When your team is in charge of cleaning an entire office, the community kitchen may not be high on your list of priorities. However, thorough office kitchen cleaning is essential because these rooms receive a lot of heavy traffic. Throughout the day, employees are constantly coming in and out of this room to get coffee, fill up a water bottle, or eat lunch. And, because employees have busy work schedules, they often don't always take the time to ensure that they have properly cleaned the kitchen area where they were preparing or eating food. As a result, dirty dishes and trash may litter this space, creating a variety of opportunities for the spreading of germs and bacteria. This can, in turn, lead to widespread illness in the office. Here are some tips and best practices for office kitchen cleaning.
Touch Points
Office kitchens have a variety of touch points that your custodial team should focus on when they're cleaning. While employees are making a cup of coffee or preparing a meal, they can potentially touch a multitude of products and appliances. As such, you should instruct your team to be wary of the germs that might be breeding on milk or cream bottles, cabinet knobs, faucets, and refrigerator doors. In fact, employees may be carrying germs from other areas of the office to these touch points. For instance, it has been proven that computers are among the dirtiest places in the office. Employees could easily transfer germs from their keyboard to the coffee machine when they go on a quick break.
Soil Removal
When cleaning an office kitchen, your team should focus primarily on soil removal. Spoiled food and spills that linger on counter tops, communal tables, and refrigerator shelves can serve as breeding grounds for bacteria, so it's essential to ensure that your team cleans up these messes as quickly as possible. But the outdated practices of running rags across counters and mops across floors only serve to spread germs around, especially if your team has already used these tools to clean other areas in the office. For instance, if your team uses the same rag to clean a coffee maker that they had already used to clean a stall, they could be transferring dangerous bacteria from the restroom to the kitchen. In this way, rags only prove to be effective when your custodial team has a system in place that urges them to use a new rag or a new side of a rag every time they move on to cleaning a new surface. Your team can also use disposable wipes to clean touch points throughout the day. A squeegee system such as KaiFly also works well for quickly and easily cleaning flast surfaces such as counters and tabletops.
To further prevent cross-contamination, your team can use more advanced technology to clean these surfaces, instead. For instance, spray-and-vacuum cleaning systems are a superior solution because they do not drag bacteria from one room to another. When using these tools, your team should start by spraying the cleaning solution onto the floor. They should let this solution sit to ensure thorough soil removal. Afterward, they should wash the soils loose by using the powerful rinse of water. If soil and food has built up in between tiles or in other hard-to-access areas, your team can use the indoor pressure washer to loosen it. Then, they can use the vacuum to remove any liquid and soil from the surfaces. This will leave the floor clean and dry.
Office kitchens need to be cleaned on a regular basis for a variety of reasons. Because employees sit and eat in these community areas, their cleanliness is of the utmost importance. Furthermore, as these facilities receive a lot of traffic, their major touch points need to be cleaned throughout the day to prevent bacteria buildup. By using these tips and best practices, your team can ensure that employees have a clean, safe area to take breaks.
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