A professional cleaner might visit your office once a day, a few times a week or weekly, but people use it every hour in between. Keeping an office clean between professional cleans comes down to a handful of habits that take minutes, not a rota of chores nobody follows.
This guide is for office managers and staff who want the place to stay tidy from one visit to the next. What the cleaners themselves do on each visit is set out on our page about office and commercial cleaning; here we deal with everything else.
Why the gaps matter
Desks, keyboards, door handles, kettle switches and the washroom taps are touched by many people every day. A cleaner can only deal with them on the day they visit. What happens in between decides whether the office looks cared for on a Tuesday afternoon or only on the morning after a clean.
A daily checklist for everyone
Put this somewhere people will see it, such as by the kitchen door or in the staff handbook:
- Clear your desk at the end of the day, so it can be wiped properly on cleaning days.
- Wipe your own keyboard, mouse and phone once a day.
- Deal with spills straight away, before they dry or get walked across the floor.
- Put rubbish and recycling in the right bin, and squash boxes flat.
- Take cups and plates back to the kitchen before you go home.
- Report anything broken or leaking rather than leaving it for someone else to notice.
None of these takes more than a minute or two, and together they make the professional clean faster and more thorough.
Shared kitchens and break areas
The office kitchen is where good habits slip first, because everything in it belongs to everyone. A few rules keep it in order:
- Washing up: each person washes, dries and puts away their own things. A full sink by the afternoon puts everyone off.
- The fridge: agree a weekly clear-out day, with a rota so the same person is not always throwing out someone else’s lunch. Anything unlabelled goes.
- Worktops: wipe them after making food, not just at the end of the day.
- The microwave: cover food while heating it, and wipe up splashes before they bake on.
Washrooms between visits
Washrooms are the room people judge an office by. Between cleans, the important thing is that problems are reported quickly. Decide who to tell when soap, hand towels or toilet roll are running low, and when a tap drips or a toilet blocks. A note on the inside of the door with a name or an extension number saves a whole day of people walking past the problem.
Reception, meeting rooms and entrances
These are the spaces visitors see first.
- Keep a good mat inside the main door, and a second one outside if there is room. In wet weather, a lot of the dirt on an office floor arrives on shoes.
- Clear meeting room tables after each meeting: cups, papers and pens back where they came from.
- Leave reception free of parcels and post. A cluttered desk by the door is the first thing a visitor notices.
- Wipe up rainwater by the entrance on wet days, so nobody slips.
Splitting the work with your cleaning contractor
The simplest way to avoid gaps, and to stop staff and cleaners doing the same job twice, is to write the split down. List what the contractor does on each visit and how often, then list what staff are expected to do. Review the list whenever the office changes: a new team, a different layout or more people working from home on certain days.
If you are choosing a contractor or reviewing the one you have, our guide on how to evaluate a cleaning contractor covers the questions to ask.
Talk to us about your office
For a regular office clean, call 01483 773531 to talk through your premises, how often you would like visits and what you would like your staff to keep on top of in between. You can also use our contact page to send us the details.