For many a year, housewives, housekeepers and maids have known the importance of carpet cleaning because if the carpet is looking great, then everything looks great; however, if the carpet looks bad, everything looks bad. You may have heard your mother saying this one – or said it yourself. The same, of course, is true of your office carpet cleaning. If the floor of your workplace looks awful, then this reflects on the whole business. It might seem like such a little thing but having a filthy carpet being the first thing that a prospective customer or client sees when they come in person for the first time might really put them off. Not that they’ll consciously think that “These people have dirty carpets. They must, therefore, be bad accountants.” It’s more than the atmosphere created by a dirty carpet will work on them subconsciously.
It’s one of those true but annoying facts of life that an office carpet is going to get a lot dirtier a lot more quickly than what’s on your floor at home. This is for the simple reason that there are probably going to be a lot more people walking over the carpets and they’ll be doing it for longer.
To make matters worse, although it’s OK to take your shoes off at the door when you’re at home, it’s just Not Done to do this at work – imagine the impression it would make if you were talking to a lawyer who was sitting there in slightly shabby socks or those socks with a fun print that was his/her way of injecting personality into a formal business dress code.
In addition, quite a lot of workplaces insist on footwear for health and safety reasons, especially in manufacturing businesses. This means that all the mud and dirt from the street gets tracked inside making carpet cleaning even more of a necessity.
The extra foot traffic in the workplace also means that carpets wear out more quickly. This slow decline into the realms of being threadbare is quickened by all the extra dirt. Needless to say, a threadbare carpet makes an even worse impression than a dirty one, and it’s even worse from a health and safety perspective.
What with one thing and another, this means that you have to take particular care of the carpets in your office and stay on the ball in keeping them in good condition. Fortunately, there are a few little tips and tricks that will help what’s on your floor stay in good condition for longer.
Vacuum, Vacuum, Vacuum
Although a vacuum cleaner can’t remove every single particle of dirt from the carpets, they remove a hang of a lot of it. This is why you need to have someone responsible for vacuum the carpets regularly – every day, in fact, if your outfit is medium to large. The task of vacuuming is best done when everybody else is out of the building, so it’s often handed over to a janitor or office cleaner. In fact, vacuuming is one of the bigger jobs that any office cleaner will handle therefore a commercial upright vacuum cleaner would be best suited for the task. Less populated offices and workplaces may not need daily vacuuming, but from my experience as a professional cleaner, these are very much in the minority.
Vacuuming also helps keep your office healthier for your staff and your customers. This is because vacuuming is your first line of defence for removing the dust that feeds the mites that act as powerful asthma triggers. In addition, vacuuming also helps remove nasties like fleas. Sorry about this, but fleas don’t know or care about how high-class or important your business is and to them, one carpet is like another. Actually, for a flea, the plusher the carpet, the better. They can sneak in from anywhere, so vacuuming regularly is an absolute must.
The Perfect Entrance
You might not be able to take your shoes off at the door of your workplace, but you can take a few steps to ensure that as little mud and debris comes in from the street with your shoes. This is done by setting up the entrance areas right. There are two very old-fashioned inventions that will help with help care for your commercial carpet.
The first is a good, sturdy doormat. Yes, I know that a coir doormat or a rubber doormat doesn’t quite have that sleek, polished look that you want to have, but they’re a heck of a lot better than mud and wet footprints all over the carpets. There are plenty of nice ones out there in a range of colours and styles, so you can probably find something suitable. These will do the job of rubbing off a lot of muck and catching the dirt before it goes inside. Most people have enough manners to wipe their feet before coming inside if a doormat is provided.
The other important part of entranceway furniture that can be particularly useful if either you or your customers are likely to get a lot of mess on their shoes before coming inside is a door-scraper. We’re not talking about those massive brush things that can be found outside a football club for getting mud out of cleats – although these wouldn’t be a bad idea for some schools – but a smaller bar that allows people to scrape mud off.
If your business is located somewhere that customers regularly get their feet grubby – a coffee shop near a popular sports field, for example – when installing a sign asking customers politely to remove muddy shoes and boots before entering, and making sure that they’ve got a place to put them that’s out of the rain and reasonably secure will help.
You can also install rubber-backed mats with absorbent textiles just inside doorways or in paved or concreted atria to act as a further line of defence. These will have to be changed out and cleaned regularly, but getting regular mat cleaning is a lot easier and cheaper than calling in a professional to carry out carpet cleaning every couple of weeks.
Spot Cleaning Is Your Friend
We all know that spills happen. While you might not quite be as prone to spilling red wine on the carpets at work – although this does depend on where you work – offices are often much more prone to other highly annoying carpet stains, like printer ink and toner. The golden rule with any spill or stain is to deal with it as soon as possible so that the stain doesn’t set. Sometimes, this will mean blotting or scraping up as much as possible of whatever it is with the help of a paper towel or some loo paper, but it is likely to also involve calling a spot cleaning emergency specialist. Most good commercial carpet cleaning companies provide this sort of service, so make sure that you have the contact details of a good one nice and handy for those little moments. Here is a great suggestion to get you started – https://www.carpetfirst.co.uk.
Stain Protection
Because of the high traffic involved in office carpets, stain protection (Scotchgard stain protection in a lot of cases) is worth considering. This does help extend the life of the carpet and prevent horrible spots and stains from sinking in, and it looks a heck of a lot better than those awful plastic mats all over the carpet!
Mat Magic
Mats are useful for areas that get huge amounts of wear, such as near desks where office chairs go back and forth all day, or hallways. Because mats are smaller and easier to replace (and clean), they act as defensive shields for the main carpet. Yes, they’ll wear out more quickly than the main carpet, but that’s the whole point!
Mats have to be placed with care to prevent creating a slipping or tripping hazard, of course, but this isn’t hard and there are tons of suitable designs out there. They can also be used creatively to enhance the décor of your office, so make the most of having to have mats.