How to Keep Your Business Clean Throughout the Winter Season

If your business operates in the northern part of the United States, you know how challenging keeping your facility clean during the winter months can be. While dirt and debris can build up quickly in the summer, those effects are only amplified during winter as salt, slush, and grit are tracked through your facility.

While commercial cleaning services are the obvious answer for keeping your facility clean throughout the winter, you may wonder what else you can do to streamline the cleaning process and safeguard floors from wintertime damage. In this post, we’ll explore some tips to help you keep your business clean while protecting its infrastructure.

Why Keeping Your Business Clean Is Crucial

Keeping your business clean during winter is crucial for several reasons. First and foremost, cleanliness ensures the safety of employees and customers by preventing slipping accidents caused by ice, snow, or wet floors. A clean workspace fosters a positive impression, promoting professionalism and client trust.

Furthermore, a hygienic environment helps reduce the spread of illnesses, keeping productivity levels high during the flu season. Regular cleaning also protects the longevity of assets, such as carpets and flooring, by preventing damage from salt or chemicals used for snow removal.

Overall, a clean business in winter is essential for safety, reputation, employee well-being, and cost-effective operations.

Tips to Keep Your Business Clean During Wintertime

If you want to keep your business clean and safe during the winter months, there are a few helpful tips you can take advantage of.

Start Now

Believe it or not, you can start simplifying winter cleaning by taking proactive steps right now. As the leaves continue falling during autumn, make sure they don’t build up around doors. Clearing away leaves near doorways and other entrances prevents them from ending up inside.

By preventing these leaves and other autumn debris from entering your building in the first place, you can simplify hard floor cleaning and create a safer environment, all while protecting hard floors and carpet fibers.

Lay Out Additional Mats

It’s also a good idea to lay out additional mats near your facility’s doorways, entrances, and exits. These heavy-duty mats are designed to absorb the brunt of wintertime salt, debris, and moisture, providing an extra buffer of protection for your floors.

Providing ample mats in high-traffic areas helps trap excess buildup and salt so it isn’t carried to other parts of your building. At the same time, they can help absorb moisture and create a safer surface for pedestrians.

Apply an Initial Protective Layer to Floors

Once the first snow hits, salt, ice, mud, and dirt can quickly take a toll on floors, particularly hardwood and linoleum. Before the first snow falls, take the time to perform a light scrubbing and recoat floors with a high-quality finish to provide a protective layer throughout the winter.

This protective coating will help you get through the early part of the winter, preventing deeper stains from penetrating your floors.

Utilize an Ice Melt Neutralizer Solution

Before a big storm, go over interior and exterior matting with an ice melt solution via a carpet extractor or an automatic scrubber. This solution removes the white buildup that appears on mats in the winter and minimizes the amount of ice melt residue that makes its way into your building. You can also use most ice melt neutralizers on carpets, hard floors, and concrete surfaces throughout your facility to protect against the residue’s harmful effects.

Keep Floor Squeegees at the Ready

During the wintertime, it helps to keep one or more floor squeegees readily available near your building’s entryways. On harsh winter days, assigning someone to regularly wipe floors and mats can go a long way in preventing moisture buildup, helping rugs dry faster, and maximizing their effectiveness of trapping salt and mud.

Maintain Walkway Mats

As you lay out additional matting during the wintertime, be sure to clean and maintain them regularly. It’s a good idea to wet-vacuum mats on intense winter days. Doing so prevents pedestrians from tracking in salt and moisture while maximizing the longevity of your floor matting. Properly maintained mats also help minimize the risk of slips and falls while eliminating foul odors caused by excessive moisture buildup beneath the rubber bottom.

Clean Automatic Scrubbers

If you use an automatic scrubber to maintain your hard floors or carpets in the winter, take the time to frequently remove ice melt residue that may collect inside or outside of the machine. When left to settle, it can slowly damage the equipment and eventually lead to a buildup of bacteria and mildew. By regularly cleaning the scrubber equipment, you’re protecting your investment while maximizing cleaning effectiveness.

Take Care of Your Mops

Make sure to mop properly after dusting and sweeping. If you’re using wet mops to maintain floors between deep cleans, rinsing and wringing them out can extend their longevity and maximize cleaning power. Depending on the intensity of the weather, it’s worthwhile to adapt your mopping schedule instead of sticking with a fixed routine throughout the winter.

Contacting a Professional

If you want to ensure that your business is kept clean and safe throughout the winter season, contacting a professional—like Carlson Building Maintenance—is your best bet. Expert cleaners come equipped with the skills, tools, and knowledge to effectively keep your business clean in winter.

Creating a winter cleaning checklist keeps your business clean and ensures that high-priority business areas don’t fall through the cracks.

Build Your Winter Checklist

Keep Your Business Clean Through Winter With Carlson Building Maintenance

Keeping your business clean in the winter has never been a simple task, but when you partner with Carlson, we make it simpler than ever before. That’s because we take the time to design a custom floor care regimen for your facility and climate. We consider factors like foot traffic, time of year, weather forecast, and day-to-day operations to design a tailored floor maintenance program that will continually exceed your expectations. We invite you to contact our experts today and experience the Carlson Difference firsthand.