JANITOR JOE’S BLOG

How quickly things change every single one of our suppliers have now put up their prices to us, some justifiable, some panic struck and some just cashing in I’m sure. Would you believe that some are putting up their prices twice a year. I bet they dont come down twice in a year when everything settles down.  However what is undeniable is that all costs are going up, such as fuel, wages and raw materials and so it is with great pleasure that Janitor Joe can announce that www.cleaningproducts.co.uk is maintaining free postage. I am not sure if this is the only shop on the web that is doing this with no minimum order, perhaps you would like to let me know if there is any one else out there still crazy enough to offer free delivery.

I asked them at www.cleaningproducts.co.uk how they could still maintain free postage and it seems that they believe that increased sales and profits can only come from helping their customers through hard times. If their customers feel they can order more items from one place then they can make huge savings in the long run. For instance if a nursing home goes down the cash and carry route then even if the cash and carry is only 5 miles away, that would mean a 10 mile round trip which in town traffic could mean £1.50 - £3 per trip in fuel costs. The Staff member who goes to the cash and carry is possibly on £7.50 an hour and a 10 mile round trip could take 2 hours, to get there and back and to shop and possibly have a cup of tea while out, could mean an over all cost of £17.00 for just a a quick pop out to the shops. Compare that to free delivery from www.cleaningproducts.co.uk This means they believe that by maintaining free postage they can grow during hard times, importantly, by helping their customers also survive this period or at least not sacrifice quality and efficiency in the name of cost saving. Contrast this to increasing your prices twice a year which means profits would be maintained on individual items but overall turnover and customer numbers would inevitably fall… I would be interested in your comments!

  Just heard a very interesting article on BBC Radio 5 concerning allergies to Enzyme based laundry powders. Apparently the University of Nottingham has just completed an extensive examination of the situation where people complain of skin irritations due to Biologically based powders. They found that there are no problems found with these powders and an awful lot of the reported cases are psychosomatic (ie mostly in the mind). Apparently they did this research using blind tests where susceptible people were reacting with the clothing whether it was washed in Bio enzymes or not. They also found that so long as the clothes were not packed in to the washing machine the vast majority of the enzymes are washed away in the rinse cycle.

Interestingly this phenomenon is fairly well restricted to Britain and not the rest of the world where apparently it isnt an issue at all. It seems it may have been caused by bad press in the TV and newspapers when Biological powders were first launched. If you want to know more then I am sure you will find something about the article on the BBC web site.

Hi Hope everyone had a great May Bank Holiday, whether you were working or not.

This is to just let you know I was talking to one of our nursing home customers today to discuss use and misuse of our chemicals. It appears that even though everything is clearly labelled and easy to use, they are still getting problems with slight misunderstandings that could lead to some serious mishaps. So I have agreed to create some posters for them to go on the wall. For instance the laundry poster will have the quantities of powder to use for types of washes and loads and when to use the in line stain remover, but it will also have cleaning items like when to empty the washing machine filters.

However because every home is different I have asked them to write down what they would like included on the poster so it is very specific to them. This means we would also be able to adapt the poster to minor changes later on as well. because they are a customer of www.cleaningproducts.co.uk we will be doing this free for them, on the basis that we need them to use the products safely and whilst it may seem like shooting our selves in the foot we dont want them to overuse the products either. So whilst we are putting this together, I thought I would ask if any of our other customers would like similar help with their product info help posters, this doesnt just have to be nursing and the care industry but it could be any industry where it is important to be careful with chemicals. If there are any questions or comments then please click on this blog and fill in the comments box or simply email Janitor Joe joe@janitorjoesblog.co.uk All we would ask is whatever we come up with for your home or business is that we can share it with our other customers.

Hi first Janitor Joe must appologise for not staying in touch more recently. We have been revamping our web sites to make them more accessible and easy to use, also we are trying to get more helpful information put on them to make everyones life easier. However it is a bit like painting the Humber Bridge, I dont think we will ever perfect them, but I suppose all that matters is that you find them more useful with every change. Remember if there is anything that you want to see on the sites please let me know.

The sites we are currently revamping are www.cleaningproducts.co.uk www.bin4gum.co.uk and www.my-school-needs.co.uk . Also while I am trying to catch up I must let you know that the www.my-school-needs.co.uk site is organising a free draw for some Goal Posts, team vests marker cones and some footballs for the PE department any school will be elligible to enter, it is completely free to enter. The details will be revealed next week on this blog ..so make sure you are subscribed.

Also on a more general note we have a lot of people who seem to want to strip their floors and polish them up… it must be a spring clean thing.
To help out http://www.cleaningproducts.co.uk/floor_care.htm has put together a mixed case of some excellent floor care products, but more importantly from next week they will give a free PDF that you can download to tell you how to do this to a professional standard yourself.

Just a quick note, the Janitor Ltd is offering  free Deb soap dispensers. Its six free dispensers if you buy just 2 cases of soap. I dont know how long the offer is going to be on for so I would check it out. I believe its the latest dispensers from their Proline range. This is the link to take you straight to the offer http://www.cleaningproducts.co.uk/deb_offer.htm

Many people ask why they are asked to use colour coordination in mops and buckets and what they are supposed to use and where.

The short answer is that colour cordination helps prevent cross contamination with regard to bacteria and disease and also reduces the risk of cross mixing of chemicals

We all know that mixing bleach with some types of toilet cleaner can cause a lot of problems with gas build up etc or if you have a cloth used for cleaning toilets and then use it on Stainless steel you can cause damage to the fabric of the steel by causing corrosion.

Similarly if you use a cloth to clean a toilet you really dont want to then use the same cloth cleaning food surfaces.

Therefore, colour coordination has been designed to over come these problems. The colours can apply to many different things including Mops, Buckets, Brooms, Dust Pan and Brushes and also protective wear such as Gloves and Aprons.

Which colours for where? There are several standards used in the industry and some of these are British Standards and some are European. Some have evolved by pressure from local health authorities some are specific to certain industries. The advantage to using an industry standard is that if you employ someone new then they should already be aware of the industry standard and this makes training quicker and safer and more consistent.

The most important thing is that you introduce a standard that suits your particular situation and that you thoroughly train your staff and more urgently that everyone knows the importance of this and are educated to follow it every single time.

An example of a colour set is as follows;

RED:  Toilets and Washrooms (Nearly always)

YELLOW: Housekeeping (Polishing surfaces general wipe down - not toilets)

BLUE: Kitchens including blue edged dishcloths and washing up bowls etc

GREEN: General heavy duty such as outdoors Rubbish bin areas

Some people will also go so far as colour cordinating cleaning chemicals for certain areas. Its very difficult to find a good chemical that is matched colourwise to the area you want to use it in, so a simple way is to wrap some coloured tape around the bottle being careful not to cover any instructions.

If  this is not your system then dont panic, if your system works for you then dont worry. Make sure it is written down in inhouse training manuals and stick to it

if any of you have other colour coordinated schemes then let me know and I will publish them later… Hope this helps Janitor Joe 

I am often asked about what type of soap is best for a certain environment. So I thought I would help point you in the right direction.

A lot depends on the environment that you are working in and also whether you want to impress your staff and customers or whether cheap is best which in itself can be deceiving.

If you are a garage or workshop or in a heavy manufacturing environment, you may wish to provide a bulk fill soap that goes in to some heavy robust dispensers that the cleaners find easy to understand and easy to fill up. There are many dispensers around of varying qualities and strengths and I will deal with those on a different posting.

There are two main categories of general hand soaps and delivery systems.

1. Bulk fill soap - this is where there is an open or capped chamber in the dispenser that allows it to be topped up from a 5 litre container. this is often perceived as the cheapest alternative. The soap is usually limited to the white pearlised, pink pearlised  and or an antibacterial soap. Some manufacturers such as Deb do refillables but this rather misses the point of being very cheap and very simple to use. The biggest problem with bulk fill is that the fillable container inside the dispenser and the nozzle should be washed out every time before refilling. You may be able to get away with out doing this once or twice in a manufacturing environment but certainly it is a very risky practise in high risk environments such as with the elderly or infants or in hospitals or clinics and even food handling.

You may think you would be OK with using antibacterial soaps but the problem with bulk fill is that the soap can get in to bottle necks or spilt in the disipenser and as such you end up with hot spots of bacterial or fungal growth that can lead to contaminated hands or industrial diseases such as dermatitis (Deb do a very good pamphlet on skin problems that can be obtained from www.deb-soap.co.uk ). To summarise bulk fill has its place but does need a lot of care otherwise it can cause problems that you are trying to prevent.

2. Cartridge soaps

There are lots of cartridge soaps on the market at present and most of them are very good, however I will discuss the Deb Range here because that is what I know and they seem to have a soap to fit every occasion or requirement. Cartridge soaps come in two forms usually, either Lotion/gel or foam. The main difference is that more is dispensed with a lotion soap and less is used with a foam soap although people perceive they are getting more with the foam soap.

So your choice is either a lotion/gel soap which will give you a far more luxuriant feel and contact time or a foam soap that gives you the same top quality soap but in a more economical package. This is a little simplistic because a lot of schools buy a foam soap called Mr Soapy Soap that is a foam, not because it is cheaper than the lotion version, but because the Kids love it and will actively look for the soap to wash their hands. This is  very important in staving off illness.

The biggest advantage of the cartridge system is that once emptied the cartridge along with the nozzle is thrown away. There is no waste , no spillage and no possibility of bacterial build up in the dispenser. One school council we talked to actually said they didn’t like the bulk fill soap because “it smelt like Chicken”. This in actual fact was a build of bacteria because the dispensers had never been washed out between fills so the kids were actually washing their hands in germs, if they washed them at all !

The Deb range of soap includes very simple basic soaps, aromatherapy soaps and anti bacterial soaps, the latter are smell free so they can be safely used in food environments and most can be bought in either lotion or foam formats.

I will do a seperate blog posting with regard to heavy duty soaps, dispensers, hand sanitisers and skin safety later on, remember if there is anything you would like to know just leave a comment and I will try to get back to you or if I feel there is a wider audience I will post my answer here. Please subscribe for free using the form on the right and I will inform you every time we have added to this blog.

Cheers Janitor Joe

Rebecca has just asked me whether the Red Dissolvo bags she has seen in the Hospital are suitable for Nappies at home.

Red dissolvo bags are a very light weight laundry bags that have a dissolving strip down the length of the one side. this means you can safely put a set of possibly contaminated clothes in from patients (or Babies) and then tie off the top of the bag and not touch the clothing again until the they come out of the washing machine all nice and clean. This is because the strip dissolves during the wash cycle to open the bag up automatically inside the washing machine. The strip turns to nothing and the remaining bags simply get thrown away at the end of the wash cycle. This prevents cross contamination between the patient and care handlers and laundry staff. This is particularly important when disease is rife in hospitals or care homes or indeed childrens nurseries. The actual answer I gave Rebecca was specific to babies nappies and was as follows;

Dear Rebecca, These bags would be ideal for you to use in this situation using cotton nappies. However they are meant for commercial premises where they are filled straight away and taken to the Laundry as soon as they are full. If you are intending to build up a quantity of nappies over a few days, then you may find the dissolving strip will breakdown before you get to the washing machine. If you are ok with using a bag for one or two nappies, lets face it you wouldn’t want to keep them around for too long any way, then they should be ok. The best bet would be for me to send you a sample. If you let me have your address I will arrange this for you.

www.cleaningproducts.co.uk has been running a test offering free postage for all their online deliveries. The trial has lasted for 60 days and appears to be a great success, so much so that I believe they are about to extend the free postage to an indefinate period. There is also no minimum delivery requirement which means you can buy as much or as little as you want. I am not quite sure how in this day and age they can do this with ever increasing transport and labour cost but they have managed to find a way.

Unfortunately this doesnt apply to abroad or even some parts of Scotland, but hey it’s great for the rest of us.

Its difficult to know where to start, cleaning products is a massive subject but also a very important one. To a lot of people cleaning products are all about bleach, but this can be dangerous in the wrong hands and can be harmful to the environment it can give a false sense of security, there are some pathogenic(disease causing) bacteria that arent killed by bleach. On the other hand bleach has probably saved millions of lives over the centuries. but now in a modern world where some seriously technically advanced chemicals are available at reasonably cheap prices, it is important that we move with the times. It is a strange thought that genetically engineered or selected biological products are now used to clean toilets a very real example of science fiction come real.

However, its confusing because there is now such a huge array of products on the market both Biological and conventional that it’s very difficult to know what to try. Well first of all you need to know that nowadays it is no longer necessary to use anything that is very dangerous at all, even for the most impacted ground in dirty jobs. Some times it is neccesary to use a quick blast of what is deemed to be a more dangerous product to cut back to a quicker cleaner finish that can be easily maintained later on more safely, in this instance you need the training and dare I say you really do have to read the label and preferably the Coshh sheet that goes with it.

This is mainly what  this Blog is about, ask us what ever cleaning related question you like, we might not know the answer ourselves but we know a lot of people who probably do. If you see a question asked and think you have the answer let us know and we might publish it, any advice and help is welcome.

So let us know what you want to know, How do you get rid of chewing gum ? How do you clean up red wine stains? Do biological chemicals work? Who is DEFRA?