We clean offices on your schedule

We clean offices in a set order

Office cleaning runs in one direction: top to bottom, and from the back of the space toward the door. We empty the trash and recycling first, so nothing spills onto a floor we already did. Then we dust the high spots, like the tops of file cabinets and the ledges under windows. Desks and counters come next. The restrooms and the breakroom follow, and the floors are always last, vacuumed or mopped on the way out.

You can tell a good visit the next morning. Desks are wiped where they were clear, and nobody's papers have moved. The door handles and light switches are clean, since those are the spots everyone in the building touches. The breakroom sink is dry and the counter has no coffee rings. Carpet shows fresh vacuum lines, and the hard floors have no streaks where the light hits them.

Do the steps out of order and you undo your own work. Dust knocked off a shelf after the floor is mopped lands on a wet floor and dries into a gray film. A desk wiped before the high dusting has a new layer of dust on it by morning. Trash left for the end drips onto clean carpet when a bag tears. Each of these is small, and each one is why an office looks dirty again a week after it was cleaned.

• Trash and recycling emptied, bags replaced
• High dusting done before any desk is wiped
• Desktops and door handles wiped down
• Restrooms and breakroom cleaned with separate cloths
• Floors vacuumed or mopped last

Winter salt ends up on office floors

From December into March, almost everyone who walks into your office tracks in something from the parking lot. Roads and parking lots around Bellingham get salt and sand all winter, and it comes in on boots. Salt dries on carpet and vinyl tile as a white crust. Sand works down into carpet and grinds the fibers every time someone walks over it. The floor just inside the door takes most of it.

So in winter the entrance gets extra time on every visit. We vacuum the entry mat and the carpet around it slowly, going over it more than once to pull sand up from the bottom. Salt does not come off with a vacuum. It has to be dissolved, so hard floors near the door get a damp mop. Then they get a second pass with clean water, so the salt does not dry back into a white haze.

When the rinse gets skipped, the white film comes back as soon as the floor dries, and shoes carry it farther into the office. Over a whole winter, salt dulls the finish on vinyl tile and leaves a stain line in the carpet by the door. Spring brings mud season, and the entrance needs the same extra time with brown dirt instead of white salt. By summer the entrance is easy again, and humid air makes the restrooms the harder job.

The building type changes how we clean

Plenty of small offices around Bellingham and Franklin are in converted wood-frame houses, like colonials and capes on a main road. Those houses have painted wood trim and hardwood floors that have been refinished over the years. Water left sitting on old hardwood soaks into the seams between boards and makes them swell. So we use a damp mop there, wrung out well, and we dry the floor as we go.

The newer one-story buildings in office parks around Franklin are a different job. Most have carpet tile in the work areas and vinyl tile in the breakroom and restrooms. Carpet tile hides dirt. It can look fine for months after it needs a real cleaning, while sand and grit wear it down underneath. Dust shows first on the ceiling vents, as gray streaks around the grille. We vacuum along the walls and under the desks, where a quick pass always misses.

Some offices in the area are in old brick mill buildings with exposed brick walls and wide plank or concrete floors. Old brick and mortar shed a fine dust, and it settles on every desk that sits against a wall. Sealed concrete wears dull over time and holds dirt in its surface. In a building like that, we dust the desks and ledges near the brick on every visit. The floor gets a slow wet mop instead of a quick sweep.

Restrooms and breakrooms get their own cloths

The restroom and the breakroom are the two rooms where a shortcut does real harm. We keep the cloths for each room apart and never carry one from a toilet to a counter where people make coffee. In the restroom we start high, at the mirror and the dispensers. The sinks come next, and we finish with the toilets and the floor around their base. That order leaves the dirtiest surface for last.

Massachusetts summers are humid, and a restroom with no window holds that damp air. Odor builds in the grout around the base of each toilet. A quick mop over the middle of the floor never reaches it, so we clean that edge by hand. Damp air also keeps a mopped floor wet longer, and we wipe it dry before we leave the room. When an office restroom smells, people blame the plumbing, but often the cause is the floor.

In the breakroom, the dirt is food and coffee. We clean the sink and the counters first. Then we wipe the microwave inside and out, and the fridge handle that everyone in the office grabs. A sink drain nobody scrubs starts to smell by the end of a warm week. Crumbs under the coffee maker bring ants in spring, and in an older wood-frame building the ants find their way in fast.

We plan visits around your workday

Every office has a quiet stretch, and that is when we want to be there. For some it is Friday afternoon. For others it is the early morning before clients arrive. Our hours are Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, so tell us when your space is quietest inside those hours. We plan the visits around it, and we work around anyone still at a desk.

How often depends on how many people use the space. A small office with a handful of desks and one restroom can usually go a week between visits. A busier office, or one where clients walk in all day, tends to need the restrooms and the entrance done more often than the desks. We look at the space with you and suggest a schedule, and you decide.

Shining Home Maids has cleaned homes and building offices around Metro West for over ten years. Small or big, every office gets the same order of work on every visit. Some spaces need special handling, like an old hardwood floor or a conference table that has to be ready for a morning meeting. We work those into the plan. Call (508) 816-5094 and tell us about your space.