You can find many recommendations online for custodial supplies, tools, and cleaning procedures. These recommendations are sometimes helpful, but other times they are inappropriate for your job, or just plain biased towards a particular brand. We all know to use chemicals, mops, and brooms to clean. This is NOT a list of those items. Tools are designed to help us get a job done. This list of tools exists to help every contract cleaner, janitor, and facilities professional complete important work optimally.

A Checklist

You and your team may know what tasks need to be completed in any given shift, but changes in staff or workloads can make it more difficult to do everything from memory. Some tasks become mundane and are forgotten.  Still others are tedious and pushed off for another time. Utilizing a task checklist ensures completion as expected. Additionally, a checklist gives management the ability to review for quality assurance and compliance.

Organizational Skill

Organization is invaluable. A simple task like cleaning the toilet requires gloves, goggles, chemicals, a toilet bowl brush, and wiping materials. Keeping these and other items organized saves time and makes the job easier. Items such as a trash can dolly, tool belts, and janitor carts organize supplies and ensure everything is always where it’s needed.

Process Efficiency

There are many ways to make things more efficient.  Simple things like cleaning high to low and dry to wet increase efficiency.  Using a chemical dilution station can reduce chemical waste and greatly increase the cleaning result. Adding a dusting sheet to a feather duster makes the tool attract more dust per pass. These are just a handful of ways to improve the efficiency of daily movements. For large scale improvements, a shift in thinking can do the trick. For example, using a battery powered backpack vacuum instead of a corded upright vacuum can improve productivity over 50%. Efficiency is a tool that should be top of mind when thinking about your custodial supply list.

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Continuous Improvement

Try new innovations and change your process entirely. There are tried and true methods for many cleaning tasks. Most of the time, trial and error leads us to the products and processes that we employ. Trying something new can seem foreign and scary, and you might not be sold on the benefit right away. Anyone that restores floors knows that stripping floors is a time consuming and back-breaking process. There are chemicals now that maintain floor finish and can drastically reduce the need for the stripping process at all. Alternatively, mopping may seem simple and time tested.  Consider the evolution though from string mops worked in a figure-eight pattern, to microfiber mops, and now to new mops that utilize the leading edge allowing for only a clean surface to be in contact with the floor at any time.  This improvement picks up more dirt with every movement. No matter your current tools and processes, there is room to innovate and improve.

There are many custodial supplies, tools, and cleaning procedures for contract cleaners, janitors, and facilities professionals. No matter the products you use, take advantage of the true tools of your trade. Checklists, Organizational Skills, Process Efficiency, and Continuous Improvement should always be on your custodial supply list.