A practical guide for facility managers deciding how often their building needs to be cleaned.
Cleaning frequency is one of the first decisions in a commercial cleaning contract and one of the most consequential for both cost and building condition. The right frequency depends on headcount, space type, visitor traffic, and — in the south Twin Cities metro — the time of year. A guidance document written without mentioning the Minnesota salt season is incomplete.
Nightly cleaning is the standard for facilities with daily occupancy and any combination of restrooms, a break room, and hard floors. It is not a premium — it is the baseline for a well-maintained commercial building. The per-visit cost of nightly service is lower than the per-visit cost of three-times-weekly service; you pay more per month but less per clean.
Nightly cleaning is the right choice for:
Three-times-weekly cleaning works for facilities with moderate occupancy and no daily patient or customer traffic. It is a reasonable middle ground for a 10-person office with a single restroom, weekly visitor traffic, and hard floors that hold up well between visits.
The risk with three-times-weekly service is restroom condition. Three visits per week means restrooms go 48 hours between service on the days in between. For an office of 10 people that is manageable; for a 30-person office it is not. Match the frequency to the restroom traffic, not the desk count.
Weekly cleaning is appropriate for very small offices with low occupancy — typically five or fewer daily occupants, one restroom, no customer traffic, and no food service. For most commercial facilities in the Mendota and south metro area, weekly service produces a visible deterioration in building condition between visits and results in the client requesting a frequency increase within six months.
Where weekly cleaning makes the most sense: storage-heavy facilities with minimal occupancy, single-tenant professional offices with very low traffic, and seasonal facilities that are only occupied for part of the year.
From December through March, road salt is tracked into every building in the south Twin Cities metro. Salt residue on hard floors accelerates finish degradation. Facilities that run three-times-weekly or weekly schedules during the rest of the year sometimes benefit from a temporary increase to nightly service during the salt season — particularly if they have VCT or LVT floors in the entry and lobby areas.
We note this in the scope of work when it applies and can structure the contract to run at a higher frequency during the November–April window and step back down for the rest of the year.
The walkthrough is the right place to settle frequency. We assess your occupancy, space type, floor types, and visitor traffic and recommend a starting frequency. If the first 30 days of service reveal that the frequency is too low or too high, the 30-day check-in is the point at which we adjust it — without a penalty for the change.
Request a Quote and Frequency RecommendationMendota Commercial Cleaning — 22 years in business — Insured & Bonded — (866) 958-8773