April 4, 2018
The commercial cleaning company, InterKleen provides janitorial services to a variety of facilities in Delray Beach, FL, including schools. A place that hundreds of kids attend daily for their education, it is important to keep our community’s schools clean. The job of cleaning a school is not easy and the germs are abundant. One child could be the incubator of a virus that days later spreads, causing multiple kids to get sick and miss school. Just think of all the surfaces each student and teacher touches throughout the day. According to a Center for Disease Control, here are the top 5 dirtiest and most germ-infested places in a typical school.
5. The Restroom… Door?
We all associate bathrooms as being gross, but they are cleaned so regularly that most of the time the inside isn’t actually all that dirty. The restroom door is the real culprit here. The door is touch by every person going in and out of the bathroom. Despite all those lessons from our parents and diagrams by the sink in elementary school, lots of kids fail to wash their hands. Potentially covered with urine, fecal matter, and whatever else they picked up throughout the day, every kid pushes the door open with their hands. A quality commercial cleaning provider will train employees not to just scrub the toilets and clean the sinks, but to also wipe down the inside and outside of the bathroom doors.
4. Cafeteria Trays and Lunch Boxes
Some parents may not be excited to learn that the cafeteria trays at most schools are not cleaned very often. It is probably assumed that these trays are cleaned between every use, but apparently, that is naive. Lunch trays are constantly in contact with hands and food, making them the perfect place for bacteria, mold, and other pathogens to breed.
Do you think that the children who bring their own lunch are safe? Think again! When do you think was the last time any child’s lunch box was washed out? Probably not recently enough. Kids go around from class to class, touching desks, whiteboards, and books, snatching their lunch box on their way out to the next classroom. Lunch boxes are just another one of the dirtiest surfaces you will find in a school.
3. The Desks Students Sit-In
The majority of a typical student’s day is spent sitting at a desk. In some cases, it is the same desk all day every day, and in other cases, they will switch between 4 to 8 desks per day. Student desks are one of the most common homes for hand contaminants. Every cough, sneeze, and nose pick has a high chance of occurring at this very spot. Desks are not cleaned very often either, sometimes going all year without seeing a disinfectant. Some proactive teachers have been known to give student wipes to clean the desks off every so often, but this is not a norm in most Delray Beach schools. Cleaning all of the student’s desks can be time-consuming, but you may want to ask your commercial janitor to at least clean them every few weeks.
2. Classrooms Supplies
After talking about the desk students sit at, it should be no surprise that school supplies are on this list. Between pencils, paper, book, highlighters, staples, etc., each child basically carries a germ bag around with them every day. Each of these tools is used frequently by students and remember that a lot of kids don’t wash their hands after they use the bathroom. Unfortunately, school janitors can’t really help with this one. It is up to students to wash their hands and wipe off their supplies on a regular basis.
You guessed it, the water fountain is the #1 dirtiest place in most schools. Students turn on the fountain by pushing a button with their potentially very dirty hands, leaving behind hand germs for the next person who uses the fountain. They also have a tendency to put their mouths right on the spigot. Fountain spigots are not on the list of things janitors clean regularly and students pass along bacteria living in their mouths. Please, let’s teach kids to keep their mouths at a safe distance from water fountain spigots. It is also a hygienic idea to let the fountain run for a few seconds to flush germs and dust before drinking. Ask your janitorial service to clean all water fountain buttons and spigots daily.
Sometimes the dirtiest places in our facilities are places we least suspect. As a commercial cleaning service for Delray Beach, FL schools, InterKleen takes pride in the quality of work we provide. Our janitors are happy to discuss expectations and go above and beyond to keep your school clean. Some of the dirtiest and germiest places mentioned in this article are beyond the reach of our janitors, but others can be taken care of with a little extra attention. InterKleen offers reliable commercial janitorial services to all types of schools throughout Delray Beach. Call today to get a quote!