, though they don’t come in the house. Stay safe, stay home unless you’re essential or doing essential tasks.

My BF and myself are still going to work every day. He works on analytical equipment and I in molecular/microbiology. We take our shoes off in the garage (always have), dump our stuff on the washer/dryer just inside the door then wash our hands in the kitchen a few steps further into the house. We then wipe down our lunch and work bags and the door handles and counters we touched and decontaminate the sink. We do change clothes, to exercise, but not immediately.

That said we are in our 40-50's and healthy. We wash our hands and carry sanitizer in our cars. Being more exposed than most, we have strictly segregated ourselves from all neighbors, friends, family, even the UPS guy.

Dr. on TV suggested that when you wash your hands, you wash your face after, since virus can live there and you probably have touched your face without realizing it. If you want to wash your veggies, I suggest using 10-20 drops of grapefruit seed extract in a sink of water and soaking them for 20 minutes. You can ingest the extract remaining on them unless you're taking a drug that interacts poorly with grapefruit. Many hospitals use this product for sanitizing.

A big chunk of where I'm coming from in this hypothetical is that I'm seeing many folks on this forum building homes with laundry rooms, mud rooms twice the size of my bedroom, pet washing stations, dual dishwashers, 2 sets of washers and dryers, elaborate recycling setups..... In other words, there are a lot of "shedding and cleansing" stations. However, I've not seen anyone discuss "designing for a pandemic" or "disinfecting stations" in terms of home layout needs.

So, I'm wondering whether y'all are integrating this into your thoughts about design and layout, if your sense of "shedding and cleansing" has changed now that we're in an era of "serious disinfecting".

Showers at the back door? Wall-mount Purell? Set-aside countertops? House clothes and outdoor clothes separated? Etc.

Another reason I'm asking: the high likelihood we'll see another pandemic in this generation that we'll have to accommodate. This is a long-term practicality. Scientists are saying to expect more of the same, because the world is so mobile and congested, and global warming has meant new diseases (e.g. Zika, MERS, Lyme) coming out of the woodwork (so to speak) regularly. Plus, in many places, there's no longer herd immunity for major diseases like measles because people are choosing not to vaccinate.

So, what are your thoughts and practices from a design point of view?

I take my shoes off immediately upon coming home from the store. I unload my groceries and put them away ... no sanitizing. Then, I wash my hands thoroughly. When I get a package delivered, I bring it in, wash my hands, and set it aside for 24 hours before opening. I don’t think any special area is necessary to address the sanitation required for the pandemic. Many of these measures are things we should be doing anyway.

My guess is there's a certain subset of people able to design houses that would be 5 times the size of mine in order to contain all of those things-nobody around my neck of the woods is doing that. Even if money magically fell into my lap that I could renovate our entire property right now-I'd not be adding any of that as there's no room. Regardless, at some point we're going to germ-free sanitize ourselves right into being able to withstand absolutely *zero* germs and it will take far less than Covid or SARS or MERS to cause a pandemic.

^^^^^

Yep, humanity survived hundreds of years of the Black Death. This is nothing to get all excited about. We all gotta die of somethin '!

There are plenty of advice columns about how to deal with this outbreak - and the one thing they all have in common is endorsing plain old soap and water for hands, countertops, door handles and light switches. I don't see any real need for a disinfection station per se. Basically, the real risk of catching the virus isn't from carrots or countertops but from people. Social distancing comes first. Basic cleanliness covers the rest.

We don't have any sort of disinfecting station. Groceries come into the house and get put on the counter in kitchen. They get put away like normal. Bags get thrown out. I wash my hands and use disinfectant wipe on counter where groceries were set down. Any packages coming into the house get unboxed on kitchen counter, boxes get chucked in garbage can or outside until we can get to the dump. I wash my hands and disinfect counter area where packages were set down. DH is the only one who has been going out to get groceries. He has disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer he uses before touching anything in the car. He washes his hands right when he gets in the house. I use a disinfectant wipe on the front door handle. Other then those things we don't do anything much different. I don't disinfect the mail either. Just open it like normally soon as we get it, wash hands disinfect counter where it was placed.

I do have to wonder what other problems all this disinfecting will cause.

tangerinedoor speaking of small spaces: I read a bunch of different stories from healthcare workers where they shed their clothes outside their front door (whether that's a house or apartment building), and leave them in a bag. the neighbors know why and completely understand!

Your face. Pretend it is coated in barbed WIRE. Every single thing we're being advised to do, is in the end, about that face. Your face, my face, his, hers !! . Freedom means freedom to be as neurotic as one chooses to be. Advice changes almost hourly, from scientists to doctors to talking heads on the tube. It's still all about our faces. ......and the germ infested hands that can not touch that face. Watch a video, please......and maybe that face might smile, just a bit.

https://www.silive.com/coronavirus/2020/03/coronavirus-straight-answers-from-a-doctor-on-the-front-lines.html

I’m doing it all. I’ve been a bit germconscious for a while. The first six months of 2019 I’d catch a cold if someone sneezed across the street. By July I was feeling wiped out.

I’ve was wearing a mask before they finally recommended it.

This is not anything I think I could afford to tackle.

Being too careful is not going to kill me. Not careful enough? It might.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not curled in a ball covered in plastic. I HAVE to venture out. I do everything I have to do, just carefully.

following.. groceries get brought in, placed into sink, hands washed, packages are wiped down with Clorox wipes, if necessary packing materials removed, fresh vegs washed & placed into the fridge, any paper bags removed to go in outside recycled bins. sink cleaned out & anything that can go into the pantry, is placed outside for 48 hours first. counters/ island wiped down with Clorox wipes again.

That's a great idea, Cheryl, just to plonk everything in the sink and go from there. I have a table set up near my entrance door with a set of paper towels, scissors, kitchen gloves, disinfectant, etc. on it, but using the sink is quite genius.

I'd have to clear off the rest of the countertop in advance so nothing on it gets contaminated, but a little planning, and...

I wash my hands at least 3 times after a grocery haul. Always have. Disinfecting and/or quarantining everything paper or cardboard (medical professionals don't know how long virus particles stick to this, but likely they stick well) is a new thing for me, though. I haven't had a cold for 11 years.

If you haven't had a cold for eleven years? Kudo's to you and you "must have done something good" as the song would say, or you never leave your home. The average is I believe two per year /most folks. ! Be proud, . You catch this the very same way you catch a common cold. The five viscous entry points on your cute little face.

Here's our routine:

1) Box deliveries (Amazon, etc.) sit overnight in an out-of-the way Quarantine Corner. that's enough for cardboard.

2) Bag deliveries, we bring in, open bag, wash hands, take out stuff inside (without touching bag handles), throw away bags, wash hands, and then put everything away where it goes. Bags are the only concern; groceries will have an overnight quarantine in most cases, just naturally, and delivered food is taken out of containers and put onto plates before consumption. (Wash hands again before eating!)

No decontamination station, just an overnight for boxes. This follows all the recommendations and voices of reason I've encountered. See this for some reassurance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/26/dont-panic-about-shopping-getting-delivery-or-accepting-packages/?utm_campaign=wp_week_in_ideas&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_ideas 

Spraying down everything in sight seems like overkill and probably makes you more anxious rather than less.

I didn't bookmark it, but someone posted on Facebook a video of a young woman who had lived with and honest-to-goodness immune system disorder. Living with that, and then having what remained of her immune system destroyed so she could receive a bone marrow transplant, she had this advice:

1) Washing hands for 20 seconds was not even the minimum for her, more like 40 seconds, at least. Never touching her face, especially her eyes, nose and mouth. Washing before she ate, and all the other times one would normally do that.

2) Keeping the frequently touched areas of her home clean. That means cleaning counters, handles, the fridge, the oven, everything that's touched a lot, *then* disinfecting those things.

3) She stayed away from people she didn't know were healthy. I can't remember if she wore a mask, but it seems likely. These tactics kept her alive long enough to get a transplant and have it succeed. It seems if it worked for her, it would work for most people.

It's not a matter of how long viruses "stick" to things. Forever. But viruses die. They die quicker on porous things that wick the moisture away (cloth, cardboard) than sweaty, sticky handrails.

If I left groceries on my porch the larger beasties in nature (deer, raccoons) would be having a feast. I suppose they could stay in the garage, but chipmunk and squirrel droppings don't make the food more palatable. Obviously, refrigerated food needs to go there.

If I saw another customer pawing at or picking over food, I'd tell the store management and let them deal with it.