An office can appear clean but have plenty of issues associated with its cleaning, and it can often be a case of the small details. It might be that one cloth is being used in multiple rooms, or maybe the water in the mop should have been changed twenty minutes ago, or maybe a disinfectant was wiped off a surface before it had time to take effect
The former usually goes unnoticed, as does all the other cleaning, so it’s hard to keep track.
The trouble is made when cleaning supplies or bad cleaning habits spread germs from one surface to the next. In an office that is constantly sharing doors, phones, break rooms, conference rooms and equipment all day there are enough opportunities for it to occur. Cleaning should not be adding to it.
Using One Cleaning Rag for Too Many Things
A cleaning rag can cover quite a bit of ground during one shift and that is not always a good thing.
Say someone wipes down a few desks, cleans the conference table and then moves into the break room with the same rag. Whatever was picked up on those first few surfaces is now coming along for the rest of the trip.
Using different colored cleaning rags for different areas can keep things organized for the staff, especially when they have to clean multiple rooms within the same shift.
Giving the Disinfectant Enough Time to Work!
You can easily spot someone using a disinfectant spray and wipe down a surface and it seems normal enough, especially when they have twenty other things to do throughout their shift, right?
But the bottle may say otherwise.
Check the directions before using a disinfectant because the amount of time it needs to remain on a surface is not the same for every product.
And if yesterday’s coffee, crumbs or some other mess is still sitting there, deal with that first. Cleaning off the mess and disinfecting the surface are two separate parts of the job.
Forgetting About the Small Stuff
Floors are hard to forget. So are overflowing trash cans and a dirty restroom sink. People see those things.
A light switch is different.
Nobody walks into the office and immediately notices that the light switch has not been cleaned. The same is true for copier buttons, door handles, shared phones, refrigerator handles and the buttons on the microwave.
Now think about how many hands touch those things.
The refrigerator in a busy break room may be opened dozens of times before lunch is even over. The copier gets used all morning. Everyone grabs the same conference room door handle on the way into a meeting.
Those are the kinds of places that need to be part of the regular cleaning routine, even when they look perfectly fine.
Letting Mop Water Get Too Dirty
There comes a point when mop water is not doing much cleaning anymore.
If a floor is especially dirty, the water in the bucket can turn cloudy pretty quickly. Continuing through another hallway, restroom or office area with the same water can end up moving that dirt around.
The mop itself matters too.
Mop heads, buckets, reusable cloths and other supplies need their own cleaning routine. Nobody wants to grab yesterday’s dirty mop and start cleaning with it again. If the water is looking gross, dump it and get fresh water. Once you are finished, rinse the mop out and leave it somewhere it can actually dry.
Clean Based on Use, Not Just What You Can See.
Something doesn’t need to look dirty in order to be dirty, and something doesn’t need to look used in order to be used. A desk might look fine, but if someone has been sitting there all day, it has probably been touched many times.
Conference rooms are a good example of this as well, as they are heavily used and used repeatedly throughout an entire work week. Unless they are being cleaned after each use, nobody walking into the conference room for a meeting at lunch would be able to tell the difference between a used room and an unused one.
The same goes for all the other high-contact areas throughout the office, even if they are less obvious on first glance. Elevator buttons can be pressed dozens of times throughout a single day, and door handles are touched countless times as well, especially in high-traffic areas.
So do not only go by what looks dirty. If an area stays busy, it is probably going to need cleaning more often.
Office Cleaning Mistakes to Watch For
A quick once-over of the premises during a single shift can highlight a few of the more obvious mistakes, and it’s mostly all the small details. This includes
Cleaning supplies
– Using one rag throughout several different areas
– Letting mop water get noticeably dirty
– Putting cleaning equipment away without cleaning it
– Using restroom supplies elsewhere in the building
Disinfecting
– Wiping disinfectant off immediately
– Ignoring the directions on the product label
– Trying to disinfect over visible dirt or grime
– Using a product on a surface it was not designed for
Around the office
– Forgetting door handles and light switches
– Missing shared phones, keyboards and equipment
– Cleaning break room appliances only when they look too dirty
– Leaving busy common areas until the end of the day
Not every office will have the same trouble spots. Walk through the building during a busy part of the day and you will usually get a much better idea of what people are actually touching.
Partner With a Professional Facility Cleaning Company!
Clean floors and empty trash cans are part of the job, but there is a lot happening around an office that needs attention too.
How the work gets done matters just as much! For a lot of businesses, it just makes more sense to have a professional crew handle the cleaning.
This way, the cleaning schedule can be built around how the building is used, including the areas that get crowded, the surfaces everybody touches and the spaces that need to stay separate during cleaning.
At AmeriStar Facility Solutions, we work with commercial and industrial facilities with different layouts, traffic levels and cleaning needs. Instead of treating every room exactly the same, we can put more attention into the areas that actually need it and keep the cleaning routine working from one day to the next.
Call: (570) 675-5525
Visit our website: www.ameristarfacilitysolutions.com