How to Keep the Office Kitchen Clean

Whether you are a business owner, a manager of an office, or you are an employer looking after a whole team, you have to prioritize the health of your staff as much as possible. Providing a clean workspace will do this, and in the wake of COVID, many companies decided to up their cleaning game by bringing in multiple teams of cleaners to come in every week. The office kitchen is usually one of the dirtiest places because of high traffic.

People are moving in and out all the time to make drinks and to have lunch, and rightly so, because that’s what a kitchen is for. But if people aren’t cleaning up after themselves during their breaks, it becomes a germ hotspot. The dirty dishes piled in the sink, the food crumbs left on the counters and sometimes overflowing trash can all help to cause a buildup of germs. 

While you can rely on your cleaners that come in the evening, cleaners should not have to clean up after grown adults in that manner.If you have coffee machines and water machines that you use for meetings, then you’re probably already using the right tools, such as a coffee grinder brush to clean the beans and a filter to purify the water. But could you imagine what your clients would think if all of that was coming from a dirty kitchen? 

Under any of these conditions, your employees and even your client could fall sick and that could tarnish your business image. With that in mind, we’ve put together some instructions on how you can keep your office kitchen clean without having to rely on a cleaning company.

Make cleaning up a policy.

Unfortunately, not all employees will clean up after themselves after they’ve made a mess. The fact that you even have employees on your payroll who’d be happy to leave the mess to others should be a concern in itself. Gather everybody together to discuss a new policy of cleaning up after oneself when the kitchen has been used. Knowledge that habits that mean that trash is laying around and food is left out can attract bugs. It’s an unhygienic practice and everybody wants to work in a clean environment, which means that everybody needs to hold themselves accountable. Implementing a policy to clean up after themselves would mean that this will check dirty practices in the office kitchen. It also ensures that there are consequences for those who do not clean up after themselves.

Make sure that the kitchen flows well.

It’s more than just getting rid of that. When it comes to keeping a kitchen clean, it should be organized so that it’s easy to move around and the flow of the kitchen is easy to maintain.There should be a designated space for coffee cups and cutlery, and there should be a designated space for dish cleaning. Any bleach products that are used can be placed in one area, and these cupboards should be clearly labeled so that everybody knows what’s what. With clear labeling, nobody has the excuse that they didn’t know where something was supposed to go.

Have a trash rotation.

It’s important that everybody takes part in the cleaning of the kitchen, so having a chart on the wall with the name of an employee on that day whose job it is to take the trash to the main bins is important. Leaving trash anywhere except in the actual dustbin itself is unhealthy. The leftover food can breathe germs and attract insects and rodents to your office, which isn’t going to give off the best impression. Food waste can especially cause some unpleasant smells and that can drift through to the office and lower productivity in your workers. The cost of calling an exterminator will be on your shoulders, not the building, so you need to make sure that everybody is taking a part in getting rid of the trash.

Do regular inspections.

It’s vital that you check to see whether or not the kitchen is clean, so you need to do regular inspections to ensure that people are keeping up with it. A kitchen should be in safe conditions and germ free, and it’s especially important that when you’re running meetings, that the coffee machine and the water machines are also cleaned. Creating a weekly routine for cleaning appliances and countertops is important and then you can ask the cleaning team to keep on top of what you’re already doing.

This is a contributed post.