How often should an office be cleaned?

Why it matters

Office cleaning schedules usually get set once, by whoever signed the first contract, and then never looked at again. The result is either paying for nights you do not need or a washroom that is embarrassing by Thursday.

Consider a twelve-person accounting office in Abbotsford that is cleaned once a week on Fridays. For most of the year that is fine. In March and April the staff work late, clients are in and out all day, and lunch is eaten at desks. By Wednesday the kitchen bin is overflowing, the washroom is out of paper towel and the boardroom table has rings on it when a client sits down. Nobody decided the office should look like that. The schedule just did not move when the workload did.

A sensible schedule comes from four questions:

How many people use the washrooms? This is the biggest factor. One washroom shared by fifteen people needs attention more often than the whole rest of the office.

Is there a staff kitchen? In our experience the kitchen is what decides whether staff think the cleaning is good, more than the desks or floors. A shared fridge, a microwave and a sink need a wipe-down every visit.

Do clients or patients come in? A reception area sets the first impression. Clinics and medical offices also have disinfection requirements that a general office does not.

What is the floor? Carpet in a wet Fraser Valley winter shows every footprint from the parking lot. Entry mats and more frequent vacuuming from November to March save the carpet.

As a rough guide:

• Once a week: up to about ten staff, few visitors, one washroom.
• Two or three times a week: ten to thirty staff, regular visitors, a used kitchen.
• Daily: clinics, dental and medical offices, food service, gyms, daycares and busy retail.

Whatever the schedule, some tasks are not weekly ones. Interior glass, vents, baseboards and a proper floor scrub belong on a monthly or quarterly list, written down so they do not get forgotten.

How Honourable Cleaning helps

We do not quote commercial cleaning from a calculator, because two offices with the same square footage can be completely different jobs. We walk the space first. A walkthrough takes about twenty minutes and most offices have a quote within one business day.

What you get is a written scope: what is cleaned, how often, on which nights, and what is not included. It also covers access, such as alarm codes, keys, which door is used after hours and where the waste goes. Most of our Abbotsford offices are cleaned two or three nights a week after 6pm, with the time concentrated on washrooms, the staff kitchen and floors.

If your busy season changes, the schedule can change with it. Adding a night for tax season or dropping one over the holidays is a normal request.

Key takeaways

• Start with washrooms and kitchen use, not square footage, when choosing how often to clean.
• Two or three visits a week suits most offices of ten to thirty people. Clinics and public-facing spaces need daily.
• Get the scope in writing, including what is not covered and which tasks are monthly.
• Review the schedule when headcount or season changes, instead of leaving it as it was first set.

Related pages

Commercial cleaning in Abbotsford → All service areas →

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