Cleaning and restoring handbags: Killing the germs inside your handbags should be an integral part of the process

Handbags are a breeding ground for germs

You use the bathroom at the supermarket, grab your handbag from the hook on the door, wash your hands and continue shopping.

Think you're safe from germs just because you washed your hands with anti-bacterial soap from the convenient dispenser?

Well, think again.

Because, according to studies, the toilet seat in that bathroom probably has fewer bacteria than the handbag you just handled!

Consider these 2 studies, for example...

A study by the University of Arizona found that one-third of the handbags in their study had fecal bacteria present. In fact, some of the handbags were 100 times dirtier than the average toilet seat. While a bacteria level of 200 is considered safe, most of the handbags had bacteria counts in the tens of thousands, and a few had bacteria counts in the millions.

Another study by Nelson Laboratories in Salt lake City investigated the cleanliness of woman's handbags. The results were eye-popping. The handbags in the study tested positive, not only for the presence of bacteria, but for bacteria of the worst kind such as pseudomonas (which can cause eye infections), straphylococcus aurous (which can cause skin infections), and E-coli (which can cause food poisoning).

Of course, this makes sense when you think about it.

You rest your handbag on the floor or seat of your car, on the floor of a restaurant, cafe, bar or movie theater, on the counter at a retail store, on a desk top at an office, on a kitchen counter, and a host of similar locations.

Bacteria transfers from these surfaces to your hands and to the exterior of your handbag. And from your hands and the exterior of your handbag to the interior of the handbag when you dig for something.

All of which points out the need to clean clean both the exterior and interior of your handbags on a more frequent basis.

Handbag cleaning must incorporate sanitizing

At RAVE FabriCARE, we clean many different brands of handbags, many different styles of handbags, in many different colors, with many different finishes, manufactured with many different materials (leather, exotic leather, patent leather, suede, fabric, canvas, nylon, vinyl, etc.) and combinations of materials.

And how do we deal with bacteria that's likely to be found on both the exterior and interior of all these handbags?

Here's how...

After the handbag has been entirely cleaned, we re-clean all the non-leather and non-suede parts of your handbag -- again -- with a specialized antimicrobial cleaner.

Our pH neutral, biodegradable cleaner contains surfactants, citrus and hydrogen peroxide. It's a combination

• degreaser,
• deodorizer (kills odor-causing bacteria),
• sanitizer (kills 99.99% of common bacteria, including Staph, Salmonella, Strep,  and E-coli) and
• virucide (kills 99.99% of specified viruses, including Herpes 2, Influenza AZ/Japan, HIV-1 and Hepatitis B).

Unlike other handbag cleaners, our handbag cleaning comes with a bonus: A deodorized, sanitized and virucided interior and exterior.

We think that's just being thorough. Other handbag cleaners call us paranoid.

So be it. We don't care what they think.