All posts by Liam Oreke

You may have considered all sorts of things when it comes to office design and layout. Perhaps you’ve tried different desk configurations and layouts (open plan offices? cubicles? hot desking?). However, a critical area of any workplace may not have really entered your mind as an area that could do with a revamp or a makeover: the bathroom and washroom areas.

When you think about it, ignoring the bathroom areas and their design is a bit silly. After all, all humans need to go to the loo several times during the workday, especially if they’re staying properly hydrated to remain alert and thinking clearly. Moreover, everybody needs to wash their hands, not only after using the loo but also before eating. You’ve probably put a poster or two up in the canteen or morning tea areas to this effect to improve health and safety and reduce time off work on sick leave. So if the bathrooms are poorly designed or a bit on the shabby side, then this will affect morale and your team members’ attitude towards your organisation.

The importance of good bathroom design doubles if you have customers and clients that also use the lavatory. If your toilets are open for customers to use, which is often the case in retail outlets, especially food and drink establishments, a bad bathroom will put people off. Conversely, a good toilet can be a fundamental feature of the place. I can think of at least four or five places that I’ve come across where the design and décor of the toilet facilities were a feature – and they’ve got extra business from me precisely because I’ve ducked in there to use their super-clean toilets and decided to linger in the retail area a bit longer. I’m probably not the only one!

But how do you go about improving your workplace bathroom facilities? Will it involve complete remodelling? What about showers in the workplace? How does one make an office bathroom more hygienic? The whole issue is big, so hopefully, these tips will help.

To Shower Or Not To Shower?

Providing a workplace shower is only compulsory if the nature of your business involves dirty work and your team members really need to get clean before heading home on the bus. In other words, showers aren’t compulsory for an accounting firm, but they probably will be for a butcher’s shop where the workers have to handle bloody carcasses.

However, providing a shower can be a real perk for your workers and be a different reason why they like working for you (which means you’ll have less staff turnover in the long run). What’s more, if people feel like they can go out and hit the gym or go for a run during their lunch break but still be able to shower off the sweat afterwards, they are likely to be more productive, as there’s nothing like getting the blood flowing to increase levels of productivity and focus. Fit employees who have the chance to work out are also more likely to be healthy employees.

If you put showers in, you will need separate facilities for guys and girls and ensure the doors are lockable so people can change in private without rude interruptions. They also have to be well ventilated and cleaned regularly.

Easy Office Bathroom Tweaks

Sometimes, improving your office bathroom facilities might not be as extreme as installing new showers or a complete makeover. Some other easy ideas won’t break your budget. Here’s a selection:

Fluorescent Lighting

Get rid of the fluorescent lighting and go for something softer. There’s something about fluorescent lights that makes everybody look horrible in the mirror. Suppose your team members see themselves looking washed out and ghostly every time they see themselves in the mirror while washing their hands. In that case, it’s not going to lift their mood or feelings of confidence, which is likely to translate to how they perform and interact once they get out of the bathroom. Softer lighting, however, is kinder – you never know; if your sales rep knows that they look good before heading out, they will have that extra bit of confidence that makes all the difference!

Go for Natural Scents

Yes, we know that toilets can smell horrible because of what goes on there. However, those artificial air freshener sprays smell pretty awful. They also give some people headaches. As for their environmental impact… well, they’re pretty bad news. The good news is that better ventilation does a great job removing pongs, and natural scents also do a good cover-up. Reed diffusers tend to be a lot nicer smelling and easier on the environment – and they don’t need to be replaced quite often, so that makes things easier for the janitor.

Rethink Your Soaps

There’s nothing worse than a clunky soap dispenser that produces something that smells, looks and feels like dishwashing liquid. Look for more moisturising products that are kinder to the skin or even go the more environmentally friendly by using bar soap in a cute dish (it’s not that hard to clean up, honestly). If liquid soap suits the way you do things best, it can be a nice touch to have hand lotion provided as well, as some people’s skin reacts to the chemicals in liquid soaps (that’s why janitors and office cleaners wear rubber gloves to do their job).

Provide a Seat Spray

You know that outlet I said I popped into (and shopped at) just because it had great clean toilets? This is its little secret that makes the difference. It probably makes a big difference to your customers and your workers, especially if they’re the sort who gets nervous about hygiene. Moreover, having a seat spray so that people can clean the loo seat before and after doing what they need to will make your office toilets more hygienic and will be good for reducing rates of work-related sickness.

Do Your Maintenance

Wonky toilet seats, dripping taps, peeling paint, malfunctioning hand driers and broken tiles all lend seedy air to any bathroom and make it harder to clean. Your janitor will probably inform you about this issue, or at least they should, so be prompt about repairing anything that needs it, even if the bathroom is still workable with the dripping tap or whatever it is.

Make it Fun

Injecting a bit of humour always lightens things up for your team members (which has knock-on effects of better mood and morale, etc.), and it’s easy to do in the bathrooms; we all know our essential bodily functions have their funny side. Humour also goes down well with clients and customers who use the loos. This can be as simple as something quirkier than your classic silhouettes for male, female and disabled toilet labels. The same goes for those posters reminding users about bathroom etiquette or the importance of washing hands properly. If they’re funny or at least light-hearted, they’re more likely to comply with rather than complain about. They’re cheap enough, so why not? Other ways to make your office bathrooms a bit more fun or quirky can include interesting posters with infographics or jokes. Anything that lifts the décor from sterile and boring will be an improvement. Make sure that any posters that you add to the bathroom are laminated or otherwise easy to clean – your janitor will thank you.

It must be one of the least favourite household chores out there. Nobody really likes cleaning the lavatory. (My mum used to use it as the go-to consequence for bad behaviour when I was younger.) However, it’s a job that has to be done if you want a healthy, happy home that doesn’t reek.

For a lot of us, the idea of scrubbing out the loo is just plain disgusting. We all know what goes on in the lavatory and what goes down there… so you know what those funny stains and streaks in the toilet bowl are caused by. It’s a basic human instinct to be somewhat revolted and disgusted by the idea of getting up close with poop. We’re even prissier these days than we used to be: in the past, minute amounts of poo were added to perfume to add a richer note to it, and buckets of human excreta were added to vegetable gardens to improve soil fertility (and there are some people today who still believe in the powers of “recycled cider” in the garden, especially for lemon trees).

But unless you hire professional cleaning company to do the job for you, there’s no getting away from it. Even if you do get in a cleaning lady to scrub your loo for you, you might find that you have to do it yourself from time to time, such as when a child misses. You may feel a little bit sorry for that cleaner who does the job for you, but you don’t need to be. The pro knows a few secrets that make this task a lot less disgusting and repulsive.

It’s Cleaner Than You Think

Toilet seats are not the hotbed of infection that you think they might be. For one thing, think about how you actually use the toilet. It’s only very, very occasionally that the toilet seat actually touches excreta (at least if the gentlemen lift the seat every time like they ought to). Mostly, it’s your buttocks that touch the seat, and your bum is no germier than other parts of your body. In fact, it might even be cleaner, as it’s not as sweaty as your feet and doesn’t come in contact with things that other people have touched like your hands do. In fact, your mouth has way more bacteria than your bottom cheeks, and your toothbrush contains far more bacteria than your toilet seat as a result.

Even the toilet bowl isn’t as bad as it could be. This is because it has fresh water going through it with every flush. If you are one of the many who adds one of those “cleans with every flush” devices to your loo (either something that hangs in the bowl itself or that sits in the tank), then every flush helps keep things clean down there.

In fact, the really germ-laden part of your toilet is the flush button. This is because you touch this after you’ve wiped your bottom. You get the picture!

This is not to say that the toilet is perfectly hygienic. Of course it isn’t. This is where the first two tips from the pros come in:

• Have a special set of tools kept for cleaning the loo that don’t get used for anything else (except, maybe, for cleaning up pet “accidents” and similar filthy jobs).
• Wear rubber gloves and tie long hair back while working.

The Basics of Toilet Cleaning

Right, now that you’ve donned your rubber gloves, let’s get started and actually clean the loo. Here’s how to do it like a pro:

1. Spray everything with a good disinfectant. Leave it time to work so it kills the germs. All disinfectants take time and don’t kill germs instantly on contact.
2. Wipe down everything with a rag or paper towel, starting at the top and working your way down. Don’t forget the underside of the seat or the outside of the bowl.
3. Squirt one of those toilet cleaning products that come with a duck-head nozzle around the bowl, making sure you get under the rim. Leave it to work for a bit then scrub like crazy around the bowl with a loo brush. Look at what you’re doing to make sure that you’re getting every bit of muck. Wash the loo brush and stand it in a tub of dilute disinfectant when you’re done.
4. Check around the floor, spraying and wiping with disinfectant if needed.
5. Check the hinge of the toilet seat and scrub, using a small, stiff brush (an old toothbrush is ideal). If this is really mucky, then unscrew the lid and clean it separately. In extreme cases, it may need soaking and a lot of elbow grease.
6. Using clean plain water and a fresh rag, rinse the seat. Having loads of disinfectant on there is pretty tough on the skin of your buttocks.
7. Flush the loo, remove old used toilet rolls and top up the supply of spare rolls.

Green Cleaning For Your Toilet

We have a tendency to throw around the chemicals in the toilet, even though it’s a small room. This is also the place where we’re most likely to use artificial air fresheners, which are some of the worst offenders for indoor air quality. Is there any way to use less toxic and more natural cleaners for your toilet?

A lot of people shy away from using natural green cleaning products for the toilet, in a belief that something as dirty as the toilet needs “stronger” artificial chemicals to deal with all the germs. However, some natural cleaners are just as powerful as artificial ones, if not more powerful. What’s more, you don’t need to have your toilet 100% germ-free. You’re not going to eat in there, after all, and you are going to wash your hands afterwards… aren’t you?

A few simple ways that you can be a bit more sustainable in the small room are the following:

• Use a spray made from white vinegar, plain water and 20+ drops of lavender, lemon or tea tree essential oil. This works as a disinfectant and as an air freshener.
• Use rags recycled from old towels and the like for cleaning the loo rather than disposable paper towels. Just wash them thoroughly afterwards!
• Baking soda absorbs smells and is great for getting stains off the inside and the outside of the bowl.
• Strong alcohol (anything from vodka to methylated spirits) is another potent natural disinfectant. Spray it neat around the place.

Big Toilet Cleaning Mistakes To Avoid

As with any task, there are some real no-nos to steer clear of. No matter how concerned you are about cleaning or about comfort, always avoid the following:

• Mixing cleaners. This especially applies to mixing things based on chlorine and things based on ammonia. Doing this in a small space like a lavatory can be fatal – they combine to form one of the nastier gases used in the trenches of WWI.
• Carpet or cloth mats around the base of the toilet or any other fabric toilet accessories. They may look cute and/or stop you from getting freezing feet on winter mornings but they collect unspeakable muck very easily and very quickly.
• Using the loo as a rubbish disposal system. Toilets are for excreta (urine, poo, blood and vomit) only. They are not for sanitary products, dead goldfish, old toilet rolls, shredded documents, cotton buds or nappies. If you flush any of these things down the loo, expect (a) to have your toilet flood on you at the worst possible moment and (b) to be on first-name terms with your local plumber very quickly.

Are you sick of promises and no delivery? If you are a facilities manager whose responsibilities include dealing with office cleaning providers then you know perfectly well what I am talking about. Organising cleaning maintenance at your London business premises can be daunting. There are hundreds of companies and the market is quite saturated with below-average services. The amount of time that you can waste chasing contractors can prove burdensome. Everybody promises everything and most of them don’t make good on it.

Drumroll! Enter Scream Cleaners.

Why are we different? Well, we would like to think that we are different and provide more value than anyone else. If we have even the slightest doubt that we will not be able to deliver our exceptionally robust soft cleaning services – we do not sign the contract. We explain why our service is not suitable for this particular client. Being totally honest upfront earns us a reputation as a service company that cares about our clients’ success and benefits.

I am sure we have a solution to your cleaning problem. Get in touch with us to find out how we can help. And make no doubt about it – if we cannot provide an excellent service with a ton of value to you, we will be the first to tell you why we are not suitable for the job. No time wasted. We might even provide free no obligation advice or recommendations.

Looking forward to surveying your business premises!

To your success,

Liam