When you have high hygiene standards when it comes to office cleaning, sharing an office with other people doesn’t help. Especially when you have co-workers that don’t give a damn about office hygiene. Most offices use cleaning companies without taking into consideration that some cleaning jobs may not be getting the attention they deserve.
We compiled a list for you with some helpful tips to elevate your office cleaning game to a whole new level. Keep your working space spotless and have visitors and co-workers wonder how you manage to keep dust, dirt, and germs at bay.
Telephone and Computer Cleaning
Most cleaning companies are contracted to carry out set cleaning tasks. These tasks normally are hoovering the office, cleaning bathroom and kitchen areas, and emptying bins. They tend not to focus on objects or technological equipment in offices.
Employees tend to overlook cleaning telephones and computers. Despite them being one of the places that harbor the most germs and bacteria. Recent researches in the U.S. revealed that the average desktop has 400 times more bacteria than the average toilet seat.
Devote 5 minutes of your office cleaning routine to those devices. All you need is canned air (which can be found almost anywhere) to remove dust out your way with little to no effort. If you’re more obsessed with cleaning than what we estimated, you can take a few more minutes to remove keycaps and soak them in a container of soapy water for a few seconds each. Wipe them good so no water touches key switches or any circuits. Just don’t forget to take a picture of your keyboard beforehand, so you’ll know where to place each one when you’re done.
Declutter Your Desk
All freebies you just couldn’t say no to, now are strewn all over your desk. Yes, we’re talking about all these decorating cups, calendars, an array of cheap pens and business cards you’ve collected over the years.
It may seem like they could be useful at any point or nice decorations when in reality, it’s just stuff that clutters up your space and makes you feel guilty for throwing them away. Once every whenever you feel like it’s necessary, arrange a 10-minute break from everything to sort out which items stay and which go. It’ll make your office look cozier with fewer things being around. Furthermore, you’ll have less stuff to clean from the dust that sits on them throughout the days that pass and they remain unused.
Assign a Place For Everything
Now that we’re done decluttering your office, time to put everything in its rightful place. This is the key to making office cleaning way easier. Find the perfect spot for each item and label the position to find it in a pinch.
Once you get in a habit of putting things away, decluttering becomes a quick task that’s second nature. New items will be added as time goes on, so make sure to keep some empty shelves or drawers. Speaking of drawers.
Sort and Clean Your Desk Drawers
Even the most organized people tend to have at least one desk drawer that gets or is supposed to be messy. Arrange a timeframe when you’ll revisit your drawers while you’re office cleaning. Tidy up what’s needed, throw away papers, folders and general junk and save room for future documents.
A nice addition is using drawer dividers with compartments to keep any paper clips, rubber bands staples, and small items all in one place. An organized person has less time to focus on distractions and delays because of the mess, allowing them to achieve rapid increases in productivity.
File As You Go
One of the biggest office problems is piles of papers. Constantly stacked up on your desk, shelves and eventually your floor. It’s really easy to get caught up in the trap of stacking papers to file for later, eventually having a task too big to handle.
A helpful tip is to process paper as you go. Set up a system of trays or categorize folders with labels. That way it’ll be easier for you to navigate through necessary documents and get rid of old ones that are not needed.
Once that becomes a habit of yours, start doing the same for your computer desktop as well. You’ll realize in no time how much easier it is to find files that were once buried underneath piles. Additionally, saving time searching around frees a lot of time that can be spent on work tasks or even more office cleaning.
Set Up a Fridge Cleaning Schedule
Are you a victim of co-workers mindlessly leaving food to rot in your office’s fridge? It may sound a bit far-fetched, but there are numerous occasions like this. Setting an office fridge cleaning rota is a suggestion for working environments with the aforementioned problem.
A shared kitchen is everybody’s responsibility, as is keeping the fridge clean. Ask colleagues to date food they open it. Asking your office cleaning company to clean the fridge once a week is a plausible scenario as well. If that doesn’t happen, ensure the fridge gets a weekly clean and that food that is close to mutate into an alien life form gets thrown away.
Saving time from office cleaning to focus on office tasks instead will boost your productivity rates. It will also ensure an environment where everyone will feel more comfortable being around. Let us know in the comments below your office cleaning tips and allow the rest of the community to take advantage of them.