We clean offices from the top down

Every office visit follows the same order

An office clean goes in a set order, and the order matters more than people think. Trash comes out first, since a leaky bag dragged across the room leaves a trail. Then we dust from the top down, shelf tops and window sills before desks. Dust falls, and anything cleaned below it first just gets dirty again. Desks and counters get wiped next, then the restroom and the break room. The floors always go last.

The spots that make an office feel dirty are rarely the big surfaces. They are the places people touch all day. Door handles and light switches top that list. In the break room it is the coffee pot handle and the fridge door. Those get wiped on every visit, even when they look fine. We also keep restroom cloths apart from the ones used on desks and counters. One cloth for everything carries the restroom onto the break room table.

You can tell a good office clean on Monday morning. The trash cans have fresh liners and the break room sink is empty and dry. There are no crumbs under the desks and no streaks on the glass front door. The restroom smells like nothing at all. When a step gets skipped, it shows up fast. A floor mopped before the dusting has a gray film by noon, and a faucet left wet dries with spots on it.

• Trash emptied and liners replaced
• Dusting from the top down
• Door handles and light switches wiped
• Restroom and break room cleaned
• Floors vacuumed and mopped last

Winter slush is hard on office floors

From fall into spring, the front door takes the worst of Helena weather. People walk in with snow on their boots, and the snow brings ice melt and grit off the sidewalk. When the water dries, ice melt leaves a white crust on hard floors and in the carpet by the door. The grit acts like sandpaper under shoes and chair wheels. That is why the first stretch of floor inside the door wears out long before the rest.

So in winter the entry gets more time than any other part of the office. We vacuum the grit out of the mats and the carpet before anything wet touches the floor, because mopping over grit just makes mud. On hard floors the white film comes up with a damp mop and clean water, changed often. Dirty mop water puts the salt right back down. Skip that and the floor looks clean while it is wet and cloudy once it dries.

Dust is the other problem, and it runs all year. The air here is dry, and all winter the heat blows dust onto vents and the backs of computers. In summer, wildfire smoke can leave a fine gray film on sills and desks. Once the weather warms up, we can also pressure wash the sidewalk out front. That clears the leftover winter grit before it gets tracked back inside.

Older Helena offices need gentler cleaning

A lot of Helena offices are in older buildings. Some are brick storefronts downtown, and some are older houses that were turned into offices. These buildings often have old wood floors and plaster walls. Standing water is hard on old wood floors. A wet mop that is fine on vinyl can soak into the gaps between boards and lift the finish. On wood we use a mop wrung nearly dry, and wet spots get wiped up before we leave.

Older buildings also have more places for dust to sit. Tall baseboards and deep window sills catch it, and so does the trim around every door. If the building has radiators, dust packs in between the fins and bakes there all winter. Radiators are easy to skip because they are awkward to reach. Skip them long enough and the room smells like burnt dust when the heat comes on in the fall.

Newer office space around town is a different job. It usually has carpet tile or vinyl plank floors, and often glass doors or glass walls between rooms. Vinyl handles a damp mop fine, but it shows every smear if the mop water is dirty. Glass shows every hand that pushed on it. A glass door wiped with a dirty cloth looks worse than one left alone. So glass gets its own clean cloth, and we check it from an angle.

We also clean office carpets and windows

Vacuuming on each visit keeps grit from grinding into the carpet. It does not pull out the dirt that has already worked down into the fibers. In a busy office that shows up as dark lanes from the door to the desks, and gray patches under rolling chairs. Carpet cleaning is a separate job that goes after that deeper dirt. Carpets come up often in our Google reviews. One customer wrote that we "did an amazing job on my carpets and windows!!"

Office windows get dirty on both sides. Inside, it is fingerprints near the handles and smudges where people lean on the glass. Outside, glass at street level catches slush thrown up by passing cars all winter. We clean windows inside and out. Outside glass dries streak free most easily on a mild, dry day, so exterior work gets planned around Helena weather. Low winter sun shows every streak that gets missed.

Fabric office chairs and lobby seating soak up spilled coffee and hold on to it. A chair can look fine and still smell sour up close. Upholstery cleaning pulls that out of the fabric instead of covering it with a scent. Odor control works the same way for a break room carpet where milk or coffee went down and never came all the way out. The smell stays until whatever caused it is gone.