Spring Cleaning Checklist for the Office

Spring is here which means a deep spring cleaning is right around the corner! It’s easy to lose the motivation to stay tidy over the winter season. Spring brings a fresh start for many when the weather starts warming up, moods improve, and motivation makes a comeback. Part of a fresh start is making sure everything is clean and organized for the new season. It’s time to get rid of all those germs and unnecessary clutter. Use this checklist for a spotless office to help get back on track!

Individual Spaces —

Individual Spaces are important, because all together, they make up most of the office space. If someone’s desk is smelly or germ-infested, that affects everyone else. If they are messy and unorganized, that reflects poorly on others and the office as a whole. The workplace acts as a showroom to customers and prospects, and it shows who the company is. Encouraging all of the employees to clean their spaces is the best place to start when doing a deep spring clean. Ways to get started on cleaning individual spaces are:

• Grab a trash bag and start going through drawers — throw away anything that doesn’t bring value to the workspace
• Wipe down all surfaces with sanitizing wipes — surfaces, phone, keyboard, mouse, chair
• Take microfiber cloths or brushes to dust electronic devices
• Once everything is thrown away, sanitized and cleaned, start the organization process. Figure out which drawers will be used for what. It’s probably best to use one of the drawers closest for pens, pencils, paper clips, notebooks, binder clips, etc. for easy access. Reference this blog for ways to organize the office space.

Once everyone’s individual space is all cleaned and organized, the office space will already be looking 10x better. This is a great start to spring cleaning the office.

Break Room —

Acting as a common area for the office, the break room endures a lot of traffic and is everyone’s responsibility to keep clean and organized. The break room includes a lot of machines that have the potential to get dirty, quick, if not taken care of properly. The best way to tackle the breakroom is to pick a day for spring cleaning and send out an office-wide email attempting to gather some willing volunteers. Make sure you let your employees know the day before so they can take all of their stuff home that they want to keep. Whoever you chose to help clean should be divided into different teams for each area of the kitchen. The teams should focus on:

• Cabinets — you might consider taking everything out of each cabinet, deciding what is needed and throwing away the items that are not. BEFORE you put the items back into the cabinet, you should wipe out the inside with all-purpose cleaner because it’s likely to be covered in some type of food or crumbs.
• Fridge — the inside of the fridge has the potential to get slimy and gross, quick. Start by emptying the fridge until everything is out. Place items on the counter, or wherever there is space. Once everything is emptied, start going through it and throw away anything that is expired, busted, or bad. Once everything is thrown out you will have all the stuff that you are going to keep, but before placing it back into the refrigerator, sanitizing is necessary. Wipe down all the surfaces inside the fridge with sanitizing wipes, or cleaner and make sure to get the outside of the fridge as well. Once everything is clean, start placing the items back into the fridge.
• Coffee Maker — whether you have a Keurig or Mr. Coffee or another brand, many coffee makers need a good cleaning, especially with all the traffic coming to it every day. Removing the germs on the outside is important, but it’s also important to clean the inside. Keurig has cleaning K-cups you can run through the machine to clean the inside and other machines may need to be taken apart to efficiently clean the inside.
• Microwave — microwaves acquire a lot of residues, especially being in a break room. A tip for cleaning the microwave is to put a bowl of water with equal parts white vinegar in the microwave and set it for 5-10 minutes. The steam from the water/vinegar will soften the residue on the inside of the microwave. After this, wipe out the microwave and then use a microfiber cloth to make sure everything gets clean.
• Counter Space and Floors — once all of the individual spaces and items are cleaned in the breakroom, take this time to clean off all the counter spaces with a sanitizing solution. This ensures all the crumbs are wiped from the counters. End the cleaning process by sweeping the floors and mopping.

Bathroom —

A bathroom is a germ-infested place year-round. It only makes sense to do a deep clean of this area in the office as a part of spring cleaning. Many things are needed to achieve a spotless office bathroom: rubber gloves, toilet cleaner, and scrubber, glass cleaner, sanitizing wipes, sanitizing spray, air freshener, extra toilet paper, and paper towels, broom, mop, cleaning rags, sponges, microfiber cloths and any other cleaning solutions that could be of use. It’s probably best to go in this order when cleaning the bathroom:

• Stalls — Use the brush and cleaner to clean the inside and sanitizing wipes/sanitizer to clean the outside. Check the toilet paper to make sure it is fully stocked, and replace if necessary. Be sure to wipe down all the surfaces inside the stall: the walls, grab bars, stall doors, trashcans. Another thing to focus on inside the stalls is the trashcans and making sure they are emptied of trash.
• Mirrors — the next area of focus is the mirrors. With people in and out of the bathrooms all day long, any glass is likely to be dirty from splatters, touching, etc. Make sure to use a dry microfiber cloth so that residue isn’t left behind.
• Sanitize — make sure to sanitize all countertops, door handles, dispensers, knobs, etc. Using wipes or a spray is sufficient enough when sanitizing the bathroom. Another step you can take to ensuring full sanitization is to spray all of the surfaces with an extra coat of disinfectant. 
• Organize Cabinets — a lot of restrooms have cabinets or spaces that contain cleaning solutions or extra products. This is the best time to organize this space and combine/throw away any old products to save space. 
• Sweep and Mop — after everything is cleaned up from the counters, the last steps are the sweep and mop. 

Sample Room —

Not all companies have a sample room, but if you do, you know how messy and unorganized these areas of the office can get. With sales reps in and out of the sample room in a hurry, things get misplaced, lost, or destroyed. It’s important to maintain this area of the office so the sales reps can offer the best quality samples to customers possible. It’s everyone’s responsibility to keep this area clean, so gather a few volunteers to tackle this room. It can get overwhelming with all the loose ends floating around the room but follow this method to ensure efficient and effective cleaning:

• Take everything off each shelf, or out of each cabinet — however, your sample room is organized, the simplest way to begin is by focusing on a specific area. This keeps you focused on one area at a time so things don’t get mixed up. 
• Organized and purge unnecessary items — with each area that you focus on, throw away outdated or irrelevant items taking up unnecessary space. Combine items into one box if they are taking up two, and dispose of extra boxes properly. If there is literature that is out of date, recycle if possible.
• Clean and sanitize — after all the areas are purged of clutter, take time to clean and sanitize. Just because this area only contains samples and literature doesn’t mean it doesn’t get dirty. People are in and out of this room all day, every day, so sanitizing is a must. Make sure to use sanitizing wipes on surfaces, sanitizing spray for light switches and door handles and sweep/mop or vacuum the room.

Virtual —

When spring cleaning, one thing people don’t normally think about is their virtual world. Think of how much stuff is done on a computer each day. Things are likely not organized the way they should be, and pointless files are taking up room. When cleaning up your computer files, consider these things:

• Reorganization — go through and look at all the content on your computer. Delete unneeded files or back them up on another program (we will talk about this next). Create folders for all different topics and place the proper files in them. If there is already a folder created that you didn’t put certain information in before, do that now. Go back through old folders and make sure the proper files are stored in them. 
• Back-Up Files — files that you no longer need on your computer could find a new home in a different program. Using programs like Google Docs can ensure that your files will stay safe and be accessible from all over while freeing up space on your PC. 
• Passwords — Go through and consider passwords for all of your log-ins. Are there any that need to be changed? Do that now. 

Overall Office Space —

Once all the individual areas of the office are clean, focus on the overall office space. The hallways, lobbies, etc. These require some love as well because they are an essential part of the office. Some ways to ensure these areas are clean include:

• Sweeping/Mopping
• Dusting
• Air Fresheners or Wall Plug-ins
• Lysol
• Organizing or Redecorating

Spring cleaning can be overwhelming when you don’t know where to start. With many people in the office, it can be hard to initiate. The goal is to have everyone pitch in and help to make the process flow seamlessly. Depending on how big your office is, it could take some time, but hopefully, this checklist will be a good guide to successfully spring cleaning the office.