We dust first and mop floors last

Every visit follows the same order

An office gets cleaned from the top down, and from the back of the building toward the front door. We pull the trash first, because a full can hides spills and it is the first thing a visitor smells. Then comes high dusting on vent covers and door frames, along with anything else above eye level. Desks and counters get wiped after that, so the dust we knock loose lands on surfaces we have not cleaned yet.

Touch points come next. Door handles and light switches get more hands on them than any desk, and so does the push bar on the front door. Restrooms and the break room follow, because they take the most time. Floors are always last. We sweep or vacuum first and mop after, and we mop toward the exit so nobody crosses a floor we just finished. When the order is right, the office smells like nothing in particular the next morning.

Skip a step, or do the steps out of order, and it shows the next day. Dust from a vent settles on a desk that was wiped an hour before. A mop pushed across a floor that was never swept turns loose grit into gray streaks along the baseboards. A can that gets a new liner but is never wiped out keeps a sour smell in a warm office. Each of those takes longer to fix than the step would have taken.

• Trash emptied and cans wiped out
• High dusting done before desks get wiped
• Door handles and light switches wiped down
• Restroom floors cleaned around the toilet base
• Floors swept or vacuumed, then mopped last

Oklahoma red dirt gets tracked into offices

Central Oklahoma soil is red clay, and it does not stay outside. After a spring storm it comes in as mud on shoes. On a dry, windy day it blows in as fine dust through every door that opens. It settles into the first few feet of carpet and the grout lines at the entry. A walk-off mat catches most of it, but only when the mat itself gets vacuumed and shaken out on each visit.

The building makes a difference too. A lot of small offices around Shawnee are in metal buildings on a concrete slab. Dust collects on the beams and ledges that nobody looks at. The brick storefronts downtown have tall ceilings, and their doors and windows seal less tightly than the ones on a newer building. Strip center suites often have vinyl tile up front and carpet in the back, so one visit covers two kinds of floor.

Weather changes the job through the year. Spring brings storms and mud, so entries and mats take more of the visit. In summer the air conditioning runs all day, and the grilles on the return vents turn gray with dust. In late winter, cedar pollen leaves a fine yellow dust on window sills and on desks near the door. We shift the time to match the season instead of running the same checklist in April and in January.

Waxed floors need more than a mop

Many offices and shops around here have vinyl composition tile, the hard squares you see in a school hallway. That tile is porous on its own. The shine comes from layers of floor finish, which most people call wax, and that finish takes the wear so the tile does not. Sweeping and a damp mop with a neutral cleaner keep the finish clean between bigger jobs. A strong degreaser or too much soap dulls it and leaves a sticky film that grabs dirt.

Over time the finish wears through in the traffic lanes and turns yellow at the edges where the mop never reaches. At that point mopping cannot fix it. The floor has to be stripped. A chemical stripper goes down and sits long enough to soften the old finish, then a floor machine scrubs it off to bare tile. The floor gets rinsed and dries fully before fresh wax goes on, one thin coat at a time.

The common shortcut is to lay new wax over old wax without stripping first. It looks fine for a week or two. After that, the dirt that was on the floor is sealed under the new coat, and the edges build up thick and dark. Red clay grit from the parking lot makes it worse, because it scratches the finish and stains any worn spot a rusty color. Floor cleaning and waxing are both on our Google listing, so ask about a strip and wax when you call.

Restrooms and break rooms take the longest

A clean office restroom has no smell at all, which is harder to get than a nice smell. The toilet gets cleaned inside and out, including the seat hinges and the base bolted to the floor. Sinks and faucets get scrubbed, and the mirror gets wiped until there are no streaks. The floor comes last, with real attention along the wall behind the toilet, because that is where odor starts.

The break room is the room nobody thinks about until someone complains. Coffee drips harden on the counter by the pot. The microwave collects splatter on the inside ceiling, and the refrigerator handle gets touched by nearly everyone in the building. We wipe the microwave inside and the appliance handles outside. The sink gets scrubbed, and the table where people eat gets wiped down along with the chair backs. When we finish, the room should look like nobody has eaten lunch in it yet.

These two rooms are where a skipped step shows first. A restroom that only gets a quick wipe on the seat starts to smell within a few visits, and staff notice before the owner does. A break room sink left with a film of coffee and grease starts to smell like the drain in a warm building. Customers who use your restroom judge the whole business by it. That is why these rooms get more of our time than any other part of the office.