How Often Should an Office Be Cleaned?

Five nights a week is the default that a lot of Brisbane offices sign up for without thinking, usually because the last place they worked had it. Then nobody looks at the invoice again for three years. The honest answer is that most offices under about thirty people do not need a nightly clean, and paying for one is the easiest way to waste a few thousand dollars a year. Work out where the mess actually comes from. A reception and a kitchen used by twenty people get dirty every single day. A comms room, a storage area and a boardroom used twice a week do not. Once you split the floor into zones, you can put the busy zones on five nights and the quiet ones on one. That usually keeps the place looking sharp while cutting the cost by a third, and nobody in the office notices the difference. Bathrooms are the exception. Restock and sanitise those on every visit, no matter how small the team, because running out of paper towels at 10am is the one complaint that always reaches the office manager. Bin runs are similar. If your building has a waste room and the bins only get emptied once a day, make sure the schedule lines up with that, otherwise the crew is just moving rubbish around. The other thing worth watching is consumables. Soap, paper and liners are usually billed at cost and top up automatically, which is convenient but easy to stop paying attention to. Ask for a monthly line item that shows what was used, and check it against your own purchase records for a couple of months. If the numbers look off, either someone is taking supplies home or the crew is being generous with the restock. Either way, you will only find out if it is written down.

How often does your office really need a cleaner?

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