Communal areas can be found in many places including office buildings, schools, blocks of flats, schools, and universities. A communal area can also include lifts and stairwells. Sometimes everyone will have been given responsibility for keeping them clean and sometimes no one will have – communal areas, despite their importance – can often be forgotten!
These areas are important because they are the first places than any visiting member of the public sees when entering the building. If they are dirty or untidy (which they often can be since they are the areas with the most foot traffic) they give a bad representation of the rest of the building, even if everywhere else is clean and sparkling.
It is, therefore, important to work out a daily or weekly cleaning regime for your communal areas. Or, if that is going to be a problem – and with everyone’s busy lives these days it often can be – why not find a cleaning company to do it for you?
When cleaning a communal area it is essential that timing is given due consideration. There is no point in cleaning a communal area only to have it trampled over within moments. Not only that, but it is important from a health and safety point of view that no one is ‘made’ to walk across a wet floor, or to dodge wires from a vacuum cleaner, for example. The best times to clean a communal area need to be assessed in advanced. For those buildings that close at night, night time cleaning is the best way to go. This way, the cleaner won’t be disturbed and neither will the workers or students. For housing this is slightly more tricky. Night time cleaning is possible, although it could disturb people who are trying to sleep. Therefore, the best time would have to be worked out depending on when there are fewest people in the building – assuming the majority work, this would be between 10am and 3pm on most week days.
Cleaning products are another consideration. Allergies are rising year on year, and the chemicals used in cleaning products are one of the main culprits for this. If at all possible, cleaning fluids should be organic and allergen free. Alternatively, it may be possible to ask the tenants if they are allergic to anything in particular, although this could be time consuming.