We clean offices from the top down

We clean an office in this order

An office gets cleaned from the top down, and from the cleaner rooms to the dirtier ones. We empty the trash and recycling first, so nothing spills onto a floor we already finished. Then we dust the high places: the tops of cubicle walls, the air vents, the light fixtures and the ledges over doors. Dust knocked loose up there lands on the desks below, which is why the desks come next and never before.

On desks, we lift the phone and the keyboard, wipe under them and set them back where they were. Most of what sits on an office desk stays in one spot for weeks, so the dust under it builds up fast. After the desks, we sanitize the spots every hand touches, like door handles, light switches, copier buttons and the handle on the fridge. One of our customers put it this way: “They don’t dust around things, they actually move them!”

The break room and the restrooms come after the desks, because they hold the most germs and the most grime. We keep separate cloths for them, so nothing from a restroom ever touches a break room counter. Floors are always last. Carpet gets vacuumed along the edges and under the desks, where chairs roll and crumbs collect. Hard floors get mopped from the far wall back toward the door. If the floors go first, every step after that walks dust back across them.

• Trash and recycling emptied, liners replaced
• Desks wiped under the phone and keyboard
• Door handles and light switches sanitized
• Restrooms and break room cleaned and sanitized
• Carpets vacuumed and hard floors mopped last

Dry Reno air makes sanitizer dry early

A sanitizer only kills germs if the surface stays wet for the full contact time printed on its label. Spray a door handle and wipe it dry right away, and you have mostly pushed the germs around with a damp cloth. So on touch points, restroom fixtures and break room counters, we spray and leave the surface wet. We wipe only after the label time has passed. It takes longer, and it is the only version that works.

Reno makes that harder than most places. The air here is high desert dry for most of the year. A light spray can dry off a counter before the label time runs out. In winter, with the furnace running all day, it dries even faster. We watch for it. When a surface dries early, it gets sprayed a second time, so the contact time really happens instead of only being printed on a bottle.

Leaving a surface wet is different from leaving it sticky. Once the label time has passed, we wipe the surface clean. Sanitizer left to dry on a desk or a counter leaves a film that grabs dust. Here, with the wind carrying dust in from the hills, that film turns gray fast. A counter cleaned the right way feels smooth under your hand, and the chrome in the restroom has no streaks or spots on it.

Reno wind puts dust on every surface

The wind here carries fine dust off the dry hills and empty lots, and it gets into every office in town. It comes in under doors and through the heating and cooling vents, and it rides in on people's clothes. The dry air adds static, so the dust clings to computer screens and plastic. A dark desk wiped on Monday can show a gray film by Thursday. That is why dusting never gets skipped in a Reno office.

The building makes a difference too. Around Sparks, a lot of businesses work out of tilt-up concrete buildings, with the office in front and a warehouse behind it. Dust from the warehouse floor and the loading dock drifts through the shared door all day. In those offices, we spend extra time on the floor by that doorway and on the nearest vents. The dust starts there and spreads toward the desks.

Downtown Reno has older brick buildings with tall windows and wood trim. Dust settles into every groove of that trim and along the deep sills. The newer office parks around town are mostly stucco over wood frame, with drop ceilings and carpet tile. Their ceiling vents build up a dark ring of dust at the edges. We wipe those vent faces during the high dusting, since a dirty vent blows dust back over a room we just cleaned.

Winter boots track ice melt across floors

Once the snow starts, every office in Reno gets the same mess at the front door. Parking lots and sidewalks get treated with ice melt and sand, and it rides in on boots. When the snow water dries, the ice melt stays behind as a white, chalky film. On hard floors it dulls the finish. On carpet it settles into the fibers, where a regular vacuum pass does not pull it all out.

So in winter, the entry gets extra work. We vacuum the walk-off mats and the carpet near the door first, to pick up the loose sand and grit. Hard floors then get mopped with clean water and a neutral floor cleaner, and the mop water gets changed often. A bucket of salty water just spreads a thin film of salt over the whole floor. When it is done right, the floor by the door looks the same as the floor in the back hallway.

The front door glass needs attention in winter too. A lot of Reno and Sparks businesses sit in strip centers, with storefront glass facing the parking lot. Slush thrown up by cars dries on that glass as gray spots. We clean the entry door glass on both sides and wipe the push bar and the handle, since everyone who walks in grabs them. A customer sees that door before they see anything else in your office.