Every office starts with a deep clean

The first visit cleans the whole office

An office that has gone a while without a real cleaning needs one long visit before weekly upkeep makes sense. Dust sits on top of the cabinets and along the window ledges. The grout in the restroom has gone gray, and the break room microwave has months of splatter inside it. A quick weekly wipe cannot catch up on that, so we start with a deep clean that goes through every room once.

The order of the work matters. We clean from high to low. Dust from shelf tops and air conditioning vent grilles falls onto whatever sits below, so those come first. Desks and counters are next, then the restroom and the break room, and the floors go last. Mop a floor first and it will need mopping again before we leave, because everything above it has been dropping dust the whole time.

When the deep clean is done well, it shows in places nobody checks. The trash cans are washed inside, and a fresh liner goes into a clean can. The strip of floor along the baseboard is as clean as the middle of the room. Jerrold Slutzky, an office client, wrote that Terry Ross does "a detailed, deep clean every time, not missing any nook or cranny." The same review says, "He even cleaned our garbage cans!"

• Desks and window ledges wiped down
• Restroom fixtures and floors scrubbed
• Break room counters and sink cleaned
• Trash cans emptied and washed out
• Baseboards and floor edges cleaned by hand

Weekly visits keep the office clean

Once the deep clean is done, the job changes. Weekly upkeep holds the office at the level the first visit set, and it takes less time because nothing has piled up. Trash goes out, door handles and desks get wiped, the restroom gets scrubbed, and the floors get vacuumed or mopped. We follow the same list in the same order every week, so no task gets forgotten from one week to the next.

Offices get dirty in different places than homes do. The break room sink is used by everyone and cleaned by nobody. Door handles and the fridge handle get touched all day long. Restroom floors take the worst of it, since every shoe in the building ends up there. A week is about as long as those spots can go before people notice. That is why this service runs on a weekly visit once the deep clean is done.

Brett Keller left a Google review for a business property that Serenity Cleaning deep cleaned first. He says they have "kept the space clean and neat with weekly maintenance." He also calls Terry "reliable and a good communicator." That part matters on an office account. You want to hear when a door was locked and a room got skipped, or when a restroom faucet drips. Another reviewer says Terry "always listens to what is important to me." So the weekly list can change when your office does.

Florida weather adds work inside an office

Pinellas Park sits on sandy ground, and that sand comes inside on every pair of shoes. Under foot traffic it scratches tile and wears the shine off the walkways first. In summer, afternoon storms add wet shoes and puddles at the door. The water turns the sand into a gray film, and a dry mop only pushes that film around. So entry mats and the first stretch of floor inside the door get attention on every visit.

Humidity is the other problem. The air conditioning runs most of the year here, and dust collects on the vent grilles as air moves through them. In damp air that dust can turn into dark spots on the grille and on the ceiling tile around it. Restrooms with no window stay damp too, and mildew starts in the grout lines and around the base of the toilet. A weekly scrub stops it early. Skip a month and it takes real work to get out.

Many offices around Pinellas Park sit in one-story concrete block buildings with stucco outside, from strip plazas to older houses turned into offices. Floors are usually tile or commercial carpet, and some older buildings still have terrazzo. Each one needs its own care. Tile and terrazzo get a damp mop with a mild cleaner, since a harsh one can etch terrazzo and leave a film on tile. Carpet gets vacuumed slowly enough to pull the sand up from the base of the fibers.

Fabric chairs and curtains hold office dust

Hard surfaces are only part of an office. Upholstered chairs in a waiting room and curtains in a front office hold dust and the smell of lunches eaten at desks. In humid air, fabric also holds moisture, so a room can smell musty even when every surface looks clean. Vacuuming the floor around those pieces does nothing for the fabric itself, and the smell stays.

Serenity Cleaning also does furniture and curtain cleaning as add-ons, separate from the weekly list. In an office, that might be the chairs in the waiting room or the drapes in a conference room. You choose what gets added, and you can add it once or come back to it later. The best time is right after the first deep clean. That way the fabric starts clean along with the rest of the office.

The main risk with fabric in a humid building is water left behind. A chair cushion that stays damp overnight can smell worse than it did before it was cleaned. Curtains hung back up while still damp can grow mildew along the hem. Fabric should get only as much water as the dirt needs, then dry with the air conditioning running before anyone uses it again.