What does your office say about you? Imagine your workplace through the eyes of your customers. Does the space represent an organized, clean operation? Or is your place of business in a perpetual state of clutter?

You never know who may arrive unannounced. It could be your biggest client who’s “in the neighborhood.” If you’re office is not prepared for surprise visits, it’s time to make a plan.

You may be absolutely convinced no client will ever visit your space. That may be true. But what about the letter carrier? What about vendors? What about the lunch delivery person? Their impressions matter because they have friends, coworkers, and family who could be potential or current clients. They, themselves, may be a future client.

“You don’t really know who’s walking through your door. So be prepared to make a great impression.”

Keeping your office clean and presentable at all times might sound like an impossible task, but with a few tips, you can make it a habit. At Master Clean, we’ve spent years learning how to efficiently clean offices of all types. Here are our seven steps to a clean office:

1. Organize loose papers. Filing cabinet surfaces, chairs, side tables and your conference table are not places to store your documents. Get in the habit of keeping papers in the proper place. And it’s a lot easier to be productive when you know where that important file is kept.
2. Keep restrooms clean and sanitized. Right, nobody likes a dirty bathroom. But half the battle is simply keeping restrooms stocked with the right cleaning tools and supplies. Sanitizing wipes, a toilet brush, easy-opening hand-soap and towel dispensers make sanitizing surfaces easy to maintain. And don’t forget to keep the restroom trash receptacle empty and near the door, so used paper hand towels don’t end up on the floor.
3. Keep dust from electronics. Strategically place cans of compressed air throughout the office and encourage employees to spray keyboards. Dust can build up in electronics and shorten their lives leading to expensive repair and replacement bills. Use anti-static dusting wipes to clean computer monitors and mice.
4. Clean the break room. The break room is one of the most important places in the office for maintaining morale. Let it fall into chaos, and productivity can quickly be replaced by griping and complaints. Clean the microwave with sanitizing wipes. Clear out the refrigerator every Friday so it’s clean and welcoming on Monday. Wipe down tables throughout the day.
5. Take out the trash. It’s easy for those small wastebaskets around each desk to overflow with papers, banana peels, coffee cups and cellophane wrappers. Purchase a large round wheeled trash container and empty the trash every day at the close of business. Think about how you want to start each new day – it’s certainly not with a full trash receptacle.
6. Maintain public areas. Start seeing your office through the eyes of your visitors. Are there fingerprints and smudges on phones, tables, door knobs and windows? Are the magazines in waiting areas worn, soiled and outdated? Is the carpet clean around the threshold? Are the lightbulbs flickering, buzzing, missing or mismatched, creating a poor impression?
7. Hire a cleaning service. An experienced, bonded, insured office cleaning partner cleaning your office regularly is the most cost effective way to make a positive impression on visitors. Consider how much it costs per hour for you and your employees to clean the office. What else could they be doing with that time? Are they trained? Is it really part of their job description? When the answers to these questions cause you a little discomfort, it might be time to hire a pro.

We all get busy. We all get distracted. One of the easiest ways to maintain a happy, productive workplace is to keep your workplace clean and make it something for employees, visitors and clients to be proud of.