When no amount of air freshener masks the bad smells in your restrooms, the culprit might be your office cleaning. Really, properly cleaned restrooms should never need chemical air fresheners to mask odor, rather, they should have a neutral, clean scent. The reality is that strong chemical odors are not the solution. Restrooms are an important part of your facility’s image and if your restroom smells like something died in it or like a science lab, you can be sure its going to impact the overall impression visitors and staff have of your facility.
Restrooms have one of the strongest impacts on perception and a poorly cleaned restroom is sure to stick out in someone’s mind even if your facility is otherwise in good shape. No one looks forward to using a shared public restroom, so for the sake of your customers and your reputation, partner with a cleaning company that pays special attention to restrooms leaving them clean and smelling fresh.
It does not matter what kind of facility you manage, restroom smell is always something you should be conscious of. Even the most competent and effective commercial cleaning companies may have issues with restroom odors simply because restroom cleaning must be on target as these spaces get used so often. So, what's the secret to handling these sometimes smelly situations? Is it your janitorial services provider that isn’t doing enough? Is the restroom cleaning more of a surface clean with important deep cleaning left incomplete? Are there issues of plumbing or materials that you as a Facility Manager need to address? Are you allocating enough cleaning time and budgeting enough to assure your restrooms are adequately cleaned?
The answer to this question is that both you and your cleaning company likely need to be doing more to make sure the restroom area smells fresh and looks clean. On your side, communicating the amount of traffic that each restroom gets on a day to day basis can help give your cleaning company a rough estimate of how often they need to be cleaning and restocking. For your commercial cleaning service, they need to be acutely aware of where smells are coming from and how best to mitigate them. Regardless of how clean your restroom looks, if there is a noticeable foul smell, it isn’t going to reflect well on you or your facility.
The best way to deal with restroom smells is to understand where they come from and how to best eradicate them. Most well ventilated and regularly cleaned restrooms don’t have a problem with the normal smells associated with using them. Offensive odors usually arise when other issues are at play. The most typical culprit with regard to restroom odor is urine. Urine is in large parts urea, nitrogen, proteins and other bodily wastes that can collect in all kinds of places creating foul smells.
Not only does urine have a noticeable stink, but when it is allowed to collect and linger in areas like around drains and seeped into porous tile grout, bacteria feed off of the urine and emit their own foul odors contributing to the smell. If your commercial cleaning service isn’t taking the time to properly clean grout, porous surfaces and the areas around urinals and toilets this smell will quickly become overwhelming. The single best way to eliminate odors in the restroom is deep, effective cleaning.
If you notice that your restrooms tend to start clean but seem to get dirty quickly, it might be time to look into more regular cleaning. Busy facilities often need to have their restrooms cleaned more than once daily to deal with the heavy traffic they receive. This can take the form of a nighttime cleaning service or a day cleaning service or day porter service dedicated to making sure that the restrooms start clean and stay clean. These touch ups and quick clean ups can help keep your restrooms stay fresh, clean and well stocked between the deeper, more intensive cleanings. Removing trash, refilling consumables, and giving everything a wipe down and mopping can go a long way to making the restroom look and smell inviting. Deep cleaning, required to effectively remove odors that can’t be reached by a cursory cleaning, can be done other times when the building is not busy.
After speaking to a number of Facility Managers about how they go about keeping their restrooms clean, we’ve found that many of them have success with a restroom cleaning checklist to help direct and evaluate their cleaning service. A restroom cleaning checklist can help address problems and missed work proactively and even gives your cleaning service a clear framework for taking corrective action. In order to do this however, you need to know exactly what goes into proper restroom cleaning. If you are looking to keep your restroom sparkly clean and smelling neutral and fresh, it’s important to know what constitutes effective restroom maintenance.
Restroom cleaning can be a great gauge of how well you commercial cleaning company is doing overall. If your restrooms aren’t receiving the attention they need, it might be time to start looking for a new Michigan cleaning service. You can find a professional cleaning company that knows how to deliver consistent, effective service, including keeping your restrooms in tip top condition. Even better, there are tools out there to help you find the right cleaning company at an affordable price. The ISSA’s CIMS and CIMS-GB certification is a powerful tool to find companies that have gone above and beyond the industry standard to deliver a responsive, professional service. CIMS certified cleaning companies are far more likely to meet or exceed industry best practices to deliver the kind of effective service you desire.