The 9 Dirtiest Areas in an Office and How a Commercial Cleaning Service Can Help

Do you ever stop and wonder what the dirtiest spots in your office are? You might walk by them every day. You might touch them. You might even eat on them. That’s right – some of the dirtiest areas in the office are areas that you probably use the most!

When you think about commercial cleaning in Newcastle, Lake Macquarie & Hunter, you might not know how much work goes into making your office as clean as it ought to be and keeping you and your staff safe from harmful germs and build-up. Commercial cleaning and office cleaning services all focus on these nine areas to make sure your office is spotless.

While you might not notice that these areas are dirty, there could be millions of microbial bacteria, germs, and funguses building up over time if you don’t have a commercial cleaning service. When you move around your office, you’re transporting millions of these microbes with you.

Even when social distancing, there can be ways for germs to spread from worker to worker. Hotdesking, shared phones, lift buttons, door handles, toilets, light switches, kitchen counters, and shared resources.

This is why it is so crucial for offices to rely on commercial cleaning services in Newcastle, to ensure that these areas are cleaned not just superficially but thoroughly and with specialist chemicals that are safe for use around people and certain materials in the office.

In this blog, we will explore the nine dirtiest areas in offices and outline how commercial cleaners can help to make your office space safe and clean.

1. Your Desk

It’s true. While it sounds farfetched, your desk is actually harbouring more than 400 times the number of germs that you would find on a toilet seat. This is because it is the perfect catching height for any and all germs that leave your mouth, nose, and skin while you’re sitting there and often sees much more use than anywhere else in the office.

On the surface of your desk, there is a rampant breeding ground for potentially harmful bacteria that will fester and grow unless treated with disinfectant sprays and rubdowns with a clean cloth.

2. Door Handles + (3. Light Switches & 4.  Elevator Buttons)

All communal touching points, like door handles, represent high traffic junctions where germs can spread from one person to another (to another to another and so on). If someone has coughed into their hand, come back from the toilet, or touched a common allergen and then uses a door handle or button or switch, all of those potentially harmful microbes are now breeding on the surface of it.

Providing a thorough cleaning service in Newcastle, you can rest assured we will wipe down any and all hot points for contact with disinfectant – including screws, crevices, and folds where grime can build up.

5. Your Office Chair

So, you’ve heard the statistics that people spend the equivalent of 33 years in bed. But how long do you spend in your office chair? The truth is that these are high use objects that see a lot of contact with us.

Due to office chairs usually being soft furnishing and made of or incorporating fabric, germs and fungus can build up and breed within these folds. This can happen following a spill, it is kept in a cold damp place, or food gets stuck down the back.

We vacuum all debris from chairs.

6. The Window Blinds

While not the same breeding ground for bacteria that your desk is, the office blinds can often go overlooked and this can mean a build-up of a thick dust layer. Not only does this look dirty and unappealing but it can be a huge health hazard, especially for staff with underlying respiratory conditions.

Having your office blinds professionally cleaned by a commercial cleaning service is the most effective way to ensure that roller blinds are soaked and dried to avoid black mould, Venetian blinds are dusted and kept free of stains, and vertical blinds are vacuumed regularly.

7. Phones and Computer Mouse

Two of the hot spots on your desk for microbes, your phone and mouse see more contact with your hands and mouth than most other elements of the office. This means that they will become concentrated zones of microbial activity and could give you bugs over time.

We scrub grease and grime build-up from your phone and mouse, using disinfectant to eliminate harmful bacteria.

The cleaning of the mouse is done after your permission. Everyone has their own rules or quirks with other people using/touching their tools of the trade.

8. The Kitchen

Ignoring, for the moment, that someone in the office is probably guilty of kicking bits of dropped food under the fridge or not emptying the bins as often as they should, the main concern in your office kitchen is the sink.

What do you touch right after spilling milk on your hands, dealing with the bin, or getting something sticky on your fingers? The taps.

And where do all the things you want off your hands go? Into the sink. Most of this can get washed away but pockets will linger in the sink or on the taps and this is where bacteria can thrive.

We use industrial-strength cleaning solutions from an internationally renowned company here in the Hunter to eliminate bacterial growth and have your kitchen sink and taps spotless for their next use.

9. The Toilets

This one will come as no surprise but it still bears thinking about. Toilets, washrooms, changing stations, and religious ablution facilities are all high traffic areas that see some of the most harmful germs – including e-coli.

This is why commercial cleaning services will focus the majority of concern here. Not only can germs spread easily but, unlike an unwashed desk or a dusty blind, dirty toilets will start to smell very quickly and very noticeably.

We use industrial cleaning solutions, clean gloves, and strong disinfectants to keep your office toilets spotless.

When it comes to offices, some areas are surprising hotbeds for bacteria, but trusting a commercial cleaning service in Newcastle could save you down the line.