A church can be an incredibly busy building. Not only do you have people coming in on Sundays, you may have a variety of activities taking place in church, many of which can stretch over the entire week. While congregation involvement may vary, ultimately, that can mean a lot of people coming through the doors of the church.
Keeping the church building clean can be more challenging than anticipated. Is it worth it to hire a professional cleaning company for your church? In many cases, it may be well worth the cost to experience the dependability and comprehensive cleaning offered by a cleaning service.
Keeping the Church Clean: Basic Tasks to Complete
Keeping the church looking its best involves a number of cleaning tasks that have to be taken care of on a regular basis.
Post-Sunday Cleanup
Sunday is the biggest day of the week in many churches. You may have hundreds of people coming through your doors on the average Sunday morning. Your bathrooms, hallways, and classrooms may all see a much heavier volume of traffic than they do during the week, which means that you’ll need someone to take care of scrubbing the toilets, vacuuming or mopping the floors, and emptying the trash so that the church will look great throughout the rest of the week.
Cleanup After Weekly Activities
While Sunday may be the biggest day of the week for many churches, it’s certainly not the only day that sees a high volume of traffic. Your church may have Wednesday night activities, small groups meeting throughout the week, and groups or events that take place on a regular basis.
Those groups may try to clean up after themselves, but you still need someone to come in and clean up after them to make sure that your church looks its best on Sunday morning, when the majority of the congregation arrives.
Cleanup After Regular Staff
Chances are, your church has staff members that are in the building every day of the week. Those staff members are highly available to your congregation and can offer critical support when needed.
That said, they may also track mud into the building on rainy days, use the supplies in the bathrooms, or pile up trash in the trash cans, all of which can leave the building looking less than its best on Sunday mornings.
Related: 7 Reasons to Hire a Professional Janitorial Company in Houston
Special Cleaning Needs
On top of all the regular activities taking place in your church, you may have a variety of other potential activities that may lead to increased cleanup needs.
Youth Groups
If you have a youth group meeting at your church, you may need to clean up after them on a regular basis. Youth groups generally meet on Wednesday or Sunday nights, but they may also get together at the church at other times for special activities, including retreats, special classes, small groups, and fun.
Those activities are, in many cases, critical for keeping young people present in the church. Unfortunately, they often involve more cleanup than anticipated. Many youth activities will involve bigger messes: shaving cream fights, cookouts, and even pizza parties can all accumulate more overall mess than the average event. Having a professional cleaning company on call can help decrease the burden on your youth minister.
The Church Kitchen
Does your church have a kitchen? If so, that kitchen may see a lot of use, both during your regular services and during the week. You may have members coming in to make coffee or set up meals for after church. You may use your kitchen to feed large numbers of people on a regular basis, especially if you’re feeding the hungry or taking on other pressing needs in the community. That kitchen may need more than a brief wipe-down after a cooking session, especially during periods when it’s seeing industrial-level use.
Preschools
Many churches will also include a preschool as part of their community outreach and connection. Church-based preschools offer a number of advantages to both the community and your church; however, they can mean ongoing cleanup needs, particularly in those classrooms.
Special Events
When your church hosts a major event, someone will need to come in and clean up after it. Church members and volunteers can help take care of many of the tasks related to the event. However, they may not be able to take care of all of them, including removing stains from the carpet after a spill or scrubbing the toilets that have seen a great deal of use due to a large number of people coming through the church.
In addition, after some types of events, like funerals or weddings, you may not want to have the guests take care of essential clean up afterward.
Related: What are Specialty Cleaning Services?
How Can a Cleaning Service Help?
Hiring a professional cleaning service for your church can go a long way toward keeping your church fresh and clean for the weekend while keeping your costs down.
Make Sure Critical Items Aren’t Forgotten.
The last thing you want, when you arrive on Sunday morning, is to discover that someone forgot to clean out the trash can in the nursery or that food has been sitting out in the kitchen all week.
Not only can that lead to a scramble to get everything done before the congregation starts arriving, it could leave a bad impression for potential visitors or even members of the congregation. A cleaning service can make sure those critical items are taken care of every week so that the church always looks its best.
Decrease the Weight on Staff Members’ Shoulders.
Staff members who are always worried about cleanup may suffer from higher risk of burnout. Especially during and in the months following the COVID-19 pandemic, pastors themselves are feeling overwhelmed and burnt out. Even back in 2014, as many as 90% of pastors report working between 55 and 70 hours per week. For whatever reason, caring for your pastors and church staff by outsourcing cleaning services is becoming essential.
Not only is staff turnover hard on your church body, it can be financially difficult for your organization, since you’ll need to search out new members to fill those roles. Taking some of the weight off your team’s shoulders by hiring a professional cleaning company can help decrease some of the stress and pressure.
Make Sure Stains Don’t Have Time to Set.
Some types of stains can mean serious damage to your carpets, rugs, and furniture. If those stains are allowed to set, they can become more serious, and you may end up having to pay to replace those items. Having a professional cleaning company come in regularly can decrease the risk of serious stains, which may help cut down on your overall costs.
Know That Everything Will Be Reliably Cleaned Up on Time.
In many cases, repeat tasks across the church end up delegated to a variety of staff members and volunteers. Unfortunately, some of them may be more reliable than others, and you may not always know up front which ones are which.
By working with an established cleaning company, you can feel confident that all cleaning tasks will be taken care of on time each week.
Hire a Professional Cleaning Company for Your Church Today
Churches are often very busy, and that busy nature may mean that a lot of cleaning needs to take place, from the everyday cleaning that keeps the church running smoothly to cleaning up after a special event. If you have struggled to keep your church looking its best, DTK Facility Services can help. Contact us today to learn more about our cleaning options and how we can help your church focus on what matters.