Fall is often considered America’s favorite season brimming with football games, spectacular leaf colors and pumpkin patch outings. While all these are fun activities outdoors, fall is also the time to turn your attention indoors to deep cleaning the office. Autumn is the ideal time to shore up those long-ignored office chores.
October is the kickoff of flu season and combined with the COVID-19 virus and seasonal colds, fall cleaning is one of the best ways to reduce office germs before they get the upper hand. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calculates that flu illness alone costs U.S. employers and businesses roughly $10.4 billion per year in hospitalizations and outpatient visits.1
For more than 55 years, Midwest Maintenance has helped business after business spruce up their buildings and prepare for winter ahead. Here are our top office areas we clean, sanitize and deep clean in fall.
1. CARPETS
Every day employees and guests track in dust, dirt and grime. Their shoes are also a host for bacteria, viruses and pollens that lead to asthma, respiratory ailments, flu and other quickly spread illnesses. Leading U.S. microbiologist, Dr. Philip Tierno, reports that carpet fibers are 4,000 times filthier than a toilet seat.2
Our thorough fall carpet cleaning features deep extraction or hot water extraction with top professional cleaning products to tackle high-traffic areas to individual office spaces. Autumn and wintertime snow, slush and rain are no match for our commercial carpet cleaning services.
2. FLOORING
With the crunch of fall leaves and cooler weather, all kinds of debris make it onto your office floors. You may not realize it, but even the porous grout between your floor tiles foster mold and germs. For effective fall cleaning, you need more than an occasional spot mop. Our floor care experts efficiently strip, wax, seal, burnish and refurbish your company’s floors from tile and ceramic to laminate and vinyl composite tile (VCT) and beyond.
3. WINDOWS, BLINDS AND WINDOW TREATMENTS
Months and months of warm weather and dust can coat your office windows on both the outside and inside. Letting the sun shine in actually boosts employee moods and lowers stress and anxiety.
Our commercial window cleaning teams work with any type of building window including fixed, sliding, casement and pivoted, transforming grime to shine. We use a Pure Water Cleaning technique that reduces labor by over 50%. Traditional window cleaning supplies are harsh and harmful, but our cleaners are eco-friendly and easy on the air you breathe. Another plus to our fall cleaning is a detailed vacuum of dusty window treatments and a full wipe down of grungy blinds.
4. OFFICE FURNITURE
Our professional cleaning services first get rid of any surface dirt on upholstery so the grime does not imbed deeply into the fabric. We work out any stains on the material and then do a complete clean so every chair, sofa and ottoman in the building looks and smells fresh.
5. KITCHEN
Sometimes the dirtiest places in the office are the ones you probably don’t think about. The kitchen harbors a number of bacteria and germs on the sink faucet handle. A number of research studies have found that workplace refrigerator handles are highly contaminated with active bacteria. A Kimberly-Clark Professional study finds bacteria contamination up to 47% for microwave door handles.3 But no worries, our commercial cleaning pros know just where to look for hidden kitchen germs to keep everyone safe and productive.
As cleaning and janitorial services experts year-round, we also recommend a thorough fall cleaning of walls, ceiling light fixtures and office computers and desktops. And don’t forget our comprehensive disinfecting and sanitizing services. Our innovative Clorox® Total 360® System advanced electrostatic spraying kills 99.9% of bacteria in five seconds and more than 40 organisms including MRSA and norovirus in two minutes or less. We also offer ultra-low volume fogging, touch point cleaning and day porters for an extra disease-fighting edge throughout your workplace.
Midwest Maintenance has your business covered with our health-restoring cleaning services so this fall you can work hard and then catch some football games and carve up the best pumpkin on the block.
1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “A Toolkit for Businesses and Employers, https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pdf/business/toolkit_seasonal_flu_for_businesses_and_employers.pdf.
2 Allergy Consumer Review, Jennifer Frye, “What’s Lurking In Your Carpet?,” https://www.allergyconsumerreview.com/whats-lurking-carpet.html#sthash.6gw7nFIn.dpbs.
3 Kimberly-Clark, “Where the Germs Are,” https://investor.kimberly-clark.com/news-releases/news-release-details/where-germs-are-new-study-finds-office-kitchens-and-break-rooms?releaseid=675760.