Does Your Restroom ‘Feel’ Clean?
Customers use their senses to determine cleanliness.
Cleaning & Maintenance Management/Spotlight: Restroom Care
by: Peter J. Sheldon, Sr. and Dr. Charles Gerba
For the past 150 years, we have been cleaning the epicenter of biowaste transfer — the restroom — to a standard we can smell, touch and see.
If it looks, smells or feels clean, then it must be clean, at least to the perception of a single individual.
Another person’s perception, however, may be completely different.
Gauging Success
Cleaning a restroom for the aesthetic appeal of the users of the facility is ambiguous at best and often a moving target.
What “feels” clean to one person, may in fact seem just the opposite to you.
In assessing cleanliness in restrooms, we need to educate building occupants that germs are invisible.
This means that places that look clean can, in fact, be very risky.
When a proper cleaning regime is not followed, cleaning can actually spread illness-causing germs in a facility, even though the facility may smell or look clean.
