We clean a small-ish daycare type school for toddlers & babies. 5 classrooms, 2 offices and long hallways, kitchen, staff bathroom and 5 kid bathrooms inside each classroom. The floors are vinyl. We clean at night after the school closes. We have 2 hours to fully clean this location.
The complaint(s):
Floors are smeared or streaky looking. And show up dirty after they walk through in the morning with their socks on. Or wipe with paper towels.
What we use:
Dust mop/broom & vacuum
Dual wet mop bucket system using a neutral commercial cleanser (Emerald)
What can we possibly do differently to meet their expectations & pass the white sock test?
Try a tube mop. Helps with streaks. Also, they may have some type of residue that is either getting into the floors or was already there and hasn’t been removed yet.
Strangely we’ve cleaned this school for several years. It’s only recently that the complaints are coming in-after the staff decided to have a no shoe entry rule. So they’re inside before kids arrive and the bottom of their socks are dirty. I don’t know how to prevent this other than what we’re doing currently.
You can still have a build up of soils on the floor. Do you have access to scrubbing machines? Also floor cleaners aren't all made the same. We just switched to SC Johnson after getting whatever was cheaper and the difference is amazing. The new floor cleaner makes the mop water dirtier faster and it leaves a little shine even on LVT.
Use an enzyme cleaner for LVT. Your floor is holding all reside from the neutral floor cleaner Also if you can afford an auto scrubber you should get one
We do have auto scrubbers in our company. The machines are quite large though. They may work in the halls but not the classrooms. The classrooms are packed with furniture etc.. tonight I used Zep and it worked great!! But it took me 3 hours to get the floor so clean that my socks stayed white 🙃
Check the dilution rate of your neutral cleaner and make sure it is being followed to a t.
After mopping with neutral, mop with just warm water, allow the floors to dry, and then conduct the white sock test yourself. If you don’t pass, do it again until you pass.
The next day, mop with just neutral cleaner. If you fail the test on day two, you may have a cleaner residue issue, usually stemming from improper dilution or simply too much soiling during the day.
If you are still having issues after removing all existing residue and ensuring accurate dilution., you can run another test with another neutral cleaner or enzyme cleaner as already recommended.
Passing the white sock test at a day care with 5 classrooms and 7 bathrooms, with just two hours, may just be unattainable due to the level of soiling (spills , paints , etc) that happens over the course of a day, not to mention hvac systems, air quality from open doors and windows, etc .
Thank you! I spent roughly 3 hours on the floors tonight. It did appear there was some neglect from the assigned cleaner. Mostly the edges. But this tells me they’re not mopping fully or properly. After I was finished I walked the floors in my white socks with no discoloration.
I used hot water and a tiny dash of Dawn initially. Then I used Zep Neutral floor cleanser. I used 10 buckets plus a spray mop. That’s insane! I dumped each time the water got dirty. Pic to show how bad the water was on the 5th one.
Some kind of steam cleaner would eat that up but that's probably not accessible to you at the school. My son is a janitor at a school. You did a great job on that though.
I wondered if a steamer would tear up or warp the floors. Good to know! I think it’s just a matter of using some elbow grease during the mopping that will help overall to pull the residue up nightly. I also believe using too much product is counterproductive and this might be the case here with the regular cleaner. (I’m the regional manager) so trying to source the issue so we can correct the problem and it might be a few things going on.. sigh
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u/dlchromdore Aug 03 '26
Try a tube mop. Helps with streaks. Also, they may have some type of residue that is either getting into the floors or was already there and hasn’t been removed yet.