We clean offices from the top down

Every office visit follows the same order

Trash comes out first on every visit. A full bin in the break room is the first thing people notice, and in a Florida building it can draw ants overnight. After that we work from high to low. Window sills and the tops of cubicle walls get dusted, then desks and counters get wiped, and the floor comes last. Dust knocked off a ledge lands on the desk below it, and whatever comes off a desk ends up on the floor.

Desks get wiped around what is on them. Papers and files stay exactly where you left them, and we do not open drawers. Some spots get touched all day, like door handles, light switches, the copier buttons and the handle on the break room fridge. Those carry grime long before a desk looks dirty, so they get wiped on every visit. In flu season, they are the surfaces that pass germs from one person to the next.

Floors come last because everything above them drops onto them. Hard floors get vacuumed before they get mopped. Mopping over grit only pushes it around, and once the water dries it leaves a gray film in the corners and along the baseboards. Plant City sits on sandy soil, and every pair of shoes carries some in. The entry mat and the first stretch of floor inside the door get vacuumed slowly, in both directions.

• Desks and counters wiped around your papers
• Trash emptied and fresh liners put in
• Restroom sinks, toilets, mirrors and floors cleaned
• Break room counters and sink cleaned and dried
• Hard floors vacuumed first, then mopped

Humid air keeps office restrooms damp

An office restroom in Plant City rarely dries out all the way. The air outside is humid for most of the year. The air conditioning pulls some of that moisture out, but what is left settles on tile and grout in a room with no window. Grout that stays damp grows mildew. It shows up first as gray specks behind the toilet and along the base of the wall. Later it turns into dark lines that a quick wipe will not lift.

Restrooms get cleaned from the top down, the same as every other room. Mirrors and soap dispensers come first, then sinks and counters, then toilets and urinals, and the floor goes last. The cloth used on a toilet never touches a sink or a counter afterward. Grout lines at the base of the toilet get a brush, because a mop slides right over them. The floor gets mopped from the back wall toward the door, so nobody has to step on it wet.

Skip the grout and the base of the toilet for a few weeks and the room starts to smell, even when it looks clean. That smell usually comes from urine soaked into the grout, and air freshener only covers it for a little while. Floor drains cause the other common smell. When the water in a drain trap dries up, sewer gas comes back up into the room. A little water poured down each floor drain on every visit keeps the trap full.

Break room crumbs bring ants inside fast

Ants find food in a Florida office faster than anyone expects. A little spilled sugar by the coffee maker is enough, and so is a lunch left in a trash can over the weekend. Once a trail forms along a baseboard, the ants come back every time food is left out. That is why the break room gets real time on every visit, even when it looks tidy.

Break room cleaning follows the same top to bottom order. Cabinet fronts and the outside of the fridge come first. The inside of the microwave is next, because splatter bakes onto the top of it and gets harder to lift every day it sits. Then the counters get wiped and the sink gets scrubbed. The sink also gets dried, since a wet sink with a sponge left in it smells sour by morning in this heat. Trash cans get wiped inside before a fresh liner goes in, because spilled coffee in the bottom of a can draws ants too.

Coffee drips and soda spills dry sticky on a break room floor. A sticky floor grabs dirt off every shoe that crosses it, so it looks gray long before anyone notices a spill. Mopping it with dirty water spreads the mess into a dull, tacky film that catches even more. So spills get lifted first with a damp cloth. Then the floor gets vacuumed, and then it gets mopped with clean water that we change as soon as it turns cloudy.

Your building type changes how we clean

Most offices around Plant City sit in one of a few kinds of buildings. Along the main roads there are strip centers and small office buildings made of concrete block and stucco on a concrete slab. In those, carpet tile often sits right on the slab. A spill that soaks through can stay damp underneath in this humidity and start to smell musty after a few days. We blot spills until the cloth comes up dry instead of scrubbing them deeper into the backing.

In the industrial parks around town, many offices are a finished room at the front of a metal warehouse. Fine dust from the shop floor drifts in every time the door between them opens. It settles on monitors and on the tops of filing cabinets, and it is back a day or two later. Those offices need the high surfaces wiped on every visit. The floor gets vacuumed rather than swept, since a broom throws fine dust back into the air.

Downtown, a lot of offices are in older brick storefronts. Those buildings often have wood or old tile floors with gaps where grit settles, and deep window sills that collect dust. Brick walls hold moisture, so a back room with little air moving through it can smell musty and grow mildew along the baseboards. On old wood, the mop goes on nearly dry, since standing water works into the gaps. If mildew keeps coming back on the same baseboard, we tell you, because that usually points to a leak or a damp wall.