As the summer continues to fly by, families are gearing up to move their students into their newly appointed homes for the school year… their dorm rooms. They may be ready, but are you? Deep cleaning dorm rooms and residence hall common spaces is important not only for the obvious health and safety standards but as soon as those students and their families enter the campus dorm facilities they are building a lasting first impression. 

Most campus communities are active throughout the year and cleaning dorms are often one of the last tasks for campus facilities crews or their custodial partners as they’re often in use. Therefore thorough, sanitization of the facilities is often down to the wire requiring comprehensive and efficient cleaning procedures to ensure a hygienic and safe living space for your students.

Here are a few tips to leverage to get those dorms ready for move-in day.

Where to begin >> Start by removing any furniture in the space.

Windows and Walls

When deep cleaning any space, start from the top and work your way down. Dust and dirt particles will be in the air and settling on furniture and flooring so it’s important to either remove any furniture from the room or keep it covered.

Ready-to-use sprays and disinfectants are perfect for quick cleaning and will remove fingerprints, smudges, dirt and bacteria.

ProTip – apply the spray to a cloth rather than directly to the surface. This reduces waste and you can control the application.

Baseboards and Molding

Baseboards and molding around windows, doors and floors are a catchall in doom rooms, likely collecting dust and dirt buildup for a full academic year without being noticed. When tackling baseboards and molding around doors and the flooring scrub brushes and aerosol sprays are easy go-tos. For the trim around the windows, an all-purpose cleaner and cleaning cloth will help keep overspray from getting on your freshly cleaned windows.

Flooring

Most residence halls and dorm facilities have mixed flooring – a combination of hard and soft surfaces. Both carpeted and hard floors should be vacuumed thoroughly before any deep cleaning begins.

Hard Floors >> Utilizing an autoscrubber to clean, scrub and recoat your flooring can help save time and puts the mop and bucket away, however, if your floors are exhibiting signs of wear and tear or a discolored finish it may be time to strip and finish the surface to protect the floors.

ProTip – autoscrubbers provide a more powerful and hygienic clean than a traditional mop and bucket… it’s more efficient as well.

Carpeted surfaces >> To clean and restore highly trafficked carpets commercial carpet extractors will remove that deeply embedded dirt.

Furniture

All furniture pieces must be cleaned not only to address soiled surfaces but disinfected for a hygienic clean. All surfaces should be cleaned thoroughly – tops, insides, underneath the surface, and legs and arms. Cleaning and disinfecting will ensure all germs and bacteria “hiding” under soils are killed preventing them from spreading. 

Residence halls, dorms and other student life facilities are hotspots for bacteria and germs which makes cleaning for health and safety a priority for your campus community. For more information about how we can partner with your facilities team to ensure a hygienic clean for your students, faculty and staff click here to learn more about MACC capabilities and to have a representative contact you directly.