40. Operational Insight: How to Deep Clean the Common Areas of a Property
Two workflows to swipe
Over the last 3 weeks we’ve cleaned the kitchen, bathroom, bedroom and reception rooms.
This week we’re finishing up with the common areas and the externals.
The common areas include the entrance hall, hallway(s) and stairs, while the externals include the garden, balcony and porch.
To recap on the 3 previous instalments of this series, check out these posts:
Agenda
Products
Equipment
Prepare the clean
Low Maintenance
Detailing
Final Stop
Externals
Here’s the workflow:
Let’s break this down 👇🏾
Products
The inventory for these cleans is simple:
Washing up liquid + Water
Glass Cleaner
Like the bedroom and reception rooms, the most common surfaces in these areas will be glass, wood, stone, metal.
Washing up liquid diluted in water is an effective multi-purpose, a fraction of the cost of a multi-purpose cleaner.
Using furniture polish is an unnecessary inventory cost.
Remember, clients expect a clean surfaces, not a polished surfaces.
Equipment
Minimal:
Microfibre cloths (All surfaces)
Glass Microfibre (Glass + mirrors)
Vacuum cleaner (Floor + stairs)
Mop + Bucket (Hardwood or stone floor)
Prepare the clean
As with all the other spaces, start by removing all rubbish.
In my experience, tenants leave very few items in the common areas. You might find some stray shoes, rubbish bags and old post, but that’s about it.
Low Maintenance
Common areas don’t tend to have much furniture, but they do have plenty of light fittings and mirrors.
The high surfaces in these areas (shelving and light fittings) collect plenty of dust because they are left untouched by tenants. They can collect 6 or 12 months+ of dust, depending on the length of the tenancy.
Porches and entrance halls will have windows, window frames and ledges to clean.
There may be cupboard under the stairs and/or on the landing which need to be vacuumed.
Any furniture in the hallway or on the landing needs to be cleaned inside and out. There may be mirrors that need polishing as well.
Finish with wiping down skirting boards, radiators, plug sockets and light switches.
Detailing
Common areas that are often overlooked include:
Ceiling corners and light fittings - These are popular spots for trapping dust and spider webs.
Hidden cupboards in the hallway, on the landing or under the stairs - Easy to forget that these need to be cleaned.
Bannisters on a staircase - They get quite dusty, especially at the base of the bannister. Time consuming to clean and one of the reasons they’re overlooked.
Marks on walls - This is a tricky one. Entrance halls, hallways and landings are high traffic areas and collect a lot of marks. Some marks can be wiped without affecting the paintwork. Other marks need a fresh coat of paint.
I would err on the side of caution and raise excessive marks with the client/property manager and recommend a paint job. Good opportunity to upsell an additional service as well as showing your expertise to the client by raising the issue in the first place.
Final Stop
At this stage, the kitchen, bathroom(s), bedroom(s) and reception room(s) were already checked off, leaving the common areas the last to be cleaned.
With houses and apartments that had multiple floors, the teams would clean from the top floor down and then towards the front door of the property.
Towards the end of the clean our teams would collect all of the rubbish, products and equipment by the front door.
Our supervisor would complete the final checks before everything was moved out of the property, leaving the hallway clear for vacuuming and mopping (if required).
That’s it, clean complete!
Externals
Technically, external areas were not included as part of our deep clean service, unless specifically requested and paid for.
However, there were things that we did to external areas that took little time and added to providing an exceptional all-service. These included:
Collecting obvious bits of rubbish from the garden
Sweeping the balcony of a flat/apartment or the patio/decking area in the garden
Cleaning windows that were easily accessible
We found a lot of upsell opportunities by looking at the externals, including:
Garden maintenance - a lot of tenants don’t look after the garden
Gutter clearing - often overlooked until there’s a blockage or a leak. It’s preventative work, especially where there are a lot of trees and foliage in the front and back garden.
Window cleaning - speaks for itself. Window cleaning should be an immediate upsell for all deep cleans.
Patio/Driveway cleaning - Especially for higher end properties where the tenants want a pristine outside spot to socialise.
This wraps up our first series of Operational Insights. This series has focused on the deep clean/tenancy clean of the rooms in a standard property.
You’ll come across a variety of property sizes and styles during the life of your cleaning business that require different nuances to clean.
Hopefully this series has given you a good overview as to what to expect and give you an idea of how to approach the clean
Any questions or if you’ve got a requests for the next series of Operational Insights - office clean, recruiting, bookings etc - let me know in the comments👇🏾
Content to check out
In this week’s episode of The Growth Lab podcast, I have a chat with Matt Ricketts about building a data driven cleaning business. Listen here.
Prefer watching over listening? Check out The Growth Lab podcast on YouTube.
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Matt @ The Growth Lab
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