Skip to content
Quality Cleaning Co.

Blog

How Infrequent Cleaning Can Actually Cost You Money and Make You Sick

Cutting back to a couple of cleanings a week, or just once a month, looks like an easy way to save money. In many buildings it does the opposite. Grime that sits between visits takes more time and labor to remove, floors and finishes wear out sooner, and germs left on desks, door handles and restrooms have more time to pass from person to person, raising the odds that colds, flu and stomach bugs make the rounds and keep people home sick. If you manage an office, clinic, shop or school anywhere from Roseburg to Medford, here is a plain look at the science, what it means for your budget, and why NW Quality Cleaning recommends five- to seven-day service for most busy buildings.

How Fast Bacteria Grow and How Long Viruses Last on Surfaces

Bacteria multiply by splitting in two. Under ideal laboratory conditions, E. coli can double in as little as 20 minutes, while the same species may need several days to double in harsh conditions [6]. Growth on a clean, dry desktop is far slower, but spills, food crumbs, damp restroom counters and break-room sinks supply exactly the moisture and nutrients bacteria need to keep going.

The bigger issue for most offices is not growth but survival: how long germs stay alive once they land on a surface. A widely cited systematic review by Kramer, Schwebke and Kampf, published in BMC Infectious Diseases, pulled together the published lab studies on dry, hard surfaces [1]. The reported ranges include:

  • Influenza (flu): 1 to 2 days [1]
  • Rhinovirus (the common cold): 2 hours to 7 days [1]
  • Norovirus (the “stomach bug”) and a closely related lab stand-in: 8 hours to 7 days [1]. The CDC notes that norovirus can persist on surfaces for days or weeks and resists many common disinfectants [4].
  • Staphylococcus aureus, including MRSA: 7 days to 7 months [1]
  • E. coli: 1.5 hours to 16 months [1]
  • SARS-CoV-2 (the COVID-19 virus): a 2020 study in the New England Journal of Medicine detected live virus for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel, though the amount dropped sharply over that time [2].

Keep those numbers in perspective. They come mostly from controlled lab experiments, often with large amounts of germs, and the review’s authors point out that lab conditions don’t always reflect real-world settings [1]. In an actual office, air movement, drying and changing temperatures usually shorten survival times. The CDC has also concluded that catching COVID-19 from a surface is low-risk compared with breathing the virus in [3].

Still, high-touch surfaces can pass germs along quickly. University of Arizona researchers placed a harmless tracer virus on one employee’s hands in an office of about 80 people. Within four hours, it had turned up on more than half of the shared and personal surfaces they tested and on more than a quarter of the employees’ hands they sampled [5]. And in its guidance on surface transmission, the CDC said routine cleaning with soap or detergent at least once per day can substantially reduce virus levels on surfaces [3].

The takeaway: many common germs can outlast the gap between a Monday and a Thursday cleaning, and people add new ones every workday.

Daily Service vs. a Couple of Days a Week: Where the Money Really Goes

Cleaning two days a week seems like it should cost far less than cleaning five. The gap is usually smaller than the visit count suggests.

Dirt builds up. Every day, people track in mud and grit (a lot of it in Southern Oregon’s rainy season), coffee dries onto counters and restrooms collect soap scum. When a crew comes in every night, that work stays light: empty the bins, wipe the touchpoints, reset the restrooms, vacuum the traffic lanes. When the crew only comes twice a week, each visit becomes a catch-up visit. Stuck-on grime takes more time and labor to remove than fresh soil, and grit left on floors gets ground in by foot traffic, wearing down carpet and finishes sooner.

Illustrative example only (not NW Quality Cleaning pricing)

Picture a hypothetical office where a nightly visit takes about 1.5 hours because the building never falls behind. With five-night service, that’s roughly 32 crew-hours a month (5 visits × 1.5 hours × about 4.3 weeks).

Now suppose that with only two visits a week, each visit takes about 3 hours because the crew is cleaning up three or four days of buildup. That’s about 26 crew-hours a month (2 visits × 3 hours × about 4.3 weeks).

In this example, two and a half times as many visits works out to only about 25% more labor, and the building is clean every morning instead of a couple of mornings a week. Real numbers depend on each building’s size, traffic and layout.

So, honestly: daily service may cost about the same as a few visits a week, or it may cost somewhat more per month. What you get for that difference is the part that matters.

  • Fewer germ build-ups on high-touch surfaces. Desks, door handles, restrooms and break rooms get reset before the next workday instead of collecting several days of use.
  • Lower costs from sick time. According to the CDC Foundation, productivity losses linked to absenteeism cost U.S. employers $225.8 billion a year, or $1,685 per employee [8]. That figure covers all illness and injury, not just germs picked up at work, and cleaning is only one piece of keeping people healthy. But lowering the risk of illness spreading through your office is worth something real.
  • Longer life for floors and finishes. Removing grit before it’s ground in protects carpet, tile and hard floors.
  • A building that always looks the part. Clients and employees notice a smudged entry door or a neglected restroom. With daily service, there’s no “bad day” of the week.

Why Cleaning a Few Times a Month (or Once a Month) Rarely Pays Off

If twice a week leaves gaps, a few times a month leaves canyons. Bacteria like Staph and E. coli have been shown in lab studies to persist on dry surfaces for weeks or months [1]. Cold and flu viruses fade in days, but new ones arrive every day someone comes to work sick, so during cold-and-flu season the surfaces in an infrequently cleaned building rarely get a true reset.

Fungi and mold are the other part of the picture. The yeast Candida albicans has been reported to survive up to about four months on dry surfaces [1]. Mold needs moisture, and the EPA advises drying water-damaged areas and items within 24 to 48 hours to prevent mold growth [7]. A dripping faucet or a leak under the break-room sink that only gets noticed once a month has weeks to become a mold problem. The EPA also notes that in damp areas like bathrooms, better ventilation and more frequent cleaning will usually keep mold to a minimum [7]. A crew in your building every day is far more likely to spot moisture early.

Then there’s cost. A monthly visit is almost always a deep clean, staffed and priced like one. The building looks great for a few days, then spends most of the month sliding back toward dirty, and restroom buildup, stained grout and ground-in carpet soil take more effort to fix each time. For most occupied workplaces, that’s paying top dollar for a result that doesn’t last.

The Bottom Line: Steady, Daily Cleaning Delivers the Best Value

Germs don’t keep office hours. Cold and flu viruses can last a day or more on hard surfaces and some bacteria weeks or longer, at least in lab settings, while dirt and moisture build on themselves. Daily service keeps your building at a steady standard, lowers the risk of germs spreading between employees and visitors, protects your floors and finishes, and often costs much closer to part-time service than you might expect.

That’s why NW Quality Cleaning recommends five- to seven-day-a-week service for most offices, medical and professional buildings, schools and retail spaces. We schedule around your business, with daytime service from 10 AM to 4 PM or night service from 6 PM to 2 AM. Based in Roseburg, we serve all of Southern Oregon, including Grants Pass, Medford, Klamath Falls, Coos Bay and the communities in between.

Want to see what daily service would look like for your building? Call us at (844) 367-6972 or request a quote at nwqualitycleaning.com. You can also find us on Facebook at facebook.com/NWQC17.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Professional cleaning reduces germs on surfaces and lowers the risk of spread; it cannot guarantee that no one gets sick.

Sources

  1. Kramer A, Schwebke I, Kampf G. “How long do nosocomial pathogens persist on inanimate surfaces? A systematic review.” BMC Infectious Diseases, 2006;6:130. https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2334-6-130
  2. van Doremalen N, et al. “Aerosol and Surface Stability of SARS-CoV-2 as Compared with SARS-CoV-1.” New England Journal of Medicine, 2020;382:1564–1567. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973
  3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Science Brief: SARS-CoV-2 and Surface (Fomite) Transmission for Indoor Community Environments.” Updated April 5, 2021 (archived). https://archive.cdc.gov/www_cdc_gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/science-and-research/surface-transmission.html
  4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Norovirus Outbreaks.” https://www.cdc.gov/norovirus/outbreak-basics/index.html
  5. Reynolds KA, et al. “The Healthy Workplace Project: Reduced Viral Exposure in an Office Setting.” Archives of Environmental & Occupational Health, 2016;71(3):157–162 (free full text via NIH PubMed Central). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4676746/
  6. OpenStax. Microbiology, Section 9.1 “How Microbes Grow.” Rice University. https://openstax.org/books/microbiology/pages/9-1-how-microbes-grow
  7. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home.” https://www.epa.gov/mold/brief-guide-mold-moisture-and-your-home
  8. CDC Foundation. “Worker Illness and Injury Costs U.S. Employers $225.8 Billion Annually.” January 28, 2015. https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/2015/worker-illness-and-injury-costs-us-employers-225-billion-annually

NW Quality Cleaning Co. LLC · Commercial Janitorial Services · Roseburg, Oregon · Serving all of Southern Oregon · (844) 367-6972 · nwqualitycleaning.com · facebook.com/NWQC17

Request a quoteSee the robotics program