Step by step

Sometimes a simple calculation can make us look at things differently. Let's do some math. We spend about eight hours a day working in our office, and we work five days a week. In a month, that adds up to about one hundred-and eighty hours - in a year, almost two thousand hours. In a lifetime, assuming a career lasting around forty-five years, we spend a total of EIGHTY THOUSAND hours in our offices. Is that a long time? That probably depends on how we look at it. Let's consider a health perspective. We know that hygiene is a key factor in good health - what's the place where we most strive to keep everything clean? Most likely it's out restrooms. Well, on average, in a lifetime we spend only a little more than TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND hours at the restroom. That's a THIRD of the time we spend in our offices - but would we say we give three times the care to how clean our office is than how clean our restroom is? "Step by step" Not all of us clean their own offices, of course. It's often a job best left to professionals, with professional tools and expertise. But for those of us who work in a home office, or even a small office where the cleaning is one of the (many!) things they have to do, a few tips from the pros can really be a big help. And we got some tips from someone who has two hundred employees who work as professional cleaners everyday : Pagi, a great cleaning company. 1) You can't clean in the middle of a mess. Before you even think about cleaning your office, start de-cluttering it. If it's like most offices, yours is filled with papers, folders, clips, and a thousand little things. Until you've put these all away (which also helps you work better later, on a side note) you can't even think about starting to really clean. 2) Start small and focused. Where do you spend most of the time, again, while IN your office? That's right: at your desk. This is where your hands are all the time, where occasionally you spill some coffee, where crumbs from your mid-morning snack go. Use some spray cleaner and a cloth and thoroughly wipe down everything - don't forget your monitor, your computer, and especially your keyboard! Keyboards often need some extra work iwth some compressed air. You'll be amazed at how much can hide between the keys! 3) Don't stop doing a good thing. While you're at it, keep cleaning the furniture: that's where the most dust settles. Bookshelves, tables, even chairs - it's their turn now. And yes, that means taking down books and cleaning them too. 4) It's just where you would expect it to be. Where do we throw away our garbage? In the wastebasket! No wonder, then, that the wastebasket is the dirtiest object in our office. Of course, it's just its job to be - even so, at least once in a while give it a nice thorough cleaning with some spray cleaner and a cloth.