There’s more to office fridge cleaning and getting rid of nasty food odors. It saves employees’ lives too.
Filthy office fridges are favorite breeding grounds of life-threatening bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli. Unless you have the money and energy and don’t mind gastrointestinal infections, office fridge cleaning is something your workplace should be most concerned about.
According to studies, there are 7,850 bacteria units breed per square centimeter of your typical fridge drawer. Unfortunately, this finding is way beyond the recommended bacterial amount for safe food preparation. Notably, 0 to 10 bacteria units per square centimeter is the safe range.
Imagine this number of bacteria populating and invading your office fridge.
Scary, right?
5 Effective and Practical Office Fridge Cleaning Tips
As they say, prevention is better than cure. Never allow germs to take over your workplace. Never let it hamper your workforce’s productivity. Doing these easy and practical tips:
# 1 – Instill office fridge cleaning accountability
Neglecting your office refrigerator cleaning is like taking an office routine task for granted. It piles up and gets out of hand before you even know it!
But then, how many from your office would be willing to get down and do the dirty work?
One of the keys to a successful fridge clean-up is making it part of the workplace routine and company policy. Since everyone’s using your office fridge, it is but logical and fair to make each of your employees accountable for the cleaning and safekeeping of this valuable yet often-taken-for-granted appliance.
Some offices set rotational cleaning schedules among their teams or departments, with one person charged to lead them. Other employers even go the extra mile by issuing memos to each of their division heads, institutionalizing the office fridge cleaning policy.
# 2 – Clean up fridge exteriors
The refrigerator’s exterior surfaces are the ones your employees come into contact with whenever they approach and open the fridge. Imagine how many hands, containing different types of microbes, are touching your fridge surface and door every single day.
Cleaning your office refrigerator’s external surfaces with a mixture of water and mild dishwashing liquid goes a long way. Even with this simple cleaning formula, illnesses from the spread of infectious microbes can be prevented. Is your office a bit fancy? You may want to use ready-made fridge cleaning solutions available in stores instead.
For this purpose, you may also want to include other supplies. This includes trash bags, disposable gloves, sponges, rags or paper towels, or microfiber cloths to make your office fridge exterior squeaky-clean and presentable.
# 3 – Organize your fridge
Before beginning your office fridge cleaning and organization, get your employees to take out everything inside the office refrigerator. This way, they can remove all their crap inside all at once. Also, they can see everything or anything that needs to be consumed or thrown off, or may still be stored for later consumption.
Besides, stuffing your office fridge full makes it hard for air to flow through each compartment. It results in warmer fridge areas than others. These areas are more susceptible to bacterial growth that eventually leads to food spoilage.
Also, an organized office fridge allows the employees, or office fridge team in-charge, to easily detect molds, mildews, and look for expired food that may be discarded.
# 4 – Adjust the fridge to the proper temperature
By now, it should be apparent that microbes make your office fridge a problematic area of your workplace. Again, bacterial growth accelerates under warm temperatures. Accordingly, employers or office managers must always see to it that the food in their office refrigerators is put under well-maintained cold temperatures.
Part of office refrigerator cleaning is keeping the refrigerator’s temperature at about 40 degrees Fahrenheit or lower. The colder your office refrigerator gets, the slower the rate of microbial growth would be.
# 5 – Invest in office fridge cleaning services
There are times when office refrigerator cleaning is just too impossible to accomplish, given all the workload your office needs to accomplish. But this shouldn’t mean disposing of cleanliness in your workplace’s top priority list.
Office cleaning services shouldn’t be taken out from every workplace’s top priority, as cleanliness is one of the cornerstones of employees’ health and wellness.
Get the right guy to do the fridge cleaning for you
Don’t let your office refrigerator cleanliness concerns be the elephant in the room and hinder your business and workplace success. Allow Prestige Property Services to do the tough job for you. Let our team of office cleaning experts handle all your workplace cleanliness needs and predicaments.
Don’t allow bacterial growth and sickness to render you and your employees powerless.
Bring back the vigor and wellness in your workplace by calling Prestige Property Services now!