The traditional Spring Clean has been a bit of a British institution that may have originated in Persia as a pre-New Year clean up (their new year falling at the beginning of spring) and is similarly related to the Scottish traditional Hogmanay house clean, but is most likely just an ideal time of year to clean as it is warm enough to open the windows and aerate the building.

National Wake Up Week!

Having a set week to focus raising awareness on is the ideal spur to get people to don their rubber gloves, open their cleaning cupboards and get scrubbing.

It is a campaign that appeals to everyone to not only clean up their home, but to learn about the health benefits of cleaning regularly and the other aspects of life that can be improved by applying the same attitude.

Digitize

One of the key suggestions for this year’s Spring Cleaning Week was to digitize your life. Start by getting rid of any rarely explored piles of paper after scanning and saving anything important to your computer, cancel all paper bills and get them sent by email instead, and then organise your online or computer files so that everything is easily found and is easy to manage as you get new bills etc.

The idea is that you will not only avoid amassing new piles of bills and paper, you will also hopefully become more in control of your life, as you can see all your bills and paperwork in one place.

Habits

Another important thing to take away from this year’s campaign is some motivation to give up your vices and take up something that will improve your life or your health; for instance giving up smoking or fast food and maybe taking up a new sport like rock climbing or swimming.

The combination of cleaning your home, organising your life and doing something positive to make you healthier should essentially ‘spring clean’ your life.

As mentioned ‘National Spring Clean Week’ is in its 9^th year and has been growing in popularity each year. This year saw national news coverage and the likes of ‘Colin and Justin’ offering tips in conjunction with the week-long event.

So did you know it was happening? Did you Spring Clean? Have you been inspired to ‘spring clean’ your life?

Off course Spring cleaning does not just refer to your house this can also relate to Office Cleaning either by you and your staff or by having a professional Commercial Cleaning company to do an annual Spring clean.

Sorry Oscar

As a celebration of film, the Academy Awards have taken a bit of a bashing of late, particularly as they seem to have consistently left so many excellent films off the nominations list.

Some say that the Academy follows fashion too closely, some say they are too nostalgic, or that they are far too easily swayed by studio lobbying and PR. It would be nice if the results of smaller film festival awards like the Sundance Film Festival were given equal media coverage as their awards seem to go to what feel like more deserving movies. (Rant over.)

Cleaners in Film

Cleaners make excellent protagonists (or indeed antagonists) in film scripts as they are everywhere; they aren’t super spies or legendary boy wizards, they are normal people like you and me, making them easier to relate to. Perhaps that’s why the following films were so excellent:

1 The Help

This film is basically a story about racism and is set in the Deep South during the civil rights movement in 1960’s America. The main characters are African-American maids who are exploited at the hands of well off white people. Octavia Spencer won the Best Supporting Actress award at this year’s Oscars.

2 Kenny

If you haven’t seen this then you are in for a real treat when you do – Kenny is a ‘mockumentary’ that follows the life of an Australian portable toilet cleaner called Kenny. He truly is a ‘Knight in shining overalls’. Shane Jacobson, who played Kenny, won several best actor awards in Australia including from the Australian Film Institute in 2006.

3 Wall-E

His job was to clean up the entire planet to allow humans to come back after they made it inhabitable. He did so and saved them from a rogue robot too. Wall-E is funny and charming and hilarious all at the same time. It deservedly won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2009.

It was tempting to add to this list with all the smashing films featuring the more sinister type of cleaner such as: ‘Mr Wolf’ from Pulp Fiction and ‘Leon’ from Leon or for that matter characters from films were they did cleaning as part of their jobs but weren’t really cleaners: ‘Rocky’ in Rocky cleaned the gym, ‘Mary Poppins’ from Mary Poppins cleaned as part of her nanny job, sometimes using magic, and ‘Amelie’ in Amelie who cleaned as part of her job in a café.

These are all great films but don’t quite measure up to the 3 winners in the category of Best Cleaning Film!

Who would you add to this list? And please don’t say ‘Maid in Manhattan’…

The soap is being developed by an international team of scientists based at Bristol University and led by Professor Julian Eastoe. It was successfully demonstrated in late January using a drop of water containing the magnetic soap being clearly drawn towards a nearby magnet.

How Does It Work?

As you probably know already, soap works by utilising it’s long molecules, which have one end that is attracted to water and one that isn’t (hence the name ‘detergent’). This means when you put it on a greasy or dirty surface, one end automatically points towards the dirt and the other points to the water, thus separating the water from the grime into nice little droplets.

What the scientists have done is introduce iron atoms into the molecules so that when the droplets are formed, they can be picked up with a magnet. This will allow people cleaning up oil spills, to simply put the special soap in the water to soak up all the grime into those droplets, then instead of trying to awkwardly and inefficiently scrape the soap off the surface of the water, they simply hold a magnet it there and lift the dirt out.

This video shows the new soap in action. Can you guess if it’s the one on the left or the one on the right?

How Will This Help Commercial Cleaning?

While this new soap is still just at the laboratory stage, such a useful invention will no doubt find its way into the commercial or even the domestic world.

Commercial cleaning uses might include its use in water treatment plants that are always looking for new ways to improve the purity of their water; it could be used for chemical spills on land like the one in China last June or even for every day clean ups in large industrial situations where cleanliness is important.

Domestically you could imagine it would be useful for cleaning water tanks so that you know you aren’t going to get bubbles coming out of your taps; for dishwashers so that they stay cleaner for longer and don’t develop that scum layer or even in washing up liquid – just turn on your ‘sink magnet’ and all your dishes are clean.

Personally I can’t wait for this to develop further and quickly so that if another terrible oil spill strikes, it won’t be such a huge environmental disaster.

A Bit Gross

Your hands have millions of bacteria on them, way more than most toilet seats. Sounds a bit gross, but most of these are harmless bacteria and viruses etc. What is important though is the fact that you have such a complex ecosystem or 10 on each hand, and that you can so easily pick up a new, not so friendly set of bacteria by touching a doorknob or desktop, then touch your own face. You need to keep the balance right by washing them often. Doing so you will decrease your chance of:

• Causing a Norovirus outbreak
• Sending your whole family down with flu
• Getting diarrhoea on your wedding day

Ideally you should wash or sanitise your hands every time you use someone else’s computer, or mobile phone or even after shaking hands, but this is just not practical and will make you look like you have obsessive compulsive disorder. The best thing to do then is to just make sure that when you do go to the loo that you wash your hands properly and therefore redress your hands’ bacterial balance.

Here are 4 steps to gloriously clean hands with hopefully just good bacteria left on them:

1 Use the Right Temperature

The optimal temperature for killing germs is anywhere above 80°C – far too hot for anyone to actually handle. So try to use water that is hot, but not so hot you hurt yourself.

2 Good Soap

The truth is that you can use pretty much any soap and get your hands perfectly clean, but you can choose some of the more intensive looking makes with names like ‘Ultra Cleanse’ or ‘Super Soap’ or similar. The important thing is that you use enough that it covers every millimetre of your hands.

3 Vigorous Action

Once you’ve got the soap on, you basically need to try and rub every millimetre of the skin on your hands as vigorously as you can. I have heard that it is in fact the hand rubbing that does the most cleaning, more so than the soap, so don’t hold back and don’t miss anywhere.

4 Effective Drying

Now you know that elaborate hand dryer that feels like a hurricane force hairdryer…don’t use that. They may be cheaper in the long run compared to buying hand towels all the time, but they just blow the bacteria around and up peoples’ nostrils. You should always use a clean paper hand towel – much more sanitary.

Have you been doing it properly?

Your office desk is as bad, if not worse than these locations for your health though, as you tend to spend all day there and you may even eat your lunch at it too.

What Nasties Are There?

Not that you can see them or anything, but here is some information on the current champion infectors in the bacteria soup that is your work space.

• Diptheroids – These nasty blighters belong to a family called ‘Corynebacterium’ and are most prevalent in acne (spots!). Unfortunately diptheroids are to be found in up to 80% of all keyboards and other work spaces which mean there is a high chance that you have come across a great many in your time. Their worst habit is attacking weak immune systems including people with cancer or other diseases.
• Coagulase-Negative Staphylococci – This is one of the many species of the notorious Staphylococci family that has the ability to cause skin infections and urinary tract infections. It can be transferred through human to human contact or by you touching anything in your work space. The best place to find them is usually on your keyboard or mouse. Eek!
• Pseudomonas Aeruginosa – A terrifying character to say the least. This bacterium can live anywhere, including water and is hard to remove with standard wiping. It goes for people with broken skin or weakened immune systems and can cause cold and flu-like symptoms, urinary tract infections and even pneumonia.

What Can You Do About It?

Don’t worry too much though because you have been living with these terrors for quite some time now. It doesn’t mean they won’t get you when you’re feeling under the weather though so you need to do your best to get rid of them. Here is a check list for you tick off:

1. Keep your desk clear of clutter (sticky notes are really bad for gathering bacteria)
2. Don’t eat at your desk (crumbs give bacteria food to grow)
3. Vacuum all around, all over your desk and your keyboard (makes the next bit easier)
4. Wash your desk and everything on it with a commercial cleaner
5. Then use an antibacterial wipe to disinfect it
6. Finally dry properly with a lint free cloth

Do this yourself regularly or employ a professional office cleaning company to do it for you and you and possibly all your staff should have a better chance to avoiding these crafty bacteria.

Do you have any cleaning tips?

A safer, and some people say smarter, plan is to look for a franchise opportunity. This involves buying the rights to start a business based on another, already established and successful business model.

Almost Guaranteed Success

One of the best franchise businesses to buy into at the moment is a commercial cleaning franchise. You would be managing the staff and services of a business that offers cleaning services to a range of premises, though primarily offices and retail units. The fact that the brand is already established and the procedures are already designed and proven to be effective, make this kind of franchise a fast tracked way to business success. Plus you can even take over an existing franchise that is in operation so you can just jump straight in, instead of having to go through the set up process.

But Why a Cleaning Franchise?

Growth Industry

Commercial cleaning as an industry is one of the strongest growth industries around. Market investors have been listing it as a bankable sector for a while now, meaning that more investors have been attracted and are investing their cash in marketing and advertising, which helps it to grow as a desirable service, which in turn helps commercial cleaners to increase their coverage and raise their prices.

Simple Model

Also, as businesses go commercial cleaning is at its base level, a relatively uncomplicated business to run. This is not to say it is going to be a walk in the park and that you can’t face problems, but in terms of business strategy it is an ideal opportunity for you to hone your business skills to perfection without too much risk.

If you do decide to go for a commercial cleaning franchise then you would have a ton of assistance and literature you can call on to help you through every aspect of the business, not just because it is a franchise model, but because there is a community of fellow franchisors out there in the same position as you or who have been there and are happy to lend you a hand and help you succeed.

What would owning your own business mean to you?