Sweat the Small Stuff: Little Details Revealing Your Building’s True Cleanliness

May 10, 2024

The Little Details Revealing Your Building’s True Cleanliness

Have you ever been in a space that never feels clean enough? Floors, windows, and surfaces look unsoiled at first glaze, but closer inspection reveals dust and grime hiding in nooks and crannies. These small details may seem insignificant, but together they downgrade your building’s overall appearance to occupants and visitors alike. Test if your facility passes muster with these key cleanliness signs.

Entrance and Common Areas

Clean hard floors, vacuumed-fresh carpets and clear windows are expected — but fine-tuning smaller, almost invisible surfaces will elevate your building. From the front entrance, make a good first impression with clean and undamaged entry mats, which are essential for preventing dirt from tracking onto floors and carpets. Trash and ash receptacles should be clean and in good condition (no grime, dust, or dents in sight). As a magnet for bad smells, upholstery needs regularly vacuuming and stain treatments. Directory signs, wall hangings and ceiling vent also require extra care as common magnets for dust.

Restrooms

Nothing advertises a pristine restroom like polished fixtures, shiny countertops, and spotless floors. The real test lies in less visible areas: like underneath the toilet seat, or around the partition walls. Check inside metal soap dispensers for potential rust or mold. The latter thrives if improperly cleaned — secretly contaminating cleansers without users knowing. Sneaky noxious smells also hide away in floor drains, which need to be flooded regularly.

Hallways, Stairs and Elevators

The devil’s in the details for these smaller transitional spaces, where any speck of grime becomes more noticeable. Walls, doors and steps — especially door kick plates and tread plates — should be free of smudges and scuffs. Baseboards, sills and railings in turn are dust traps, making them ideal bellwethers for cleanliness. In elevators, grime also loves to hide between tracks and around floor buttons.

At SparkleTeam, we carefully track all these details through our signature SparkleTeam Site Survey Reports — an in-person, real-time examination of the entire building. Our comprehensive point system objectively accesses areas of concern large and small. Where allowed, we also survey tenants for personal insight into their day-to-day experience in the building.

This way, our team can track crew performance, identify problem areas and provide solutions. The account supervisor also receives the survey, along with service tickets to address any issues needing attention. From the survey results, we prepare a detailed scorecard for property management, providing tangible assurance and peace of mind.