Dirtiest Office Spaces

We often focus on cleaning the same few areas over and over again. While it’s good to keep areas like desktops and floors clean, sometimes we should focus on cleaning areas we don’t even realize are dirty. With flue season approaching in the midst of a global pandemic, now is the time to prepare and make sure you know which areas need to be thoroughly cleaned, and how often.

How Germs are Shared

There are many places in the office you might not consider germ heavy areas. However, think about any time a coworker asked to borrow a stapler or a roll of tape. Think about how many people touch the handle of the water cooler every day, or the door handle to enter the building. Because any one individual only interacts with these items a few times a day, we tend not to think of them as being germ heavy areas. However, because of the amount of people that handle these items daily, they can quickly turn into infection risks.

While some transmission of germs is unavoidably person to person (such as through situations such as handshakes or breathing), many germs can catch a ride from one person to another through contact with the same item or object. That’s why taking your office hygiene seriously can cut down on the number of germ transmissions and hopefully the number of staff who come down with whatever’s going around at the time.

Shared Devices

One of the most common ways for germs to be shared in an office environment is through shared devices. The most common of these include shared copy machines and printers. Other shared devices could include fax machines, phones, and even computers or keyboards.

When cleaning your office, remember to take a few minutes to wipe down the copy machine and printer. Remind staff to clean desk phones and computers often and provide supplies for them to do so.

Office Kitchens

Another common area for germs to exist in high concentrations is the office kitchen. Any item or area that is touched by multiple people multiple times a day is a place to make sure you clean often. For example, the handle of the office coffee pot. Because so many people get coffee, the handle can end up with a lot of germs on it. The same goes for the handle of the office refrigerator door. A brief wipe down at the end of the day can help keep these items clean and safe.

Similarly the sink handles and shared dishes can be additional places for germs to gather. If the sponges used to clean shared dishes aren’t changed often they can lead to germ transfers. Additionally, wiping out the sink occasionally can do a lot of good as well, since so many shared dishes go through it.

Knobs and Handles

As mentioned previously, door and drawer knobs and handles are also high germ count spots, especially when they must be used by many people within an office. These are often overlooked at cleaning time, but it’s important to wipe them down regularly to avoid spreading germs throughout your office.

Looking for the best office hygiene solutions for your business? Contact Business Hygiene of Central Texas to learn how our San Marcos cleaning services and janitorial supplies can help.

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How Touchless Sensors Maintain Hygiene

During the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, it’s important to take steps to protect the health and safety of your business, for the sake of customers and staff. There are lots of helpful business practices that can be put in place, such as enforcing social distancing and requiring your customers and staff to wear face masks inside. Another helpful practice you can look into is to utilize automatic, touchless fixtures where needed in your building. Touchless fixtures can not only help maintain your business hygiene, they can also cut some small costs along the way.

How Germs Spread

Before looking at fixtures, it’s important to know how viruses and germs spread between people and things. For example, the coronavirus has been shown to spread through the air, such as after a cough, and also by sharing physical items that might have particulates of the virus on them.

Wearing face masks helps prevent airborne transmission. The weak link in the chain then becomes the common places that everyone must touch to go about their daily lives.

These sources of infection can be difficult to clean after every single use without delegating a staff member to that job only. Because of that, automatic, touchless fixtures can become an invaluable resource.

Automatic Faucets

Automatic faucets are one of the most helpful touchless fixtures. When using a regular faucet, everyone must touch the handle to turn on the water flow with their unwashed hands, then wash them, then touch the handle again to turn the water off. This is a process that risks spreading germs between everyone who uses the handle.

Automatic faucets don’t have to be touched at all to turn on. Simply waving your hand underneath the faucet to trigger a sensor will start the water flow. These also turn off automatically, so there’s no need to touch a potentially germ-covered handle after washing your hands.

An added benefit of automatic faucets is that, because they turn off automatically, there’s no way to leave them running. For larger businesses, water usage can become a large bill, and having people’s water usage limited automatically can save quite a lot.

Automatic Toilets

The toilet is an area where germs are not just created by human to human transmission, but also a moist area where they can grow and continue to be troublesome if not thoroughly cleaned. Automatic toilets can help prevent the issues presented by many people touching a handle to flush.

In addition to the boosted hygiene, having automatic toilets has some addition benefits as well. Automatic toilets are made to comply with all ADA regulations, so you won’t have to worry about whether your new ones are compliant.

These also help keep restrooms clean. With automatic toilets, there’s never a forgotten flush that causes odors. Automatic toilets are also set to use a powerful flush, which helps prevent the need for multiple flushes.

Automatic Soap Dispensers

Automatic, or touch-free soap dispensers have a variety of benefits. They prevent the need for multiple people to touch a surface with unwashed hands repeatedly.

They also dispense a specific amount, which can limit the amount people use. For example, people may automatically use a pump dispenser three times, while only using an automatic dispenser once, trusting that the amount dispensed is appropriate.

Additionally, the soap canisters in automatic soap dispensers are easy to replace, making refilling them a quick task when cleaning business restrooms.

Automatic Towel Dispensers

The last thing you do after washing your hands is to dry them. Using automatic paper towel dispensers prevents you from having to touch anything after washing your hands.

Automatic paper towel dispensers are also cleaner than air dryers, since they do not spread water particles to the surrounding area. Like automatic soap dispensers, automatic paper towel dispensers are easy to refill.

Struggling to keep your workplace safe and clean this year? Contact Business Hygiene of Central Texas, a San Marcos janitorial supply company, to learn how we can help.

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Preparing Your Business for Covid-19

While a ton of businesses have been shut down, as the economy opens more and more, we will need to start taking steps to ensure that these sites are kept clean and safe. Instead of relying on employees who have other roles, like accountants, front desk clerks, or managers to safely clean up your business, it can be helpful to have a professional janitorial service to take care of the cleanliness and proper preparation of your business for staying safe and reopening. Rather than relying on someone that might not properly clean an area, it can be helpful to ensure that you have someone doing regular cleanings and give you proper cleaning advice during these times.

Give Notice

One important thing to keep in mind during this reopening is to have the proper signs posted at the front door and in the bathroom areas in the entryway. We can provide assistance here, but some posters will differ based on your local statutes and laws. If your local area requires masks for your business, it would be a great idea to post signs stating this, so that your employees do not need to mention it to every single customer that walks in the front door. When it comes to these signs, you will also want to make sure you have hand washing signs posted inside of the bathrooms as well. You want to make sure your signs are in large, clear print, and of course that they can easily be read, since not everyone has great vision, and your goal is to have the highest compliance to them. For this reason, you might also want to make sure that these signs are bilingual, posted in both Spanish and English, and use large graphics that clearly display their purpose and goal.

Offer supplies

Another helpful option as far as the entryway goes, is that you will need to ensure that you have hand sanitizer in all the common areas since you cannot be sure everyone is exercising proper handwashing techniques. One option for this is automatic sensor dispensers, but you can also just use traditional large bottles of hand sanitizers.

Keep it Clean

As well, without a professional janitorial service, it tends to be rare that bathrooms, kitchen areas, front desks, front doors and other areas with high foot traffic and a lot of interactions get cleaned thoroughly. By relying on employees to clean, the countertops and some handles might get cleaned, but the really dirty areas, where germs tend to hide in repositories, tend to not be cleaned very often, and mopped even less. Because of this, cleaning just the surface areas will not take care of the underlying problem. This can be an important part of dealing with coronavirus, since the disease can survive on porous surface for 3-7 days, and on non-porous surfaces a week or longer, meaning that if it is not getting cleaned, it is unlikely it will just go away.

Owning a business is hard, but following guidelines, offering services, and keeping things clean can provide its own set of challenges. By following these tips, your business can get on right path for a proper reopening. If you are looking for professional cleaning services or hygienic tips in the San Marcos area, don’t hesitate to give Business Hygiene a call today!

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Essential Cleaning Supplies For Business

Cleanliness has always been an important factor in the success of any business, but now more than ever, your employees and clients need to actively see and feel like your business is going above and beyond to protect them. With tensions already high as businesses do their best to get back to business, we cannot necessarily see it as a “back to business as usual” approach.

It is our job to give the public the peace of mind they need to feel comfortable patronizing and working with your business. Here are a few items you can invest in in order to up the ante in hygiene for your business.

Floors and Surfaces in Common Spaces

It is not enough for the common spaces in your business to be clean, they must feel and smell clean as well. This gives everyone who comes and goes the confidence that you are doing your part in protecting them. Using the right products to clean the floors and surfaces properly will help a great deal with this.

One of the best floor care products you can use to keep a streak free and sterile floor for any wood, linoleum, tile, stone, or other hard flooring is 24” microfiber mopping pads. One of the great things about using these is that they are machine washable, so you can thoroughly disinfect these after every use in order to avoid any contamination.

These can be used to dust the floors, sterilize them with a disinfectant cleaning solution, or even to apply wax to keep your floors looking spic and span. Microfiber cloths are also great for dusting and disinfecting other surfaces like tables, cabinets, bars, or any other surface that is communal. These are also washable and reusable, so you can keep your cleaning supplies fresh and ready to keep your common spaces looking and smelling great!

Bathrooms

Keeping your restrooms immaculately clean is one great way to help keep peace of mind. For maximum cleanliness use various supplies like bleach and other cleaning solutions that both clean and deodorize the area.

Bathroom hygiene has never been more important for businesses. There are several products you can install in your restrooms to help promote the highest level of hygiene possible, like touch free dispensers.

Touch free soap dispensers, water fountains, paper towel dispensers or blowers really help reduce the amount of germs that are spread throughout the day, and these types of investments help show your clients and customers that you really do care about their safety.

Air Freshening

One great way to go above and beyond is to use air fresheners in order to create a great smelling environment as well as a clean one. Nothing says nice and tidy like a nice spritz of citrus wafting through the air.

There are many forms of air fresheners available including metered sprays, T-cell neutralizers, and gels and these all come in a wide variety of scents. These are really simple and economical ways to take your already clean and sanitized business to the comfortable and friendly environment you always hoped for!

Need more solutions for sanitizing your business? Contact Business Hygiene of Central Texas, a San Marcos janitorial supply and cleaning company, to learn how we can help.

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Why You Should Get Touchless Fixtures For Your Business Restroom

With rising levels of sickness in our communities, one of the best ways we can keep our friends and families safe, as well as our businesses afloat, is to minimize the amount of germs spread. More and more people are becoming aware of how frequently we touch common surfaces, and one way your business can say “we care” is by completely eliminating some of the surfaces. By installing touchless appliances and fixtures, you are investing in the health of yourself, your community, and your business.

The Rules of Hand Washing

One aspect of daily life that has been promoted more than ever is the frequent washing of hands. One of the most effective ways to reduce the spread of bacteria is by thoroughly washing your hands throughout the day and especially before and or after activities like cooking, touching public surfaces, petting or feeding an animal, taking out the trash, and of course – going to the restroom. The CDC has laid out instructions on how and when to wash your hands, highlighting the importance of lathering your hands and rubbing them together, cleaning every part, for at least 20 seconds. Now, more than ever, we are understanding the importance of reducing the spread of disease by washing your hands many times throughout the day.

Why Go Touchless

With societies new found appreciation for cleanliness, it is important to identify some of the sneaky ways germs can make their way into our lives and reduce their spread even further. One of these areas include the bulk soap dispensers that many business restrooms use. In fact, studies have shown that as many as 25% of these bulk dispensers are excessively contaminated with harmful pathogens and various bacteria. One way to eliminate the spread of germs even further is by installing a touchless soap dispenser that is motion sensor operated. Such a small shift in your business can help reduce the spread of these harmful pathogens ensuring that your employees and clients stay as safe and germ free as possible while in your establishment.

Touchless Options

There are several available and economical options that can make switching your appliances to touchless very simple and affordable.

Touchless Soap – By installing touch free soap dispensers in your business restrooms, you are reducing the amount of germ spread by that much more! Your clients will be that much more motivated to frequently wash their hands when there is as little contact as possible with the dispenser.

Touchless Hand Sanitizer – In addition to the soap dispensers in the restroom, having touchless hand sanitizer dispensers at the entrance and throughout your business motivates your employees and clients to frequently make use of them. This also helps keep a general state of mindfulness in your business that can motivate everyone to reduce the spread of germs.

Touchless Faucet – Having faucets in the restroom that are sensor activated is another way of reducing surface contact and, in turn, the spread of germs throughout your business.

Touchless Paper Towel Dispenser – And while you’re benefiting from the touchless soap and water faucets, consider going the extra mile for your business with paper towel dispensers or hand dryers. These further reduce the contact in your restroom where many germs can live, helping yourself, your employees, and your clients stay healthy!

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Announcement: Now Offering Disinfectant Fogging

Business Hygiene of Central Texas is an expert in keeping business facilities as clean and safe as possible. So in this critical time we are bringing in a new service, called DISINFECTANT FOGGING. With this service we can disinfect whole rooms, such as bathrooms, break rooms, whole restaurant, meeting rooms, etc. If you have concerns about your facility, give us a call for a quote at 512-396-3484.

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Why Air Freshening Is Important For Business

As a business owner, many aspects play essential roles in your enterprise’s growth. However, some of these have a tendency to be overlooked, if not outright ignored. Proper ventilation is not only a health code requirement, but it is a substantial determinant of the quality of air. A pleasant smelling business creates a serene environment for your customers, which is good marketing for your business.

Contrary to what most of us believe, excellent customer service is not all about giving the clients the best service or product purchase experience. It is also crucial that your clients be comfortable when on your premises. Your business should be appealing and welcoming, and so should the smell.

Furthermore, not only does air quality enhance the client’s experience, but it also promotes the productivity of the employees. The aroma you choose to use for your business can shift moods, and it can make people relax. Thus you can keep your team calm and focused, as well as keep your customers happy.

Good First Impressions

First impressions are crucial for any business, regardless of how prominent it is. Other than the appearance, there is a definite chance that customers will also remember the smell and scents of your business location.

Bad, unpleasant odors will imprint negatively on clients. Typical smells such as trash or washrooms should not be ignored since these can create an impression that your business is unclean.

Good Memories

Scents are linked to memories, and memories are associated with people and places. It is imperative that your business is associated with pleasant smells. Masking odors is essential, but it may backfire if there is an intermingling of odors, which will only make the situation worse.

As such, it is important to have constant and reliable air freshening. However, air fresheners should also be used with good hygiene routines to prevent mingling scents.

Good Marketing

You can create a signature ambiance to your business with your scent, which your customers and clients will associate with excellent services. Also, it is a significant reinforcement of cleanliness, since you do not want your business smelling like cleaning products. Clients will always prefer a business that makes them feel comfortable.

What to Look for in Your Business Air Fresheners

Variety and Options – When choosing scents for your business, you might try an array at first to find what works best for you. Some air fresheners have varying intervals for releasing scents and some have a constant release. Decide what would work better for your business ahead of time so you’ll know what type of scent items to look for.

Ease of Use – You can install, place, and adjust air fresheners at whatever location you deem fit. Some owners prefer them in reception areas or other places with more traffic, while others prefer to be tucked away and unseen. Before installing air fresheners, decide where they will be most effective so you get the best scent from their placement.

Looking for the best air freshening options for your business? Contact Business Hygiene of Central Texas, a janitorial supply company in San Marcos, TX, to learn more about our air freshening solutions.

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