We clean the floors after everything else

Every office visit follows the same order

We start high and finish low, because dust only falls one way. Vents, the tops of file cabinets, window sills and picture frames come first. Then we wipe desks and counters, along with the spots people touch all day, like door handles and light switches. Floors come last. If the vacuum runs before the dusting, whatever drops off the cabinets lands on a clean floor, and someone spots it by lunch.

Desks get wiped around whatever is on them. We do not move or sort your papers, because a shuffled pile is the first thing anyone notices when they sit down. Keyboards and phones pick up a lot of grime, so they get a cloth that is damp but never wet, and nothing drips between the keys. Trash and recycling get emptied at every desk, including the small bin tucked under it that is easy to walk past.

The restroom is the room a visitor remembers, so it gets the most time. We do the sink and mirror first and the toilets after that. The floor gets mopped from the back wall toward the door, so we never step on the wet part. In the break room, the counters and the inside of the microwave get wiped. The sink gets scrubbed until the coffee stains are gone. Skip the microwave for a few weeks and the whole room smells like old lunch.

• Dusting from vents down to baseboards
• Desks wiped around papers, never rearranged
• Trash and recycling emptied at every desk
• Restroom and break room sinks scrubbed
• Floors vacuumed and mopped at the end

Boise weather ends up on your floors

Winter is the hard season for office floors around Boise. Parking lots and sidewalks get sand and de-icer, and everyone who walks in carries some of it across the entry. Grit works like sandpaper on vinyl plank and on the finish of a hard floor. Near the door it grinds into carpet until the fibers turn gray. De-icer leaves a white, chalky film that a dry mop just spreads around. It takes a damp mop and clean water, sometimes two passes, to get the floor looking right again.

Summer brings the opposite problem. The Treasure Valley is high desert, and the air stays dry for months. Fine dust rides in on shoes and through the air system. Dry air also builds static, which makes that dust cling to monitors and the fronts of printers. In a smoky August, a thin film of ash can show up on window sills too. A dry cloth only pushes that dust to the next desk, so we use one that is slightly damp and actually picks it up.

All of this collects at the front door, so the entry gets extra time on every visit. We lift the walk-off mat and clean the floor under it, then vacuum the mat on both sides before it goes back down. Grit trapped under a mat scratches a floor faster than grit sitting on top. The glass on the front door gets cleaned inside and out, since fingerprints and road dust both show on it. Most customers see that entry before they see anything else in your office.

Your building changes how we clean it

A lot of office space in Meridian and Garden City is in tilt-up concrete buildings. Many are flex spaces, with a front office and a shop or warehouse out back. Dust from the back does not stay there. It comes in on boots and through the door between the two, and it lands on the front desk first. In those buildings we give extra attention to that doorway and the carpet path leading from it, because that is where a dark trail forms.

Downtown Boise has older brick buildings, and in the older neighborhoods some houses have been turned into offices. Those often have old wood floors with small gaps between the boards that catch grit. Too much water on that kind of floor soaks into the seams and can lift the edges over time. So the mop gets wrung out until it is barely damp, and the boards get dried as we go. Tall baseboards and deep window sills in these buildings hold a lot of dust, and they get wiped by hand.

Many newer office buildings in Meridian and Eagle are wood frame with stucco outside. They usually have carpet tile where people work and vinyl plank in the halls and break rooms. Carpet tile hides dirt well, and that is the trouble. It looks fine for months, then the walking paths wear flat and dark all at once. Vacuuming those paths on every visit, like the route from the front door to the coffee pot, keeps them from forming. Vinyl plank needs a mild cleaner, because a harsh one leaves a dull haze that looks like dirt.

Missed steps show up weeks later

Most of what makes an office look neglected is small and slow. The bottom of a trash can gets sticky and starts to smell. Crumbs build up in a ring around each desk chair, where the chair has to be rolled out of the way to reach them. Fingerprints spread across the glass on conference room doors. None of these is visible after one skipped visit, which is why they get skipped. After a few weeks, staff walk in and it feels like the whole office got dirty overnight.

We treat the easy-to-skip spots as part of the job. When a bin liner has leaked, the can gets wiped out before a fresh liner goes in. Chairs get rolled back so the vacuum reaches the carpet under each desk, where most of the crumbs end up. Shared spots like the copier and the coffee pot handle get wiped on every visit, because everyone in the office touches them. Those are the places a quick clean leaves behind, and they are the ones staff notice first.

Because we clean in the same order every time, a missed step is easy to find. If something looks wrong when you come in, call and tell us what it was and which room. We check that spot first on the next visit. Cleaning the same way each time keeps the office from sliding back, and it means the place looks ready whenever a customer walks in.