As the weather warms and you’re taking stock of facility needs, you might consider hiring a commercial cleaning service to help you with some of the items on your to-do list. Whether you’re managing a bustling office space, a high-traffic educational facility, or a thriving healthcare center, keeping your buildings clean and usable is of the utmost importance. Fight illness from germs, irritation from spring allergens, and more with this spring cleaning checklist.

What to Know About Creating a Spring Cleaning Checklist

Why Is Spring Cleaning Important?

While keeping your facility clean is always crucial, the spring season provides an excellent opportunity to assess your building’s needs and hire the appropriate commercial cleaning services to address them all. Decluttering an area has been shown to reduce cortisol and adrenaline, drastically improving moods and boosting morale. Obviously, this is key in an education facility or office building, but it’s also important in healthcare facilities, restaurants and hospitality establishments, retail centers, manufacturing facilities, and more. Wherever people work, shop, learn, and live, the space they occupy should be clean and organized.

Besides the many mental health benefits of a tidy, organized space, cleaning is also critical to physical health. As spring approaches, common health threats may linger in unclean spaces. For one, any seasonal change brings the risk of common colds and the flu virus, which are easily spread through airborne germs and via contact with unclean surfaces. Also, spring brings an increase in allergens as local flora blooms. As a result, your building’s occupants may have itchy or watery eyes, runny noses, and coughing or sneezing due to allergens. So it’s important to address the quality of your air and the cleanliness of your carpets to remove dust, mold, pollen, and other allergens from them.

Finally, unclean spaces pose everyday risks such as foodborne illness due to surfaces that have not been adequately disinfected. Trash, sewage, and other debris can also cause health issues, so ensuring your waste management protocols are in good shape is vital. And keeping your facility looking pristine will certainly impact its aesthetic appeal, which is good news for you and your business’ bottom line, too.

Begin With the Basics

As you begin to write out your spring cleaning checklist, start with the necessities. You may have a daily or weekly janitorial service in place, but are they getting the job done to your satisfaction? Next, take stock of your facility’s cleanliness after receiving this commercial cleaning service. You should have proper waste management and recycling services, floor care services, bathroom deep cleaning services, and general maintenance and repair services all accounted for.

Deep cleaning your floors at least once per month is important for all facilities, especially those that see high levels of foot traffic. It’s not enough to sweep, wet mop, or vacuum daily—although those are good places to start. You’ll also want to consider steam cleaning your carpets periodically to remove grit, grime, and stains. And polishing your floors can help them remain sparkling clean and provide a protective barrier to reduce scuffs and scrapes. Take note of any floor repairs needed as well, like chipped or broken tiles, dents or cracks, and missing grout.

Red flags would include the presence of dust and debris on your surfaces or baseboards, soil or stains on your floors, and—it goes without saying—rodents or other pests in your buildings. In addition, suppose your facility has a kitchen, a medical lab, or another high-risk area present. In that case, you need to be especially attuned to receiving proper and frequent disinfection and care for these areas so that you don’t put your building’s occupants at risk.

Consider Disinfection Services

Beyond the day-to-day commercial cleaning services, your building needs deeper disinfection, especially if your facility’s occupants include children, seniors, or immunocompromised individuals. Disinfection services differ from janitorial services because they’re more comprehensive and use specialized equipment and EPA-approved chemicals to sanitize and sterilize high-risk surfaces and spaces deeply.

Experts specializing in disinfection services should be able to use various tools and techniques to keep infectious diseases and common germs at bay. For example, they may apply an antimicrobial barrier to your high-touch surfaces, which can guard against bacteria, viruses, and mold for approximately three months. They may also use misting and electrostatic spray disinfection with circulating and fogging devices to protect those hard-to-reach places. In addition, a remediation disinfection service will use CDC-compliant chemicals to safely disinfect any areas confirmed or suspected to have exposure to infectious disease—highly critical for healthcare facilities and educational facilities.

Another option is ultra­vi­o­let C (UVC) radi­a­tion, which is trust­ed by the U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion to dam­age, and there­fore kill, many bac­te­ria and virus­es while being safe for reg­u­lar use. This non-chemical alternative uses UVC light’s wavelength to disinfect and even eliminates COVID-19 by as much as 90%. Your facility will have unique needs, so make sure that you work with a team that knows what they’re doing and has the testimonials to back their success in providing high-quality, safe, and effective disinfection services.

Monitor Your Air Quality

What should be on my spring cleaning list?, you’re wondering. In addition to janitorial and disinfection services, you want to consider everything you can’t see. Of course, we’re referring to the air your building’s occupants breathe. As stated above, spring allergens are a common culprit for all sorts of physical discomfort, and they can even result in hay fever, asthma attacks, or the spread of illness, which can negatively impact your productivity and profitability with staff or student absences.

It’s essen­tial to mit­i­gate car­bon emis­sions (CO2), not only for your occupants’ health, but also for your facility’s sustainability goals. And eliminating the VOCs (volatile organ­ic com­pounds) and par­tic­u­lates (PM pathogens) keeps the air at its clean­est so all occupants can breathe easily.

These factors aren’t quite so easy to spot, which is why you’ll want to hire a team of experts who can use specialized equipment to monitor your IAQ (indoor air quality). If the team finds any issues, they can use high-effi­cien­cy par­tic­u­late air (HEPA) puri­fiers that can cap­ture approx­i­mate­ly 99.7% of par­ti­cles 0.3 microns and larg­er in size, mak­ing the inter­nal environment much healthier. And consistent monitoring of your IAQ is vital, as air quality changes with the weather, season, and other factors. At the very least, installing HEPA filters throughout your facility can help drastically reduce threats of airborne illness and harmful allergens. And changing your building’s HVAC filters should certainly be a high-priority task on your checklist for spring cleaning.

Don’t Neglect Your Outside Spaces

It can be easy to overlook the outside areas of your building as you run through your checklist for spring cleaning. But maintaining your building’s exterior and grounds is just as important as keeping the interior spaces clean. You might consider pressure washing your building’s exterior to remove debris from the elements, and mold that could be lurking. Power washing can also give your building a fresh look without repainting the entire exterior. But, of course, a fresh paint job can go a long way in brightening up your aesthetic if you have the time and budget to receive such a service.

Landscaping is a critical piece, too. Think of how many people see your facility’s grounds daily and what the upkeep of those grounds might be communicating to current or potential occupants. If you’re managing a business, overseeing a school, or running an apartment building or HOA, having beautiful, well-kept landscaping could make or break your success. From commercial landscape maintenance to installation and irrigation, fertilization to pest management, snow and ice removal to weed control, landscaping is a big part of spring cleaning.

Partner With The Budd Group for Your Spring Cleaning Services

The Budd Group is your one-stop shop for everything related to facility maintenance. We offer janitorial services, CDC-compliant disinfection services, floor care services, landscaping, and more. The Budd Group is a family-owned and operated company that has provided exceptional services and solutions to facility managers across many verticals for 60 years. We serve clients throughout the Southeast United States and are happy to provide references and testimonials from satisfied clients.

Our team is composed of over 4,000 highly trained service associates. We utilize industry-leading cleaning equipment, EPA-approved chemicals, and expert techniques to deliver the commercial cleaning services you need to your satisfaction. In fact, we are so confident in our services that we offer a “Make It Right Guarantee.” If you’re not completely satisfied with the level of care you received, we vow to make it right! Currently, The Budd Group is offering a spring cleaning discount, so you can save 10% when you book your spring or summer project. Don’t wait—contact us today to discuss your facility’s spring cleaning checklist and how we can help.