Coronavirus Shoe Changing Station For Disinfecting Soles After Exposure

Coronavirus COVID-19 may remain active on surfaces on average from 4 to 5 days, and even up to 9 days. This is a serious concern and potential means of contagion.

In my view, one’s shoes are a high risk factor.

You might take all appropriate precautions while making that careful grocery store or supply run. You don’t touch anything that you don’t have to. Never touching your face with hands. Disinfecting shopping cart handles. Applying disinfectant upon returning to your vehicle. Washing your hands when you get home (the right way).

However when you return home and enter the premises, you may be tracking in Coronavirus right onto your own floor!

Moreover, when you eventually remove those shoes, you may get the virus on your hands if you happen to touch the soles. And if you subsequently touch your face, nose, mouth, eyes – you may become infected.

Is this being overly paranoid? Heck no! This is real!

[ Read: How Long Coronavirus Stays On Surfaces ]

How Can Caronavirus Get On Your Shoes?

The virus may get on the soles of your shoes when you walk on the virus itself. That’s a logical reasonable assumption.

You can’t see it. But you might best assume that it’s possibly there.

But how does it get on the floor?

>> If and when someone coughs or sneezes who has Coronavirus.

The droplets may spread out 6 – 10 feet and then settle to the floor (and/or anything in it’s path). These distances will vary. Some suggest it may be further. But suffice it to say, you might assume that the floor in these stores might have virus on them (until they are disinfected).

How To Get Coronavirus Off Your Shoes

Spray the soles with disinfectant. That’s what I do now.

If you’re in a warm climate, you can do this outside. Have a chair outside your door, maybe on your porch – wherever. Keep a ‘clean’ pair of shoes next to it.

Sit down. Remove one shoe while not handling the soles. Spray the bottom of the sole. Get it good and wet. Repeat for the other shoe. Let the shoes sit there to air dry on their own. Simply put on your spare ‘clean’ shoes and go about your day.

If you’re in a cold climate or season, set up a shoe changing station right inside your door. Better yet, in the garage before you enter the house (if you have one). Buy one of those plastic boot trays (I have a number of them at home on the floor in my ‘mud room’ entrance. Use that tray as you spray your soles – letting the excess drip off. Place your sprayed shoes to dry.

The Formula

I mix up a solution of bleach water that’s 2500 ppm bleach/chlorine (for non-food surfaces). Enough to put in a spray bottle. A cup or two at a time. I leave the spray bottle at the Coronavirus shoe changing station. Easy.

Use a heavy duty spray bottle designed for chemicals (like this one on amzn) because bleach solution tends to diminish the life of the cheap bottle sprayer mechanisms over time.

Here’s the formula for making that disinfectant solution:

4 teaspoons regular bleach (6% sodium hypochlorite) added to 2 cups water.

This is equivalent to 3/4 cup bleach per gallon of water.

A ratio of 1:22
~ 5%

[ Read: Bleach Water Ratio For Disinfecting ]

[ Read: Make Your Own Bleach With Pool Shock ]