There are roughly 33 million small businesses in the US. While many of them are retail, manufacturing, or industrial concerns, a healthy percentage of them are strictly commercial operations.
With commercial operations comes a lot of office space. Even with a healthy percentage of the population working from home, that still leaves you with a lot of bodies moving in and out of your office space.
For health and basic safety reasons, you need that office space kept clean. Keep reading for five essential office cleaning tips to help keep that office spic-and-span.
1. Take Out the Trash
While it might not seem like a big deal to let trash sit in small trash cans for a few days, it’s actually a terrible idea. After all, employees will often drop partially eaten food in those desk trash cans after lunch or a snack break.
Discarded food in desk trash cans creates a lot of problems. For one, it can start to smell bad very fast. It’s also a breeding ground for bacteria and may even attract pests.
Take out desk trash every day.
2. Encourage a Clean Culture
While no one wants a boss who micromanages how their desk or cubicle looks, you should put out some expectations. Setting minimum expectations will promote some gentle peer-to-peer discouragement of messy desks.
A few common types of guidelines include:
- Organizing papers before heading home
- Emptying desk trash receptacles before leaving
- Wiping down screens at least once a week
- Dusting keyboards periodically
These kinds of rules set a minimum level of acceptable cleanliness that you’ll enforce.
3. Provide Cleaning Supplies
If you’re going to impose cleaning rules on employees, it’s only fair that you provide the tools for making it practical.
That means keeping some basic cleaning supplies on hand, such as dusters, disinfectant wipes, and paper towels.
4. Focus on Floors
Dirty floors are especially easy for visitors to notice. While it’s less obvious with carpeting, at first, it will become progressively more difficult to make it look clean once dirt gets ground into carpeting.
Sweeping or vacuuming should ideally happen every day. Mopping should probably happen at least once a week or more often, when necessary.
5. Use Professional Cleaners
Of course, there are some tasks that you simply cannot ask staff members to do, such as cleaning bathrooms or windows. You should get professional cleaners for that kind of work.
A basic online search for commercial cleaning services near me can help you identify local companies.
Leveraging These Cleaning Tips
When leveraging the cleaning tips above, you may find it takes time to implement. For example, you can only build a culture of cleanliness over time.
You may also need someone on staff to do basic janitorial duties such as sweeping, mopping, and emptying trash daily. If your office is in dire shape, though, you’ll probably want to jump straight to bringing in professional cleaning services.
Looking for more office management tips you can use? You can find more posts by heading over to our Business section.
