Thanks to the amount of supplies and equipment they have to contain, the janitor’s closet in your facility or workplace can get disorganized pretty easily - ironic, considering the whole point of a janitor’s closet is to help keep things clean!
Keeping a janitor’s closet organized can provide a ton of benefits for your workers, your building, and your company as a whole, including cleanliness, sanitation, and more. If you need some advice on how to keep your janitor’s closets clean and organized, here’s a few places to get started:
Keep Stock Of What You Have: The best place to begin when organizing any janitorial or maintenance room is to take stock of what you have on hand, and how often you use it. This will both give you an idea of what you need to put away later, and prevent the over-ordering of unneeded supplies that you’re already all stocked up on. Use this time to get a good plan of action for what you need to keep around, and what you could stand to have less of to save space.
Organize According To Need: After figuring out exactly what you have on hand and need to put away, the next step is to figure out where everything should go. The best way to do this is to determine how often you use a given item, and how frequently you need to resupply it. Keep supplies you need more frequently - cleaning spray, floor cleaner, etc - at arm’s length and right out front where you can get to it, whereas things you use less often could be safely put away further back or higher up on the shelves to free up space for items you need more frequently.
Bring In Extra Storage: If there’s extra space, there’s never any harm in bringing in some extra industrial storage equipment to help keep everything organized and available. Steel wire shelving is an ideal storage solution for a lot of janitorial supplies thanks to its strength and cleanliness, and plastic storage bins are a great way to keep smaller items like rags and spray bottles separated and organized. If you have the room, a janitorial cart is a great call too, in order to help you bring more supplies around the building and help prevent making too many trips back to the closet for supplies.
Keep Everything Safe: One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that janitorial chemicals and supplies are often slightly hazardous, particularly when it comes to cleaning fluids. To prevent accidents, it’s important to remember what each container holds, what can be safely mixed together, and what needs to be kept far away from the others to prevent accident or injury.
Follow these tips (and remember to keep up on them going forward) and your janitor closet should be clean, organized, and efficient to face any maintenance issue that may come up!