ACUHO-I News Blog

George Washington University used to provide cleaning services for its freshmen students in suites; no more. Now students must clean their personal spaces; common spaces are still cleaned by staff, of course. A few other institutions offer cleaning services for private student spaces–most often bathrooms. Some cite the basic cleanliness issue: dirty bathrooms are nasty things, and can spread illnesses–such as staph infections–which already burden campuses. Some students find the maid services a selling point; others are neutral on the issue. In addition to the expense, some institutions have had complications with maid services; sometimes students’ rooms or bathrooms are too dirty to be cleaned. What then?

But wait…I have a disclaimer.  I didn’t have a maid in college. Or any other time. I actually worked as a maid, for a little while, between other jobs. All things considered, it was a nice job. I listened to music on headphones and I cleaned private homes, which were usually not particularly dirty. But still, the idea of having a maid is foreign to me, especially having a maid in college.

I’m probably just saying this as an Old Grumpy Person, but I think it was useful to see how appallingly dirty a space can get without enough cleaning. I realized, sometime during my junior year while evaluating my bathroom before a parental visit, that there was nothing inherently clean about precious me.  The bathroom was disgusting, it reflected badly on me, and I had to do something about it, lest I make my mother cry. In my late-teens and early 20s, I gradually became a tidier person. When I had to clean my own space, I tended to be more respectful of it and more careful not to mess it up again. I’m far from a tidy person right now (just ask my ACUHO-I colleagues, who have seen my office), and my husband and I have a dog whose primary avocation is shedding hairs that corkscrew themselves into our rugs and clothing. But I think learning to clean, by learning about not cleaning, was useful.

That said, I understand about the staph infections. My housemates and I are probably fortunate we were not killed by our own bathroom, though we found our ancient and thunderous washer quite fearsome. Our worries were probably misplaced.

  Today, I’d like to tell you about a little 40-page booklet that could prove quite indispensable to you. It is the ISSA 540 Cleaning Times, available from ISSA, an association for cleaning and custodial contractors and vendors. (Originally, the ISSA stood for International Sanitary Supply Association, but in 2005, it was changed to ISSA: The Worldwide Cleaning Association, to better reflect their membership.)

The cleaning times booklet has estimations of the times it takes to do certain custodial tasks, such as: The time it takes one person to vacuum a carpeted hallway of a certain square footage; the time it takes to clean a certain number of restroom sinks; the minutes expended vacuuming a couch. They also include the tools typically used for a job. This can help you allocate custodial staff and supplies.