Restrooms Matter More in Commercial Cleaning

No one likes a dusty room or a cluttered work area, but when a restroom looks and smells dirty, it’s somehow worse. Maybe because the business of a restroom is well, something we’d rather not think too much about. But when a commercial restroom smells bad, visitors and occupants in your building are forced to confront the unpleasant and stinky realities of bathroom business. The reality is, restrooms have a disproportionate affect in the perception of your facility. No matter how great everything else in your facility is, if visitors, clients and employees are hit with malodorous smells when they step into your restrooms, they are going to have a strong negative reaction. If your restroom facilities are not clean and fresh, the cleanliness of every other area in your building will be in doubt.

You Aren’t the Only One Concerned About Restroom Odor

Restroom odor is a periodic problem in most facilities for a number of reasons. The issue of restroom cleaning and odors is very real for many Facility Managers. In fact, keeping restrooms clean and smelling good continues to top the list of maintenance challenges. Maybe your commercial cleaning company isn’t doing the deep and detail work they need to keep your restrooms clean and fresh. Maybe you have insufficient venting in your restroom. Or perhaps, you simply have too much traffic in and out of your restrooms to count on only a periodic or nightly cleaning. Or it could be that your restroom materials are porous or problematic for a restroom that sees so many visitors throughout the day. The problem is that even if your restrooms are visually clean, if someone’s nose picks up the offensive smells, they will register your restrooms, and your facility overall, as dirty and ineffectively maintained. There can be no doubt, if you as a Facility Manager don’t insure your restrooms are clean and actively eradicate odor, the image of your company will suffer.

Why Do Office Restrooms Get SO Stinky Anyhow?

Well, for one, it’s not like we go in the office restrooms to arrange a bouquet of flowers right? The business of ‘doing our business’ is kind of smelly. But in a clean, well-ventilated restrooms, these odors shouldn’t linger and build up. In restrooms, especially the men’s room, urine is the main culprit. Urine eliminates water and salt from our bodies and some of the compounds found in urine, including nitrogen, chlorides, proteins and urea can leave behind unpleasant odors when allowed to evaporate and concentrate around your office restrooms. Not only do these compounds get stinky left to collect on surfaces, they provide an ideal buffet for a host of bacteria that also produce offensive odors.

A Basic Restroom Cleaning Isn’t Enough

If your commercial restroom cleaning company is cleaning once daily, this might just not be enough to keep up with your restroom’s visitors. Even periodic day cleaning may include a quick once over like trash removal, restocking supplies, spot cleaning and a quick mop of the floors. But the compounds related to restroom stink aren’t easily removed with a quick mop. And left on a mop that isn’t cleaned and changed frequently enough, these smelly compounds can even be transferred to other restrooms and areas throughout your facility. Even worse, adding moisture with wet mopping without eradicating the compounds and bacteria that feed off of them is likely to make a smelly situation even worse. Urine splashes gather around urinals and toilets, they seep into the grout and collect in hard to mop areas like corners.

Solving Your Smelly Situation

While the help of your restroom cleaning services is critical, it helps you to know what they should be doing to combat filth and odor in your office restrooms. Even a restroom cleaning checklist can be a helpful way of acquainting yourself with the details of the work that must be done to keep your restrooms clean and smelling fresh. While basic everyday cleaning is critical, the big fix in dirty restrooms and combating restroom odor is in deep cleaning. Everyday basic cleaning, while important, just doesn’t attack the real cause of offensive restroom odors. Additionally, day cleaning of restrooms doesn’t really allow for the time needed to let cleaners and cleaning chemicals do the job right. In order to get restrooms clean and smelling fresh, your restroom sanitation service must be advised and allowed the time to deep clean office restrooms.

Deep Cleaning Your Commercial Restrooms

At intervals determined by you and your restroom cleaning service, your facility restrooms should get a thorough, deep cleaning. This means that all surfaces including counters, floors, urinals, sinks, toilets, stall partitions should get a more detailed cleaning with the use of chemical disinfectants. If you can eradicate and remove most of the urine compounds and bacteria, you can stop the smells that stop you cold. Cleaning enzymes and chemical disinfectants are proven to work well for combating germs, bacteria and odor but they need time to work. If proper dwell times are not observed, the removal of the bacteria, and hence the smell, is less effective. Dwell times are the amount of time a manufacturer stipulates that a product must be allowed to remain on a surface wet in order for it to meet efficacy claims of germ removal. Ideally, your commercial restroom cleaning company should spray down areas and let the disinfectant sit and do its job while they carry out other tasks like restocking supplies, cleaning mirrors and removing trash. And your restroom cleaning services should be sure to target porous, hard to reach areas like grout lines and corners as well as thoroughly remove moisture in order to keep the space clean and fresh longer.

Get the Help You Need to Solve the Smelly Problem

Maybe you have been handling your restroom maintenance in-house or perhaps you have an existing maintenance company that just isn’t giving your restrooms the attention and care they require. Either way know this, getting a good value and clean restrooms is not only possible, it can be relatively straightforward. The best janitorial companies and office cleaning companies understand the real benefits of a clean workplace and shiny, fresh restrooms. Not only will they offer the know how and expertise to do the job, they will have systems in place to make sure you don’t have to check and double check their work.