CM/Spotlight: Restroom Care Add soiled grout lines and streaky mir-rors to the undeterminable gunk and you have an off-putting recipe of dissatisfactory clean restrooms. Tips To Improve Restroom Cleanliness By: Mike Weber Focus on cleaning for health Cleaning with health in mind combines using sound procedures with highly effective cleaning and disinfectant products. Studies have shown that families will shop longer in retail facilities if there is a clean restroom available. So, an effective restroom clean-ing and disinfecting program is important to help negate negative hygiene signals. Use simple, effective and multipurpose products Beyond the efficiency and effectiveness of multipurpose products, employee satisfaction improves because they see better end results. Many reputable companies offer multipurpose products that can deliver a simple, yet effective program for rest-room cleaning. Never overlook training Cleaning and disinfecting products need to be “used as directed” in order to be effective. Unfortunately, our industry’s “dirty little secret” is that the recommended contact time — usually 10 minutes — is not always followed, and thus the products are not truly disinfecting. This problem can be overcome by increased training and better sharing of information about disinfecting products with cleaning employees. Can’t You Smell That Smell? Failing to focus on detail cleaning in rest-rooms can not only lead to unsightly or damaged surfaces, it can also promote malodors. Sometimes, regularly scheduled clean-ings of common high-touch areas is not enough to rid a restroom of soils that bac-teria feed off of, which leads to unpleasant smells. Regardless of how clean the restroom appears, an odor will overpower the senses and give the impression that the restroom is dirty and unsanitary. The only solution is frequent detail clean-ing of the entire restroom, not just where visible soils exist. of the like contribute to poor air quality and can release volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the environment. Moreover, failing to sufficiently clean all surfaces in a restroom will contribute to bacteria replication and leave more poten-tially harmful pathogens to be cleaned at a later date. However, failing to adequately clean can be as equally detrimental to air quality as using harsh chemicals with poor ventilation. “Bleach is a commonly used disinfectant that does a good job of killing germs,” notes Hill. “But, at the same time, the fumes can be overpowering, especially in a confined space like a restroom stall.” Buildup around fixtures is off-putting to patrons expecting a clean facility. Proper Restroom Cleaning Cleaning, which has traditionally been done for appearance, has taken on more of an infection control function in the past sev-eral years. As a result, many facilities and contrac-tors are increasingly focusing their attention on cleaning for health. According to Mike Weber of Procter & Gamble Professional, when cleaning pro-fessionals strive to get rid of soils and germs, it also reduces the transmission of infectious diseases while at the same time impacting the aesthetics of the facility. Some operations with extremely tight budgets or poorly trained staff will spray air fresheners or employ other odor-masking techniques instead of eliminating malodors at their source. While they may feel this is a quick and easy way to improve the perceived cleanli-ness of the restroom, their actions — or, more appropriately, inactions — are coun-terproductive and potentially harmful. Constant use of air fresheners and things When the level of cleanliness is improved, germ levels will be reduced and a facility’s appearance will improve. Choosing the proper tools, chemicals and equipment will make specific restroom cleaning tasks much easier and more effec-tive. There are devices available that can access hard-to-reach areas such as those behind commodes or between fixtures and countertops. “We see sales of touchless cleaning sys-tems growing exponentially as facility man-agers and cleaning professionals become increasingly aware of the productivity improvements and resultant improvements in hygiene standards that they deliver,” pro-claims Bradley Drury, product manager for Hydro Systems Company. “This trend has accelerated of late with the growing aware-ness and concern associated with nosoco-mial infections.” When combined with properly diluted cleaners and disinfectants — and, in some cases, technologies like ionized water that require no chemicals — these tools, which include spray-and-vacuum systems, motor-ized scrub brushes and various microfiber products, make the removal of unwanted matter easier, improving the perceived and actual cleanliness of your restroom. CM www.cmmonline.com 33
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