Pets In The Office: Five Essential Cleaning Tips
More and more businesses are encouraging employees to bring their pets to work, and some companies even have their own office animals that belong to the company. While these furry creatures can reduce stress and impress clients, they can also make messes. If you want to keep your office clean while also welcoming pets, here are five tips to keep in mind:
1. Prepare to vacuum more
As a general rule of thumb, you need to vacuum at least once a week for every pet or human you have living or working in an area. That means with an office full of people and a handful of pets, you probably need to up your vacuuming routine to once a day.
Lobby areas where you greet clients may need to be vacuumed twice a day to keep them looking tidy.
2. Rake the carpet before vacuuming
If you want to save your vacuums from getting damaged, buy a carpet rake. These rakes lift and separate the carpet fibers, and as a result, pet hairs get loose and aren't embedded in your carpet. That makes vacuuming more effective and saves the brushes on your vacuum from unnecessary wear and tear.
3. Invest in an ultraviolet light to find stains
If your office pets are having trouble with accidents, it could be that an old stain is setting them off. Ideally, you should have a small ultraviolet light in your office. Dim the overhead lights and shine this light over your carpet.
Any old urine stains will basically glow. Once you identify them, clean them thoroughly with a stain remover and a deodorizer. That should cut down on future office pet accidents.
4. Assign pet duties to volunteers
When you have lots of pets in your office, you don't just have to worry about stains and fur in the carpet. You also have to worry about small tasks like cleaning out litter boxes if you have cats and taking dogs outside for potty breaks. Even walking dogs can indirectly reduce messes as exercised dogs are less likely to get into messy trouble than dogs with pent up energy.
So that you have all of these tasks taken care of, invite your employees to volunteer for them. Keep a signup sheet on the break room wall, and mark off each task as it's done so you can track everything.
5. Hire professional cleaners
To help deal with the extra messes created by office pets, consider hiring professional commercial cleaners. These specialists can help with general cleaning as well as pet-related messes. If you are keeping your animals in the office overnight, make sure they are kenneled, and alert the cleaners that they are there. Contact a business like Metro Cleaning Service Inc to learn about what services are offered.
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