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How clean is the average retail store?

Most times when you walk into a store of any kind, you expect that it will at least be clean, right? Very often they look fairly clean, but just remember that looks can be deceptive. Those Victorian stores, for instance, that are smart enough to use a cleaning service for retail stores Melbourne-wide won’t have this problem because experts have cast their eye and tools across the space and rendered it spotless. The same can’t be said everywhere, though?

But seriously, how dirty would a retail store really get? It’s very normal to see people pushing mops through them, no? All that happens is that customers come in, look at the goods, buy what they want, and leave? Where’s the opportunity for dirt?

1. Hands All Over Everything

First of all, let’s not forget about that customer dynamic that happens in a retail store. A customer walks in, and you have no idea where they have been prior to visiting your store, nor in particular where their hands have been. The customer then walks around, picking up several different items and inspecting them before returning them to the shelves or racks. That places all the collected germs of each customer’s hands on any and all touched products and surfaces.

Their hands also touch the shopping carts, baskets, the screens and other buttons on the self-service checkouts, if your store has them…and that’s before we get to the various door handles that are touched as they come in and out. It’s not as though customers are trying to make a mess, and much of what they leave is invisible to the naked eye, of course, but it means any retail space is essentially as dirty as the average person’s hands.

2. Dirt Via Shoes

Another source of contaminants is customers’ feet. Unlike when they get home, they don’t remove their shoes at the door. Customers wear outdoor shoes in the store, bringing in dust, mud and dirt, bits of gravel, and worse. This gets embedded into carpets and flooring, and can linger there for the whole day, possibly getting pushed around, under shelving units and in hard-to-reach spots for the daily vacuuming job. Obviously, you can’t remove shelving every day to clean underneath, but you can use commercial cleaning services in Kitchener, ON, or wherever you are, to give your floors a monthly deep clean.

3. A Failure to Wash Hands

If your retail space has an in-store bathroom for customers, then how sure can you be that everyone who uses it is washing their hands? You might have a strict policy for employees, but you just can’t ever get the same results when it comes to customers. Some are in a hurry, some forget, some just don’t feel like it. This exacerbates problems that we described in the first section above.

4. Trapped Grime

When dust, dirt, and other contaminants get trapped in the tight corners, nooks and crannies of a store, sometimes completely out of sight, they can start to generate other problems such as bad smells or even the growth of mould. Many customers report that one of the most off-putting things about a retail space is when it has a bad smell in it. What often happens is that stores may look clean, but when more thorough periodic deep cleaning isn’t carried out in the darker corners of the store, it can start to put people off and create problems for a business.

5. Poor Cleaning of Restrooms 

We mentioned bathrooms above and how customers bring their germs in and out of these spaces, but what about the bathrooms themselves? It’s easy to make a bathroom look relatively clean, but how clean is it in reality? Beware of bar soap, uncovered toilet seats, as well as the condition of door handles. 

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