How Often Should an Office Building Be Cleaned?

When deciding how often to schedule commercial office cleaning, remember that a clean office keeps workers and visitors healthier while it makes the workplace tidier. The frequency of regular and deep cleanings will depend on factors such as the size of your office building, how many companies use it and the number of visitors. Learn more about the best way to determine how often to schedule janitorial services to keep your building in top condition.

How Often Should You Schedule Commercial Cleaning Services?

How frequently you need to schedule office cleaning services depends on several factors that affect the cleanliness of the building. For example, offices that stay unoccupied due to holiday leave will not require cleanings as often as those that have regular use. The number of workers also affects the frequency of cleaning as more workers can contribute to a greater need for cleaning. Answer the following questions to help you to decide on a building cleaning schedule best for your facility.

1. Is the Office Building Shared With Other Companies?

Sharing an office building with other companies increases the number of employees. More people in the building creates a greater need for more frequent cleanings.

The types of companies you share the facility will also make a difference. For instance, if one of those other businesses is a doctor’s office or a similar medical facility, you will need to schedule deeper daily cleanings for that space to keep patients healthy. The same holds for any facilities that have children, such as schools or tutoring areas. Children quickly spread germs among themselves, and keeping the areas where they learn and play clean can help prevent outbreaks and keep the kids healthier and parents happier.

If you have an office with only employees entering the area and using their desks, such as a call center or real estate agency without regular visitors, you may only require occasional deep cleanings that include cleaning the carpets supplemented by light surface cleaning and dusting once or twice a week.

Sharing an office building with other companies also means shared restrooms and kitchen areas. Regardless of how often you should clean your commercial office, you need daily restroom and food preparation area cleanings. These areas can harbor bacteria that will spread throughout the office unless you keep these spaces clean.

2. How Many Employees Work in the Building?

If you have dozens of workers, you may require weekly carpet and floor cleanings. A higher number of employees in the building will track in more dirt, especially in rainy weather. To keep floors clean, you should consider carpet cleaning and floor mopping at least once a week. You may only require such services every other week if the building has few employees.

3. How Large Is the Office?

The size of the office also makes a difference. No matter how many employees work in the office, a larger space will require cleaners to take more time to tidy. Vast spaces, such as department stores or similarly sized areas, may require zone cleaning, wherein a cleaning company cleans the whole store over a week, one sector at a time.

4. Do Your Customers Frequently Visit Your Office?

If you have regular visitors, pay close attention to lobbies, restrooms and other spaces they visit. Clean these spaces daily to keep guests happy and leaving with a positive impression of the business. For especially busy offices with frequent visitors, consider scheduling restroom cleanings more than once a day to keep these areas fresh.

How Frequently to Schedule Office Cleaning for Each Area

Each area of the building will require a specific office cleaning schedule. For example, medical offices need daily cleaning, whereas insurance offices may only need weekly cleanings.

1. What Is a Good Office Restroom Cleaning Schedule?

On your professional office cleaning checklist, always include daily restroom cleaning. Daily cleanings will keep these places sanitary for workers and visitors. No one should have to use a dirty restroom, and daily cleanings will prevent that.

If the restrooms have a lot of traffic, they may need cleaning twice a day or more. Have a worker check the toilets several times a day for a week to track how often people visit these facilities and whether twice-daily cleaning will help keep the space in good condition.

2. What Should Be My Office Kitchen Cleaning Schedule?

Because people prepare food in an office kitchen, you will need to clean the surfaces and microwave daily. Once a week, empty the refrigerator to prevent mold growth and food spoilage. While you may have your workers clean up after themselves and remove their leftovers from the fridge, you don’t have to turn over the responsibility for cleaning the kitchen to your employees.

Schedule janitorial services for your office kitchen for a weekly deep cleaning if you can turn over daily tasks to your workers. Otherwise, incorporate kitchen cleaning into the regular restroom cleaning schedule.

3. How Often Should I Get Commercial Carpet Cleaning?

The best schedule for commercial carpet cleaning depends on the type of traffic the building receives. You may include carpet cleaning on your commercial deep cleaning checklist with other tasks, such as removing dirt and dust from air ducts and tile grout. However, if your business gets a lot of traffic or an extended period of wet weather results in people tracking in large amounts of mud and dirt, you may need the carpet cleaned sooner.

One way to schedule carpet cleaning for heavily trafficked offices is to have a cleaning company do the job over the weekend while the office space has fewer people. This timing allows the carpets to dry thoroughly before work begins on Monday morning. For offices that only need infrequent carpet cleaning, schedule this service once a month. Cleaning the carpets should occur at least several times a year to prevent dirt buildup in the carpeting, which becomes harder to remove at the next cleaning session.

4. How Often to Clean Lobby Areas?

Lobby areas greet visitors and workers alike and should have a presentable, clean appearance. Daily freshening of this area may include vacuuming, wiping down surfaces, dusting and washing the windows. Although these are just a few simple tasks, these jobs can dramatically affect how clean the lobby looks. If your facility has a large number of visitors, keep your entry area as clean as the restrooms, and schedule daily services for both.

5. How Often Should I Have My Office Cleaned?

When determining how often to have your office cleaned, consider how many people visit it. If your workspace regularly hosts visitors, you will need more frequent cleaning than if you and your coworkers are the only ones to visit. If you keep your office clean enough by taking care of light chores yourself such as vacuuming, emptying wastepaper baskets and wiping down your desk, then you may only need deep cleaning a few times a year for your work area.

6. How Often to Schedule Janitorial Services for the Exterior of My Building?

The outside of your building will also need attention. Whether you have all glass that needs window washing or a concrete exterior that requires pressure washing, hiring someone with the right tools to do the job is a smart move.

For windows, washing the exterior of your lobby once a month keeps the interior greeting area filled with unobstructed natural light. Visitors will have a positive experience upon entering a clean entry area. For office windows, you may only need cleaning for them a couple of times a year. The exception to this timing is if your office is near a heavily traveled street. Pollution from passing cars can more quickly obscure your windows, requiring more regular washings.

Pressure washing once or twice a year may suffice for typical office buildings. Pollution can increase the number of times you need exterior cleaning, though, as can having a white building exterior. White concrete or stucco can show dirt much easier than darker colors and will need more frequent cleaning. Similarly, if you live in an area with high levels of pollution, the dirt in the air can settle onto your building, requiring cleanings once a quarter or more often.

7. What Is an Effective Office Cleaning Schedule for Daily, Weekly and Monthly Use?

When deciding on an office cleaning routine, you need to determine which parts of the building need attention daily, weekly and monthly.

For daily cleaning, at the very least, you must have the restrooms cleaned. Additional chores could include vacuuming the lobby and other high-traffic areas, cleaning the lobby area by dusting and wiping down surfaces, cleaning out the microwave and kitchen counters and emptying office trash bins.

A weekly office cleaning checklist should include anything that you don’t have done daily as well as wiping down surfaces throughout offices. You may request carpet cleaning in areas that see a lot of foot traffic.

Monthly cleaning services will include deep cleaning that cleans the carpets, floors, upholstery and drapes. You may also need to have your building’s exterior treated through pressure washing or window washing, at least on the ground floor. Upper levels may need less frequent cleanings because visitors do not get a close view of those areas as they do the ground floor. The exterior of these upper floors do not get as dirty as the bottom floor because they sit farther from ground-level pollution.

8. How Often Do Offices Need Deep Cleaning?

The frequency of deep cleanings depends on how much use your office gets. For instance, lightly trafficked offices where only employees enter the working spaces may only require deep cleanings of the carpets, drapes, upholstery, tile grout and air ducts once every six months up to once annually. Offices with a few visitors and employees may require quarterly deep cleanings. However, those workplaces with heavy traffic from visitors and workers will require deep cleaning at least once a month to reduce dirt, dust and stain buildup.

Benefits of a Regular Commercial Cleaning Schedule

Because the average American spends less than 10% of their time outside, the indoor air quality and cleanliness of the places where they live and work is vital to their health. Regular office cleaning can keep workers healthier by reducing disease spread and encouraging total wellness.

1. Prevents the Spread of Disease

Diseases can spread quickly through an office building, stealing employee work time and productivity. To study how quickly germs can spread, researchers put a virus onto one doorknob in an office. After four hours, 60% of those in the facility had picked up the germ. Regular cleaning can prevent such instances by removing bacteria from surfaces such as doorknobs, desks and tables.

2. Retains Workers

A clean workplace also helps you to retain workers. Among those in the tech industry, 93% reported that they would stay longer with their company if offered healthier office space.

A healthy workspace incorporates the seven standards for Well Buildings. These are:

• Air: Preserving air quality through green cleaning practices and encouraging fresh airflow are parts of this standard.
• Water: Encouraging regular consumption of safe drinking water helps keep workers focused on their jobs.
• Nourishment: Promote healthier eating by increasing the availability of fruits, vegetables and other nutritious foods.
• Light: Increase natural lighting where possible. One study found that more natural light reduced worker drowsiness by 10% and led to an 84% decrease in eyestrain.
• Fitness: Promote worker fitness with bike storage, employee showers, accessible stairways and space for workers to move around more freely.
• Comfort: Have ergonomic chairs and desks and accommodate employees, where reasonable, who may need different areas to work.
• Mind: Incorporate more greenery into the workplace to soothe employees’ mental health.

Among these, the most important for office cleaning schedules is air quality. Choosing a cleaning company that uses environmentally friendly products and cleaning methods prevents contamination of the air with toxic chemicals found in many cleaning formulations while removing dirt and dust that can worsen existing allergies and asthma.

3. Saves Time

When you establish a daily cleaning schedule for your office, you save time on booking individual sessions in the future. You can book regular deep cleaning sessions for your workplace, too. Doing this task ahead of time will save you time to focus on more critical aspects of the building’s operations.

4. Leaves a Better Impression on Visitors

Visitors who come to a clean office building immediately have an impression of efficiency and productivity. Though workers usually do not have the responsibility of cleaning their work areas, visitors may not recognize it. Instead, they may blame the company for failing to have a clean office. Regular cleaning, especially of visitor areas such as lobbies and restrooms, leaves visitors with a better impression of all businesses within the office.

5. Helps Carpets and Floors Last Longer

If you have frequent cleanings of your building, stains have less time to set in on carpets and floors. When the time comes to clean these surfaces, the cleaners will require less time and effort to achieve good results because there is less dirt present. Regular cleanings can preserve the lives of your building’s floors and carpets by reducing the number of stains that would lead to replacing these surfaces.

Schedule Office Cleaning Services Today

You need a clean office building, and at Shine Facility Services, we’re here to help. Both our commitment to quality and our use of eco-friendly cleaning products and methods ensure that you get a cleaner building with less impact on the environment and your employees’ health. To verify your satisfaction with our services, we will follow up with you for feedback on our cleaning. We want to make you happy with the cleanliness of your office building.

When you want to schedule an office cleaning routine with us at Shine Facility Services, contact us online. We are just a short email message away from working out the best time to come to your office for regular and deep cleaning services.