How to Keep Your Office Fridge Clean

A person’s decision to leave a company is rarely about the workload and the difficulty of tasks. People stay with a corporation for years because they feel valued and taken cared of. They are not only comfortable with their colleagues and bosses but they also consider the office their second home. 

Thankfully, creating a comfortable workspace environment isn’t rocket science. Providing them with a dining area that has all the amenities is ideal. Likewise, it is as important to keep these amenities clean and sanitary. After all, a tidy office space is a productive office space.

Truth be told, keeping a communal fridge clean is a challenge. Not everyone’s tolerance for dirt and mess is at the same level. Nevertheless, as the manager and business owner, it is your responsibility to create guidelines that would maintain the cleanliness of your workspace’s common areas.

Is your office fridge in dire need of maintenance? Below are a few guidelines that you can follow in order to ensure that your break room fridge is clean and safe to use:

Impose a Cleaning Schedule 

A dirty fridge is not only disgusting but it can be dangerous as well. Unchecked moldy food containers can affect the integrity of freshly packed meals inside the fridge. At its worst, your most productive workers can get food poisoning. Failing to maintain this area can cause dire effects on your employee’s health and wellness. 

With that said, imposing a strict fridge cleaning schedule can help prevent the build-up of bacteria and germs. You can ask for help from your employees in order to accomplish this task. Since it is a communal appliance, it makes sense that the responsibility of cleaning is shared by everyone. A different person could be assigned to clean the fridge every week. To make the task less arduous, you can treat the assigned person with a free meal.

Likewise, if you have a maintenance team in your payroll, providing them with exact cleaning guidelines to follow would make the process less tedious. There are specific ways to ensure that the fridge is clean. Just because spills are wiped down doesn’t necessarily mean that the food is safe to consume. Which brings us to…

Make Sure the Fridge is Cleaned Properly 

Because you are dealing with food, taking care of spills and sticky areas are unavoidable parts of fridge maintenance. While spills seem innocuous, did you know that up to 8,000 bacteria per square centimeter can thrive in a sticky surface? You wouldn’t want you and your employees to eat food from a fridge teeming with pathogens. 

Cleaning the fridge properly requires several specific steps:

  • Best to remove all the contents inside the fridge before cleaning. This way no nook nor cranny would remain unsanitized. 
  • Remove all the fridge shelves and wash them separately in the sink. If the spills prove to be difficult to wipe off, soak the shelves for a couple of minutes until the debris can be washed away. 
  • While the shelves are in the sink, use warm soapy water to wipe down all surfaces. If you can, use a cleaner that is specifically made for fridge maintenance. Otherwise, dish soap should suffice.
  • Dry the inside of the fridge with a paper towel. Make sure that the shelves are dry before putting them back in. 
  • Move the fridge to clean the coils behind the appliance. Cleaning this part would enable your fridge to run more efficiently. 
  • In order to prevent odors, leave a dish with baking soda or ground coffee in the back of your refrigerator.

Fridge cleaning might seem laborious but ticking off each step regularly would help you avoid having to spend on a new appliance every so often. 

Organize Accordingly

If you are a small operation, it might be a good idea to provide your employees with specific areas inside the fridge. You can furnish them with individual baskets that they can use to store their meals and condiments. You can also have masking tape and a pen easily accessible so your workers can label the food that they bring in. 

Encouraging your employees to clean their specific areas might be more manageable for them than having to clean the entire fridge by themselves. Moreover, organizing your fridge accordingly would not only maintain its tidiness but it can also keep your break room conflict-free.

Do a Regular Toss-Out

Aside from weekly cleanings, it is also a good idea to schedule regular fridge toss-outs. Throwing out vessels that are no longer wanted would save you and your staff a lot of time. After all, an empty fridge is easier to sanitize. 

It is best to conduct these toss-outs every Friday. Before the end of the week, send a reminder to everyone regarding the toss-out. This way your employees would get the chance to recover the containers that they still want to take home. 

Keep Cleaning Materials Accessible

More often than not, people fail to clean their immediate areas because there aren’t cleaning materials readily available. The same can be said for communal spaces like the break room. It is easier to ignore a spill than to run around the office to look for a rag to clean it up with. 

In order to maintain the cleanliness of your fridge, make sure that supplies are always within reach. This way your workers have the means to maintain the fridge without the extra effort of gathering materials. 

Get the Help of Experts 

In a perfect world, you don’t have to employ the help of a maintenance team to keep an organized office. After all, your employees are capable adults who understand their responsibilities in maintaining a shared space. 

However, in truth, your workers are busy with their tasks throughout the day. You don’t want to pull their focus away from the goals that you hired them for. Besides, for most of them, their job descriptions do not include office maintenance. It is doubtful that they know the first thing about keeping a workplace clean.

Your best bet is to hire a commercial cleaning service that would maintain your office space. Professionals would know exactly what to do with minimal supervision and guidelines. With the right people in tow, you don’t have to stress over delegating cleaning tasks to your employees. Like your workers, you come in Monday morning with the office bright and sparkling. 

The cleanliness of your fridge takes time and effort. But best believe that allocating resources to its maintenance is well worth it. Your employees are your company’s best assets– there is truly no price for their health and safety.