What You Should Know About Cleaning High-Traffic Areas

High-traffic areas are places where people pass through often and receive heavy foot activity, such as hallways, aisles, and bathrooms. These can be challenging to keep clean due to the constant flow of people moving through them, but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. They should be prioritized because of the increased amount of bacteria and dirt that gets brought through.

If your building’s high-traffic areas appear as though they’ve never been scrubbed, keep reading. This article covers the essential things you should know to maintain a safe, sanitary, and appealing business, even with hard-to-clean spaces.

The Importance of Cleaning High-Traffic Areas

Maintaining a sanitary commercial facility is essential, otherwise you risk impacting your company’s quality. High-traffic areas accumulate germs and harmful bacteria that cause sickness, excess dirt and grime, and spills that risk slips and falls. When these areas are neglected, employees and customers alike suffer the consequences. Public perception plummets and business slows, and your bottom line reflects it.

On the other hand, keeping busy areas tidy can serve to improve the morale of all those within the facility, increase profit, and reduce safety concerns.

Common High-Traffic Areas to Address

Commercial buildings naturally experience quite a bit of foot traffic and are littered with busy spaces. Some of the most common commercial facilities include schools, warehouses, retail stores, shopping centers, offices, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, and community centers, among many more. How cleaning high-traffic areas is done within these establishments may differ based on their unique layouts and industries, but many share similar places to emphasize:

Hallways and aisles: Store aisles, hospitals, and school hallways account for a large portion of foot activity in commercial buildings, so they require frequent cleaning. Tiles should be scrubbed and polished, just as you should vacuum the carpet of any debris. Using high-quality cleaning products to remove stains is one of the best tips for cleaning high-traffic carpet areas.
Restrooms: People are constantly going in and out of bathrooms, splashing water, missing the trash can with paper towels, and touching various handles on doors, sinks, paper towel dispensers, and toilets. Sanitizing these spaces can help keep everyone healthy and happy using the restroom.

Keeping restrooms clean and sanitized is essential to the well-being of your customers and employees. However, neglecting them can have negative consequences. Learn more about the importance of retaining clean, pleasant bathrooms and how it affects your company.

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Gymnasiams: Gym floors can quickly become scuffed and dirty after a stampede of shoes have stomped across them during a game. Dripped sweat can also pose potential slipping hazards and spread bacteria across weightlifting equipment, requiring thorough disinfecting.

Stairways: Stairways are used daily and can be hazardous if not kept clean. Ensure they are swept free of debris and any slick spots are wiped up.

Main entrances and exits: As the primary entrances or exits, these areas see more foot activity than most. Keeping them clear of debris and slippery substances can reduce the chances of an accident. Take special care to keep floormats dry during times of rain as well.

Garbage and recycling bins: Regularly emptying trash containers can prevent pile ups and keep garbage off the floor.

Cafeterias and coffee stations: School or work cafeterias—as well as kitchens and prep areas—are used daily and, as such, are subject to spills and crumbs. These require regular attention to prevent accidents and reduce bacteria.

Knowing which spaces need attention can make cleaning high-traffic areas much smoother.

Tips for Cleaning High-Traffic Areas

Schedule the Best Cleaning Time

Cleaning high-traffic areas is challenging, especially with many customers to work around. However, calmer points during the day give the best opportunity for detailed cleanings. Even if these times are still busy, they can make the cleaning process more manageable than the alternative, but choosing to clean at the beginning and end of the day can also give you an edge.

Tackle High-Touch Surfaces

Many high-traffic areas also come with high-touch surfaces requiring equal attention. Surfaces like light fixtures, door handles, railing, shelved products, carts, and desks are touched countless times throughout the day. Sanitizing and disinfecting these surfaces in active locations prevents illnesses and ensures safety.

Utilize Checklists

With so many high-traffic areas that require attention, you’re liable to skip a cleaning duty or two throughout the day. Creating a checklist guarantees that every high-traffic area within your building gets cleaned by the end of the day.

Assign Cleaning Stations

It can be challenging for cleaning staff to quickly address incidents when your facility contains several high-traffic areas. This can lead to customers or other team members slipping and injuring themselves. By assigning cleaning stations to specific employees, you can disperse responsibilities and allow them to tackle issues quickly.

How Commercial Cleaning Services Can Help

When tips like creating checklists and distributing cleaning duties don’t seem to impact the cleanliness of your facility’s high-traffic areas, consider turning to commercial disinfectant cleaning services. As experienced professionals, commercial cleaning services can completely turn the state of your building around by implementing effective high-traffic cleaning strategies and using the best equipment.

Hiring a commercial cleaning service takes the burden of keeping a facility clean off your shoulders, as they can handle all the sweeping, scrubbing, and other cleaning duties without any trouble. Their service hours and tasks are highly customizable and can be adjusted to accommodate the specific needs of your business. Also, hiring cleaning services is much more cost-effective than paying an internal cleaning crew to perform less thorough work, which can improve your company’s bottom line over time.

However, these helpful services are only as reliable as the provider you partner with. Consider a cleaning company with ample experience, positive reviews, and a dedicated mindset, such as Carlson Building Maintenance.

Let Carlson Building Maintenance Handle Your High-Traffic Cleaning

As a privately owned Minnesota company specializing in cleaning and floor maintenance within commercial spaces, Carlson Building Maintenance can help keep your facility in peak condition. Our team has decades of experience sanitizing, disinfecting, and restoring the appearance of buildings from several industries, like educational facilities, industrial warehouses, and retail stores. We bring our knowledge and accumulated skillsets to every client we take on, and we intend to do the same for you.

Contact Carlson Building Maintenance today to set up recurring, tailored, and reliable deep cleaning services.