There are many reasons it is important to keep your office clean.  From making a good impression for potential clients or employees to improved worker productivity and enhanced health and safety, a clean office is an effective office.  Nevertheless, approaches to office cleaning vary widely.  Some companies hire professional cleaning services to ensure the office is organized and spotless from top to bottom.  Others expect their regular staff to keep their own workstations clean while only paying professionals to handle bigger jobs like kitchens, bathrooms, floors, and windows.  No matter your company’s individual perspective on office cleaning, these office cleaning tips will help to ensure a happy and efficient workspace.

Get Organized

We can never be too organized –a well-organized office is easy to keep clean.  Start with your cleaning supplies.  It’s always a good idea to maintain a closet or cupboard with all the basic office cleaning supplies.  Glass cleaner, paper towel, dish soap, sponges or cloths, and microfiber wipes should be kept in one place so that everybody knows where to go if they need supplies to clean up.  A designated cleaning cupboard is important whether you contract professional cleaners or not – after all, small messes and spills are bound to happen from time to time.

Beyond the cleaning supplies themselves, make sure your office is organized so all equipment, files, and supplies have a designated place.  Also, make sure to adequately label all storage locations so staff can more easily maintain an organized office.  Ultimately, it’s helpful to limit the amount of paperwork and material on desks so that it’s easier to focus on the job at hand rather than worrying about clutter around a workstation.

Make Cleaning Easy

Ideally, your office should be equipped so that small cleaning tasks can easily and regularly be handled.  Keep a supply of keyboard and monitor wipes, and eve antibacterial wipes so that staff can wipe down their own desks and equipment at the end of the day or week.  You can also install large recycling bins so that employees can easily empty their own recycling when personal bins get full.  If staff members frequently eat in the office, consider having a separate bin for food waste and/or compost.  Ensure that this bin is emptied at least every other day.

With respect to shared eating spaces like office kitchens or break rooms, develop a system to ensure that expired food doesn’t build up in the fridge.  You can require that staff label containers in the food with their name and date, so that you can easily remove unlabeled or past due items.  Similarly, install a dishwasher or encourage staff to clean shared dishes after every use.

Regularly Review your Policies

Finally, in order to ensure that you maintain a clean office, it is important to review and update policies that aren’t working.  Identify the major cleaning issues that plague your office and consider creative solutions.

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Properly maintaining your carpets involves a regular cleaning schedule.  Not only should you vacuum your carpets frequently (most carpet cleaning experts recommend vacuuming at least on a weekly basis), but they should also be steam cleaned regularly.  But what exactly does “regularly” mean?  How often should you clean your carpets?

This is actually a very common question, to which there isn’t really a defined answer.  For new carpets, you should be mindful of the conditions in your warranty.  Most carpet warranties require that carpets are professionally cleaned at least every 12 to 18 months in order to keep the warranty valid.  But, once the warranty has run out, there are many factors to consider when determining how frequently you need to clean your carpets.

Some homeowners make the false mistake of thinking darker coloured carpets need to be cleaned less frequently, but this is simply not true.  On the contrary, because visible signs of soiling are not always obvious on darker-coloured carpets, you likely want to clean these carpets more frequently in order to reduce dust and allergens in your home.  So what factors do you need to consider?

Manufacturers Rrecommendations

First and foremost, consider your manufacturers recommendations with respect to frequency of cleaning.  While they’ll usually suggest relatively frequent cleaning, their recommendations are typically based at least in part on the type of fabric used in the carpets.  Ultimately, it’s important to note that regular steam cleaning will help increase the life expectancy of your carpets.  Standard recommendations suggest cleaning at least every 2 years.

Traffic

Do you have pets or young children?  Is the carpeted area in a heavy traffic room or a low-use room?  Not only are carpets that are subjected to heavy traffic more likely to become stained, they’ll also accumulate more dirt and dust that may or may not be visible.  If your carpets are located in high-traffic areas, consider cleaning them more frequently.  Obviously, you can spot clean stains between cleanings, but annual or biannual cleanings in high traffic areas are recommended for rooms that see a lot of action.

Cleanliness

The final consideration you should make when deciding how often to clean your carpets is daily maintenance.  If you vacuum your carpets regularly, have a “no shoe” policy, or if you don’t have pets, you can probably schedule carpet cleanings less frequently (i.e. every two or three years).  However, if you avoid vacuuming like the plague, you probably want to schedule yearly cleanings in order to keep your carpets in their best condition.

Remember, more frequent cleaning is not a problem and many carpet cleaning experts will recommend annual cleanings.  This not only improves the life expectancy of your carpets and keeps them looking great, but also lends to a more hygienic home environment.

Under the umbrella of commercial cleaning you’ll find professionals offering services for a wide range of businesses from office and industrial cleaning to retail cleaning.  If you are looking for retail cleaning services, you’re sure to find a number of contractors that can tailor their cleaning to your company’s needs.  Regardless of the types of cleaning services you require, working with a professional helps to ensure your retail space reflects the quality and excellence you’d like your company to demonstrate.

When it comes to retail cleaning services, you might be surprised to learn that cleaning companies offer everything from post-construction cleanup and emergency cleaning to floor and surface cleaning, bathroom cleaning, and even parking lot services.  Ultimately, as a retail business owner, your job is to identify some the most important cleaning tasks for your business and then tailor a cleaning contract with a professional cleaning company.  Some of the tasks that might be necessary for your retail business include:

• Regular cleaning and disinfecting of bathrooms
• Window cleaning
• Pressure washing exterior building surfaces and/or sidewalks
• Replacing light bulbs and cleaning light fixtures
• Washing walls and product shelves

Still, you might be wondering why you would hire a professional cleaning company for your retail space rather than paying your own employees to do it.  There are a number of important reasons to contract retail cleaning services to a specialized company.  First and foremost, research shows that employees are more productive when their duties are focused, but also when they work in a clean environment.  This means your employees should focus on the retail side of your business, but should also be working in a clean store.  Similarly, whereas you would need to train each of your employees in proper cleaning techniques, expert cleaners would already have all the training they need.

Another reason to hire professional retail cleaners is that they have the expertise to get the job done right.  Not only do contract cleaners have all the supplies and equipment they’ll need to effectively and thoroughly clean your retail space, but they’ll also be accountable for the job they do.  In general, companies offering professional retail cleaning services will get the job done more thoroughly and faster than your store employees.

When it comes time to choosing retail cleaners for your business, always conduct a thorough search.  You could speak with other retail business owners in your area about where they source their cleaning services, but you should always create a shortlist of candidates before making a final decision.  Ask each candidate for a list of references and make sure to speak with them about which types of cleaning tasks you require.  When you check references, make sure that the cleaning company has worked in a similar space and fulfilled similar cleaning tasks.

Flu season is upon us and that means we’re all at risk of at least missing a few days of work to this seasonal illness.  Perhaps the main and most effective way to prevent the flu is to get vaccinated, and considering the prevalence of new strains of the flu such as H1N1 (swine flu), this really is your best course of action.  Still, for one reason or another, not everybody can or wants to get the flu vaccine.  So what are some other methods of preventing flu?

Keep your Hands Clean

This is a no-brainer.  Regular and thorough hand sanitation is an important step in preventing all kinds of contagious illness including the cold and flu.  During flu season, health experts recommend keeping a hand sanitizing solution on you at all times.  You should have a supply at your work, home, in your car, and even on your person.  Fortunately, there are many excellent hand sanitizers on the market nowadays, and you can even get a personal size that you can easily carry in your pocket or purse.  And here’s a tip for saving money: buy one personal sized sanitizer for everybody in the family but refill them from a larger, more cost effective bottle.

In addition to hand sanitizer, you should also thoroughly wash your hands several times a day.  This includes washing between fingers, under finger nails, and your palms and the back of your hands as well.  After using the washroom, scrub your hands with soap and try to avoid contact with tap and door handles.  Also, when you come in contact with other people (especially if they are showing signs of illness) or after using public transportation, wash or sanitize your hands.  This will help prevent the spread of the flu virus.

Disinfect!

Not only do you want to keep your hands clean, but you should also thoroughly disinfect areas of your home or office that are frequented by multiple people.  You can find disinfectant sprays at your local supermarket, and even disinfectant wipes that make it easy to quickly wipe keyboards, telephones, and door handles.  Especially during the cold and flu season, you should think about all the places that are touched frequently – the fridge door, kitchen counters, television remote controls, etc.  Keeping these areas disinfected means they’re germ free.

At the First Sign of Illness

Sometimes, all the preventative measures in the world won’t prevent you from getting sick.  As soon as you start to feel an itch in your throat or other early signs of flu, you need to act.  Gargle with an alcohol-based mouth rinse or a solution of warm salt water to kill germs in your throat before they take hold.  Always cough or sneeze into a tissue or the crook of your arm to prevent depositing germs on your hands where it’s easier to spread them around the house.  You could also consider wearing breathing protection, like a surgical mask, to contain your illness and keep your family from getting sick too!

A clean office is an efficient one, where the health and safety of employees along with a general attitude toward organization is valued.  Still, the question of whether to hire in-house staff to provide janitorial services or whether to outsource these services is an important one.  Ultimately, you want to get the best bang for your buck while ensuring that your office staff can be as productive as possible.  So what are the main benefits of outsourcing your company’s janitorial services?

Expertise

You might not realize it, but there are actually different kinds of cleaning companies often offering disparate services.  There are even differences between companies when it comes to the experience of their staff.  Depending on the type of company you operate, you’ll likely find a number of cleaning companies that can provide you with the services you need.  But remember to take care when selecting a janitorial service, traditional cleaning companies or even your own company may employ cleaning staff at minimum wage, while franchises are generally operated by their owners who invest their own time, money, and effort into the quality of service they provide.  It should come as no surprise that owner-operators are often more dedicated to the job.

Availability

By outsourcing your janitorial services, you can generally find a company that can work within the parameters of your business.  If you require cleaning staff on the weekends or evenings, or even on holidays, a contracted janitorial company will likely always adapt to your needs.  This often means as a company owner you have peace of mind knowing that you never have to stress about replacing a sick cleaner or rescheduling cleaning jobs for any reason.

Quality

Janitorial companies must provide a standard of quality or they won’t be in business for long.  If you opt to hire your own cleaning staff, you will be responsible for reviewing and managing the quality of the cleaning work.  On the other hand, janitorial companies are motivated to ensure their standards are always achieved, or they risk losing business.  Moreover, specialists are more likely to have the products and equipment to ensure the highest standards of hygiene and health.

Budget

Most janitorial companies offer a range of services that can be tailored to the needs and budget of your company.  Even if one company doesn’t offer the services you need at a price you can afford, you’ll have many alternative cleaning companies to consider.  Ultimately, you’ll be able to develop a schedule of cleaning services within your budget without concerning yourself with the day-to-day management of a janitor.  More importantly, business owners often discover that they save money on maintenance, staff, equipment, and cleaning products that are related to cleaning services.