In this series of articles we’ll be providing creative office cleaning tips for and your employees to maintain the workplace tidy and clean without much hassle.

The best place to start introducing tidiness and cleanness measures is at individual level with employee’s workstations, cubicles and desks. Every employee should be responsible for its work space; he or she must keep it uncluttered and speckless most of the time.

Do not allow employees to eat at their desks and incite them to clean their hands every time they return from a meal or a snack specially if they went out to eat. A recent study revealed that offices that allow employees to eat at their desks tend to turn their keyboards into bacteria’s hives responsible to transmit could and flu, especially at this time of year with the cold season approaching.

If you hire the services of an office cleaning company make sure their office cleaners disinfect keyboards and phones every time they come to your office and also sure they use appropriate cleaning products. Electrical equipment can not be cleaned with any polish or cleaning product. Use the wrong products and you will end up damaging them.

Promote random audits to make sure employees are keeping their workstations organised and penalise those who don’t. By implementing these audits and penalties you will force your employees to maintain their work place tidy most of the time.

Be careful with what you can’t see!

Make sure you inspect the drawers you will be surprised with stuff you will find in some of your employees’ workstation drawers. That said, what was the most unusual thing you found on an employees’ drawer? Share your findings in our comments.

Do not allow them to store food in them and make sure they keep them tidy and clean as well.

Provide files and folders so employees can store their paper work and avoid paper clutter on their desks.

That is it for now but stay tuned for more office cleaning tips here at Total Clean Office Cleaning London!

If I walked into such an office and I would turn back and leave straight away and I bet you would too. With that mind set I’ll share with you some easy to execute office cleaning tips to help keep your office sparkling clean at all time, be it a town office or a home office.

Generally town offices are cleaned by professional office cleaning companies but there are certain things that can be done to help improve the cleanliness of these work places.

This first tip might sound obsolete but you would be surprised how many offices still haven’t applied it to their work environment. Reduce paper clutter by bringing in a digital filing system.

It’s likely your business already has a network, and that’s a great starting point. Next comes a complete overhaul of the network’s file structure. This will take some time and careful consideration. A general rule-of-thumb is that an effective digital file system – when compartmentalized – reflects exactly how the business is organised and leaves room for future amendment and likely change.

Create a cleaning and organisation inspection team, the idea here is to nominate two or three employees, depending on the size of your workforce, to go around the office inspecting tables and drawers.

This inspection team should report directly to the office manager or to you. They should give out warnings for those who don’t keep their workstation organised and then issue penalties. That way you will incite your workers to keep their tables and drawers organised at all times.

For home office workers you will have to be your own inspectors, even though you might not get anyone visiting your office. Remember what was said in the beginning of this article – A clean and organised workplace boosts productivity.

Incite recycling by adding recycling bins in your office’s kitchen and around the office. Pick a day of the week to do a “Paper recycling day”. You can use the cleaning and organization inspection team to go around the office asking for people to get rid of old paper work that won’t be filed.

Professional help

As my last piece of advice, I would recommend you seek professional help to enhance even further the cleanliness and hygiene of your office. Hire an office cleaning company and let them to do the dirty work for you.

Got any office cleaning tips you would like to share with our readers. Do not hesitate to leave them in our comments section below.

Here at Total Clean we strive to deliver an environmentally friendly office cleaning service by applying cleaning products and methods that are less harmful as possible to the environment.

We also have a great concern for our clients’ homes, reason why every once in a while we publish cleaning tips to help them maintain their houses as fresh and clean as we leave their working place. This time we compiled a list with our top 10 Green Cleaning tips for you to keep your house fresh-smelling without harming your family’s life.

1.Employ green cleaning products
As the health and environmental impacts of conventional cleaning products become more thoroughly understood, more and more brands of healthy, green, and effective cleaning products have started hitting the market and competing for that coveted place of honor under your sink. Many of these products are non-toxic, biodegradable, and made from renewable resources (not petroleum). But if designer labels aren’t for you, home-mixed cleaners can get the job done and then some. Vinegar and baking soda can be used to clean almost anything. Mix in a little warm water with either of these and you’ve got yourself an all-purpose cleaner.

2.Avoid poor indoor air quality
It is not uncommon for the air inside a home or office to be more toxic than the air outside. This is because of the presence of toxic materials and substances and the fact that homes and buildings are better insulated than ever before (which is a good thing from an energy standpoint). Keeping windows open as often as possible allows fresh air in and keeps toxins flowing out. This is especially important when cleaning your home.

3.Be careful with antibacterial cleaners
The antibacterial and antimicrobial ‘cleaners’ that many people think are necessary, especially during cold season, don’t clean hands better than soap and water, and also add to the risk of breeding “super germs,” bacteria that survive the chemical onslaught and have resistant offspring. The FDA has found that antibacterial soaps and hand cleansers do not work better than regular soap and water, and should be avoided.

4.Help your home smell baking soda-licious
Baking soda not only removes those strange smells coming from your fridge, it’s also a great odor-eliminator for your carpet. Just sprinkle on a little baking soda to soak up some of those odors and then vacuum it up.

5.Clean your indoor air naturally
Skip the store-bought air fresheners and instead try boiling cinnamon, cloves, or any other herbs you have a fondness for. Fresh chocolate chip cookies also have been known to create a friendly aroma. Also, plants may not make your house smell different but are good for filtering interior air–pretty much any broad green leaf plant will do. Peace Lilies are a favorite choice.

6.Toss toxic cleaners carefully
When replacing your cleaning products, don’t just throw the old ones in the trash. If they’re too toxic for your home, they won’t be good for the drain or the landfill either. Many communities hold toxics & electronics recycling days and will take all of these off your hands. Throwing chemicals in the trash or down the drain means they might end up back in your water supply and come back to haunt you (see How to Go Green: Water for more).

7.Avoid conventional dry cleaners
Conventional dry cleaners are the largest users of the industrial solvent called Perchloroethylene, or perc, which is toxic to humans and also creates smog. The two most common green drycleaning methods are carbon dioxide cleaning and Green Earth. Seek out cleaners that use green methods. If you do take clothes to conventional cleaners, be sure to air them outside before wearing them or putting them in the closet.

8.Employ a green house cleaning service
For people don’t have the time to clean their own homes, fortunately there are an increasing number of green cleaning services out there to help get things spic and span. If you can’t find one in your area (or their rates are outlandish), call around until you find a service willing to use the products and methods you specify.

9.Leave the toxins at the door
Imagine what’s on your shoes at the end of the day. Bringing that oil, antifreeze, animal waste, particulate pollution, pollen, and who knows what else into the house is not good news, especially for kids and other critters that spend time on floor level. Keep the sidewalk out of your home with a good doormat or a shoeless house policy. Many green buildings now include entryway track-off systems as a means of maintaining a healthy interior environment. Less dirt also means less sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming, which means less work, water, energy, and fewer chemicals.

10.Design with clean in mind
Designing houses and other building with cleanability in mind can create spaces that are cleaner, healthier, and require fewer substances to maintain. In larger buildings, good cleanability can also be a big money-saver as cleaning costs can often add up to as much as half of a building’s total energy costs.

Why not help us extend this list? Share your green cleaning tips and lets make the world a cleaner place without harming it.

In the same way that you can’t help but judge the author of an email littered with spelling and grammatical errors, you invariably judge a company whose employees’ work at desks piled with seemingly random papers.

It all comes back to that age old rule: your first impression counts – mess that up, and you’re facing an uphill battle that could’ve been easily avoidable. Whether we like to acknowledge it, a cluttered, untidy and – worst of all – unhygienic office is likely to scare off new clients. In fact, never mind about new clients, you want your current partners to hold you with high esteem, right? If so, undoubtedly the best way for that to happen is creating a clean, organised environment and sometimes the best way to do that is by hiring a professional office cleaning company.

As a business manager, the key is to shift the company’s attitude to creating clutter. This is significant for two reasons.

First is because the overall efficiency and productivity of a business can increase when employers spend just a minute a day less searching for documents etc. By itself a minute doesn’t sound like much of course, but accumulatively – over the space of weeks, months and years – it can make profound difference to your business’ growth.

Secondly, cleaning gets harder the worse mess becomes. It’s human nature to put off chores like cleaning until tomorrow. Problem is; tomorrow comes and the mess is worse, making tidying up even more of a chore. It’s a vicious (and ultimately messy) cycle!

So how can you sort this? In today’s office cleaning tips we will bring you a wise and environmentally friendly  idea to help you reduce paper clutter in your office. The tidiest offices are generally those that simply have less material clutter to begin with. And how do they manage this? By bringing in a digital filing system…

It’s likely your business already has a network, and that’s a great starting point. Next comes a complete overhaul of the network’s file structure. This will take some time and careful consideration. A general rule-of-thumb is that an effective digital file system – when compartmentalized – reflects exactly how the business is organised and leaves room for future amendment and likely change.

Of course, there will always be a need for hard copies. However, to discourage printing unnecessary hard copies, some organisations have avoided giving each employee their own filing cabinets, and instead, opt for a communal filing station that of course means getting up, walking over and finding the appropriate file.

Although simple, making this change and gathering your troops for a inspiring talk about the reasons behind, is a sure fire way to instal greater productivity and the priceless benefit of your employees and clients enjoying spending time at the office – the value of which barely needs our endorsement!

The main criticism with eco-friendly cleaning services and producs is that it’s a higher expense for something that has the same outcome as traditional cleaning solutions. Overall, it’s easy to wonder if you’re getting bang for that extra buck.

Now, you will see a lot of terms thrown around such as “green” “eco friendly” and “biodegradable” when looking at cleaning products or services. The truth is that companies will grossly exaggerate their green credentials in order to convince you that their products are non-toxic, non-corrosive and non-carcinogenic.

If this is the case, then how do you tell apart the real from the fabricated?

Well, for a start, the Environmental Protection Agency offers an eco-friendly certification called Design for the Environment – which essentially validates any claims to being eco-friendly.

Another way is to look for “Green Seal” certification which, again, will appear on a product’s packaging and identifies the product as fulfilling eco-friendly standards. That said, such certifications are voluntary, meaning that not all products without these certifications are not eco-friendly.

In our experience, super-slick branding and packaging for products that profess to being eco-friendly often turn out to contain ingredients that are chemical-based as opposed to citrus-based solvents, vinegar, natural abrasives and essential oils.

This is mainly down to its parent company responding to the demand without wanting to invest in new product development. We’d suggest that, when all else fails, look for minimal packaging or cleaners that can be refilled from concentrate to cut down on packaging waste – as they often turn out to be the most effective and genuinely eco friendly cleaning solutions.

Now for cleaning companies a way to certify that their cleaning services are eco-friendly is to ask for their green accreditations and for their environmental cleaning policy.

Here are some cleaning tips to help you on your way:

-  Get your carpets professionally cleaned. Think of all the sand and grass clippings that have been walked in on your flip-flops this summer.

-  Clean your windows, inside and out, including in between the sills.

-  Cleaning your house from top to bottom, focusing on public rooms such as the living room, family room, hallway and bathroom.

-  Get out the vacuum. Vacuum the drapes, window treatments, baseboards and in the corners. Move furniture and vacuum beneath and behind it. Vacuum upholstered furniture, or have it professionally cleaned if necessary.

If you are looking for a professional contract cleaning company with a difference please visit the Total Clean Services website.

All carpets require a periodic carpet cleaning scheme, be it a residence or an office, bacteria, soil and grit are the major causes of wear and tear and this will reduce the carpet’s life.

For offices and other workplaces, a regular carpet cleaning program will increase the carpet’s life, but without a doubt carpet’s biggest enemies are stains, here are a few tips to remove them without damaging your carpet.

Beer Stains

Not very common in a workspace, but whoever hasn’t spilled beer on a carpet can throw the first can! Mop up the stain with a paper towel and sponge with warm water or soda water.

Wine Stains

You probably have heard this one before, to remove red wine stains simply pour white wine over fresh red wine stains or squirt with soda water. For white wine simply squirt with soda water.

Chewing Gum Stains

No doubt the most feared of all carpet stains, do it wrong and you damaged your carpet for good. So get a blunt knife and scrape up as much as you can, if the gum is still sticky place ice in a plastic bag around the gum to harden it and keep scrapping as much as possible. Apply carpet shampoo to the area and clean, wait until it’s dried them vacuum it off.

Coffee Stains

Very common both in an office or at home, blot with kitchen towel or similar, sponge with soda water, blot dry and repeat until the stain has gone.

Ink Stains

Another great enemy of carpets. Removing ink stains will depend on the type of ink. For ballpoint ink stains dry it up as quickly as possible. Dab with menthylated spirits or use a stain remover.

Fountain pen ink stains need to be diluted with soda water then mop up as much as possible. Make a hot solution of soapflakes and apply on the stain and leave it for 15 minutes then blot. Repeat the process until the stain disappears.

Fat, Oil, Grease or Candle Stains

Lay blotting paper or brown paper over the stain, place a cloth over the paper and apply a medium iron to draw the grease into the paper. You may need to follow this up with a good quality carpet shampoo. If the grease has penetrated into the pile, the stain may reappear weeks later as it seeps upwards, requiring further treatment.

Tar Stains

Another nasty carpet stain that if incorrectly removed can damage the carpet for good. First, scrape the excess tar off, make a solution of equal parts of glycerine and water, apply and leave it for an hour then rinse it with water. Again repeat the process till the stain in completely gone.

There are other types of carpet stains, but to cover them all would turn this post into a book! If you have a better technique to remove the above carpet stains, or would like to share another carpet stain removing tip, please don’t hesitate to share them with us and our readers.

- The first rule in making sure a cleaning products are really non toxic is read the ingredient list.

- Avoid petroleum-based solvents, chlorine, ammonia and phosphates and avoid products that have “danger,” “poison” or “warning” on the label.

- Look for cleaning products that have particular information regarding biodegradability.

- If a product is marketed as “natural,” read the label more closely (petroleum is also classed as “natural”).

- If you need a scented product, choose one that uses essential oils. Avoid products with synthetic fragrances.

Now you have all the information needed to ensure your cleaning is eco-friendly. However, if what you really require is a contract cleaning company to provide a bespoke service please visit the Total Clean website.

Not only is it hygenic to maintain a clean computer, but you could also prevent so many illnesses that could occur due to the germs lying in the machines.

It could also add years to the life of your computers and telephones, as not cleaning it could lead to it getting damaged.

Jonathon Millman, chief technology officer for Hooplah Interactive says:
“Your computer could fry if you don’t keep it clean.”

According to Microsoft at home, this is because when dust clogs the vents behind your computer, your CPU heats up—and heat is the biggest cause of component failure in computers.

But, don’t just go and get your nearest polish or cleaning products!! You need to be careful what use on your electrical equipment beacuse it can be damaged with the wrong products.

If you are not sure what to use, Total Clean Services Ltd offers bespoke computer and telephone equipment cleaning, for more information please contact us.

Cleaning Windows

Each summer, you should clean your outside windows and screens.

Always use a broom to remove spider webs and dirt before using water. Be careful of possible bee, wasp, or hornet nests.

Driveway and Deck Cleaning

The start of summer is a great time to do these once-a-year cleaning jobs. Our first tip is to not use a power washer! They are very dangerous to you, and can destroy your deck and driveway.

For outdoor decks, you can use a diluted mixture of TSP or deck cleaner, and then use a push broom or stiff brush to scrub the deck clean. Be sure to rinse well.

Grease stains can be treated with kitty litter or dry cement left to absorb the stain and then swept away.

Luggage Cleaning

It is the time for summer holidays, so chances are you’ll be dusting of your old suitcase and bags, with this you will probably notice how dirty it has gotten since you used it last year.

So here are some tips on how to clean your luggage without ruining it. Firstly, clean the outside with a diluted mild cleanser (leather should be cleaned with a commercial leather cleaner).

If the inside has developed a musty smell, clean it with a vinegar-water solution. Then let it air dry for several days.

After your holiday and before putting the luggage away for storage, toss a fabric softener dryer sheet into the closed bag, especially if you don’t use the luggage often to keep it fresh.

So now you’re set with our cleaning tips you can get your house prepared. But if you have a larger invironment that needs cleaning like an office, Total Clean Services could be just the company you are looking for.

We offer bepoke contract cleaning for businesses, for more information please click here.