Winter is coming, as you may have heard countless times on a certain TV show. Winter brings festivities and holidays with it, and snow is a joyous event for kids everywhere. But the wind, the rain and general sogginess of the seasons mean a veritable pile of additional responsibilities for the rest of us. Especially in the carpet cleaning industry, because every winter brings a spike in calls and an increase in frequency of scheduled cleaning, as any experienced facility manager or executive housekeeper will know.
Your carpet is one of the great achievements of human civilization: it is affordable, easily replaceable and comfortable flooring – that can become a stained, uninviting mess over the course of just a week of bad weather. If your facility includes a space with high foot-traffic , that space is usually the lobby. And this means that carpeting that most people see first and which is therefore a key factor of you facility’s appearance will suffer the most.
Unfortunately, there is not much you can do to prevent that, bar from asking people to take their shoes off before entering. Fortunately, we are all in understanding that this is under no means an option, especially in wintertime. So those in charge of facility appearance management have only one option: to grit their teeth and get that carpet cleaned, regularly, sometimes even on a daily basis, depending on the volume of traffic, until bad weather succumbs to sunshine.
Of course, it is to be expected that the entrance to your facility bears the brunt of the assault. People come in from the cold, rain and even snow, and their shoes are muddy, dirty or wet. Installing heavy duty mats can make a difference, but not really if you are dealing with dozens of more people per hour, even if all of them are really good-mannered and take care to wipe their shoes. Posting notices which spell out the need for shoes being wiped upon entrance also helps, but can only go so far. In the end, your carpet will get dirty and messed up – and the degree to which this will happen depends solely upon how long you delay cleaning.
There is also the age –old logical fallacy of slackers and procrastinators everywhere, which amounts to “but why clean it when it will just get as dirty as it was, within a week or so?” Yes, that is true, but it doesn’t mean that cleaning it is useless. For one, regular cleaning extends your carpet life and not doing it is usually a good enough reason for the manufacturer’s warranty to become void. Also, dirt that doesn’t get cleaned for a while becomes a stain, and stains that don’t get cleaned for a while become a part of the fabric color – and just like that, your lobby carpet goes from beautiful beige to a gross shade of gray and can never go back to being what you originally paid for.
Let’s be fair, it is usually not due to procrastination and negligence (facility managers and executive housekeepers usually don’t get to that position by being negligent procrastinators, I’m sure we can agree). The main culprit that leads to the battle being lost, to paraphrase the old adage made famous by Benjamin Franklin, is the desire to save money and cut costs. But investing more into regular cleaning actually saves money down the line if you simply take into account the losses incurred by void warranties and/or the cost of having to replace some areas of the carpeting due to winter wear and tear.
Even though the entrance and lobby areas are the most vulnerable points in this respect, care should also be taken to perform regular maintenance of adjoining hallways and other areas like side or back entrance hallways, basically all places that see foot traffic of more than a few people entering daily. And there’s no telling when a single visitor or a single day of really bad weather can do the work of an entire week’s worth of soggy and muddy shoes walking around the building.
While it is true that we don’t see much of it in Florida, it must be noted that salt used to speed up the snow melting process is also a major source of carpet damage. That is another major reason to not dally with carpet cleaning during the snow season, since it can eat away at the material if left for too long. Again, entrance areas are at highest risk here.
In addition to all this, people tend to spend more time indoors during winter months, since weather does tend to get colder, even in Florida. This doesn’t really make a difference for your carpeting, except that there may be a greater chance of spilling something on it, simply because you will be spending more time on it. But, it is not only people who stay inside more – this goes for our pets, too.
Now, if your facility is the sort that allows pets – a residential building, most likely – you will know that pets are much better than us humans at bringing in dirt and mud. But keeping them inside too much causes different problems: the hairs and pet dander accumulate much more quickly on all surfaces, and your carpet is a great magnet for it, considering that it is the biggest air filter at your facility. It traps all of the soil and allergens, which get kicked into the air as you walk on it. This can acerbate the problems of people suffering from respiratory issues.
There are many reasons why having your carpet cleaned more frequently during the winter is recommended and those reasons are not simply esthetic or hygienic, but also budgetary and health-related. Scheduling regular carpet cleaning means you will not have to worry about those things, and you will actually save money compared to calling your carpet cleaners only when the problem is already visible and probably too far gone. Regular, scheduled carpet cleaning is the only optimal option and the most efficient solution in wintertime.
