7 QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD ASK A RESIDENTIAL CLEANING SERVICE PROVIDER

Hiring a residential cleaning service provider can be a challenging task, especially when you are avoiding making mistakes as a first timer, or as one who has made mistakes in the past. With so many available options, from single maid services to property cleaning franchises, and prices ranging from easily affordable to scary rates, it’s easy to get confused in the process.

We’re approaching the festive season, and we understand many of our readers will need residential cleaning services. Below are some recommended questions to help you hire someone that is worthy of taking care of your most valued asset – your home.

How Long have you been operating as a residential cleaning service provider?

Anybody can wake up any day, pick up a mop and a bucket and start a cleaning business. Sure, this is Nigeria. However, it takes professionalism and expertise to run a well established sustainable cleaning company. For this reason, many cleaning services providers go out of business within the first year of starting up; few that survive, fold between the early years of starting. While this is not to refute the fact that newly formed company can survive, generally, the longer a company has been providing quality service, the more likely the company is to be around in the future.

How do you train your staff?

The cleaning service industry has a lot of works flying around, and it’s not unusual for some companies to carry out improper recruitment process just to get the job done. With this happening, new cleaners might get little training, or sometimes, no training at all. Professional cleaning services agencies typically have formal on-going training and retraining programs routinely to keep their staff updated with the latest trends and technology. This helps increase the quality assurance of the company.

How do you screen your staff?
Just like mentioned above, some companies don’t conduct thorough background checks before employing their staff. Just like you, no one wants to get dishonest individuals or criminals going through their residence both when they’re present and in absentia. Some of the questions to ask here include, “Does the agency check references of potential staff?”, “Do they conduct criminal background checks?”, “If yes, Are they willing to provide proofs?”

Are you Insured?

It is vital a residential cleaning service provider is insured. What happens if something in your house is broken or damaged? Always verify insurance coverage through the company’s insurance provider.
An insured company will undoubtedly charge cheaper, but when incidents occur, they are also the ones that cannot afford compensation bills, leaving you to take care of the charges.

Can you provide me with a written checklist of cleaning tasks to be performed?

This is a vital question that should be asked before hiring any type of cleaning service. Different companies have different ideas of what a basic service contains. Asking this question helps you know exactly what you are paying for and enables you to conduct a proper comparison of different cleaners. It’s necessary you save yourself later regrets by requesting for written specifications upfront.

What if I am not satisfied with the cleaning service provided?

In the case of this, some cleaning services offer a specified percent off your next service. A professional service would come back and take care of whatever it is that you are unsatisfied about, or be willing to offer you your money back. Do well to check the terms and conditions of the cleaning service. If they won’t satisfy you, why would you even want to use them next time?

Who Provides the cleaning equipment and products?

Go for a cleaning company that provides their own equipment and products; it shows professionalism. Besides that, cleaners achieve optimal results when they use machines and supplies they are familiar with and are trained to use. Additionally, in the long run, it saves you more cost when the cleaning service provider provides the equipment and supplies.

Conclusively, these are many others are questions to ask before hiring a residential cleaning service. We all at Phronesis Cleaning Service wish you the best as you clean up your residential property in preparation for the festive season.

5 REASONS WHY PROFESSIONAL CLEANING SERVICES ARE A WISE INVESTMENT

Nearly every business, not minding the industry or type of work done, requires hiring cleaning professionals to carry out commercial cleaning service of some kind. Cleaning your office is something that needs to be done, especially during seasons like Harmattan, whether you have customers visiting your office or not. The house cleaning frequency, however, varies with the type of business.

Leaving the cleaning jobs to your employees may affect their productivity as participating in cleaning activities won’t allow them to get their actual jobs done. However, neglecting to clean your office is likely to result in slips, trips and other forms of negative effects of having an untidy office on your employees, clients and your business. Undeniably, adverse impact on clients and employee will lead to them raising compensation claims against you.

However, janitorial services help you solve this problem as you can outsource your cleaning to professionals who have been in the industry, at affordable house cleaning rates. In this piece, we elaborate on 5 reasons why professional cleaning services are a wise investment.

Make an excellent Impression

If customers enter your office space or business premises and notice evidence of proper cleaning, it gives them an excellent impression of you. It reassures the customers that you take good care of your business which translates to them that you care about them too.

Keeps your business running effectively.

Employing the services of a professional janitor will allow your business to run smoothly. It removes the cleaning stress from your employees enabling them to focus on their job and enhances the smooth running of your business. Professional cleaners can provide daily house cleaning services or weekly house cleaning services depending on your needs. As experts, they know how to ensure every aspect of your business premises looks their best. This saves you time and energy, leaves your employees motivated for work and your clients impressed.

Professional Opinion and Expertise

It’s perfect when you leave the cleaning jobs for the experts than doing it yourself. It is doubtful for you to know what level of cleaning your business premises needs and also what type of products are needed to keep it in the best possible condition. Cleaning service professionals are dedicated to their industry, and as experts, most cleaning service companies will offer you a full consultation and quotation based upon a survey of your cleaning needs. They can guarantee the correct cleaning equipment and the level of cleaning your facility needs.

Keeps your Employees Healthy

Germs are the last thing you want to infest your workplace. They can be a big worry when there are enough of them in the air, and more dangerous when they spread into the carpets and surfaces in your office. A clean working environment means fewer chances of germs spreading, and hopefully less sick days from your workforce entirely. Productivity is profoundly affected even when only a single employee is off on sick leave. Imagine what it will look like when more employees are off work due to a germ infestation. Professional cleaning services can devise a weekly office cleaning services or any other frequency of cleaning that will handle and destroy germs and their remnants using quality cleaning chemicals.

Quality Cleaning Services use Quality Cleaning Products

Though how to find a good cleaner is not easy, when talking to a potential cleaning services company, it is worth spending time discussing the cleaning chemicals and equipment to be used. This is because what they use directly determines how efficient their cleaning will be. Besides that, it helps you know whether your office has some materials these products might be unsuitable for. Go for companies, like Phronesis Cleaning Services, that use quality cleaning services.

Conclusively, the importance of investing in professional cleaning services can never be overestimated. It impacts positively on both your quality of services, employees’ health, and business branding.

If you are in Lagos, then you must have taken cognizance of the weather change. The harmattan season is here again, and just like you have noticed, it is usually a dry and dusty period associated with low humidity.

Harmattan occurs between November and March each year, and during this period, dry and dusty wind blows southwards from the Sahara, across the country. As the wind passes the desert, it picks up large specks of dust which it transports down to the south. During this period, it’s almost inevitable to have dirt in our offices because it can be carried into the office space through customers and employees’ shoes or blown in through windows, doors and other openings.

Because of the nature of this period, there’s great need to dust and clean the office regularly to keep the office tidy and prevent respiratory illnesses and every other negative effect of having a dirty office.

As a business owner, it is usual for you to focus more on increasing productivity at work, however, if you are concerned about your health and that of your employees, there is need to engage in intensive office cleaning during harmattan. Whether your office is big or small, frequent cleaning during harmattan is necessary.

To help you scale through the harmattan, Phronesis Cleaning Services, a professional cleaning service provider in Lagos, provides you with top three ways to keep your office clean during harmattan

Thorough Carpet, Rug or Tile Cleaning

Carpet vacuuming and cleaning become of utmost importance during the harmattan season. This is because an enormous amount of specks of dust enter the office during this period and most of the dust sifts down the carpet’s fibers easily. Since these specks of dust collect a lot of harmful bacteria, ensure you give your carpet a deep cleansing using a vacuum cleaner.

This, however, might seem complicated if you are not an expert in the conducting the process. You can hire a professional carpet cleaning service provider to provide deep carpet cleaning services using the right methods and products.

Dusting and Cleaning Computers, Keyboards and other Gadgets in the Office

During harmattan, it is usual to come to the office in the morning and see specks of dust settled on your gadgets, after conducting a thorough dusting the previous evening. This is because computers, keyboards, and other devices collect most of these dust. Consequently, most of these bacteria carrying specks of dust are transmitted from hand to mouth while using these office gadgets. To keep your office clean during the harmattan, always dust your gadgets as many times as possible in a week.

Keep Your Office Organized

Keep your office organized at every time during the harmattan if you want a clean and easy to dust environment. Declutter your office and leave as little objects on your table as possible if you wish to dust your office with ease. Provide your employees with drawers to let them manage their files and other objects in one place, leaving the tables bare.

Conclusively, the amount of dust that enters your office space is proportional to how open you keep your office. Offices which have good ventilation system and air-conditioned offices are expected to have their doors closed at all times to reduce the inflow of dust through the door.

Though dust cannot be entirely prevented from making the office untidy during the harmattan season, it is paramount you do what you can to reduce dust and keep your office clean during harmattan.

With these top three ways to keep your office clean, we believe you have all it takes to maintain a clean office throughout the harmattan season

Your window is the eye through which you can see the world and its beauty every morning you wake up or walk into the office. Standing in front to your window every beautiful morning and taking deep breaths of fresh air while taking in the beauty of your environment can be the kick you need to start your day on the right note. When your window is dirty, you will feel quite irritated and uneasy. Even if it’s a little smudge, the beautiful view will be obstructed. There’s a probability that you do not even feel the nudge to clean the dirty windows as cleaning it can be very tasking.

Window cleaning shouldn’t be so difficult for you. You don’t have to give up the beauty you see through your window for some slimy grease. You can make it easier and even more fun to clean by adhering to these five window cleaning hacks to clean like a professional.

Use Microfiber Cloth to prevent streaks

Streaks can be deadly to the beautiful memories you keep while staring at your window. Instead of using cotton and paper towels that end up making your work of cleaning harder by smearing it around the cleaning areas, you can use a microfiber cloth which traps dirt and dust and therefore wiping your window of residue. Wipe the smear or dirty area in a circular motion making sure the whole dirty area is covered while overlapping strokes of your microfiber cloth. This will help prevent streaking as outlined in our previous post on cleaning tips you should know.

Have a blackboard eraser for better cleaning

What will you do when streaks persist? There’s just one thing you can do which is to involve a blackboard eraser in your cleaning activity. Rubbing a blackboard eraser over the streaks can send them running from your window.  If it happens that you do not have a blackboard eraser, you can use soft cotton to remove a stubborn streak, dust or dirt.

Kitchen tongs wipe blinds clean too

Wrapping rags round a pair of tongs and securing them with a rubber band provides you with a weapon to battle dirty blinds quickly and with a lot of ease. All you need do is to clamp this tongs with rags attached to them onto the blinds and work your way up, down and sideways to pick up excess dust which has accumulated. At the end of this activity, you will end up with a window you can lean on with your beautiful white dress without the fear of getting your dress stained.

DIY glass cleaner can come in handy

Certain glass cleaners contain chemicals you might not want to get on your hands. You can always go for natural solutions and glass cleaners with organic ingredients. Making your own glass cleaner can aide your cleaning, and it’s not so hard to make. Mix one part soap and vinegar in two parts of water and store in an air compressor. When cleaning, spray your glass cleaner on your windows and wipe down. Always ensure that you rinse your windows with clean water to prevent a buildup of soap on your window.

Using air compressor for your windows cleans better

You don’t have to break a sweat for places that are hard to reach. An air compressor will do a cleaner job for these places as they will help you clean out the dirt and dust packed in these hard-to-reach places. It’s as simple and fun as that.

Conclusively, ensure to wipe out dust before embarking on cleaning your windows with water and detergent or any liquid for cleaning. We hope with our hacks for cleaning a window like a professional; you have what it takes to have a nice weekend cleanup.