Saskatoon cleaning company services in big demand

Mark Mellish has worked for Saskatoon Janitorial for the last 30-years. Now in his 50s, he says while some businesses have closed up shop and don’t need their services for now, others are ramping up the number of cleanings each week.

“For example, if we have been you know, cleaning once or twice a week, perhaps we’re in there five times a week now.”

The emphasis of course is on disinfecting.

While he explains that his company has been excellent over the years not allowing cross-contamination say, from cleaning rags used in a kitchen to be used on a bathroom mirror, now, employers are most concerned with killing viruses, not streaks on their mirrors.

“We don’t want to drag germs over from one end of a facility to the other. So you have barriers put up. They always wear gloves and we use a colour coded rag system.

“We also leave disinfectant on surfaces for as long as we possibly can,” he adds.”We follow the manufacturer’s suggestion, but the longer the product is on, (it) can be better.”

Not only that, the types of disinfectant used is hospital grade. It’s extremely powerful, and in huge demand right now.

“We’re all carefully monitoring our supply lines here. Things are backed up. Fortunately, we always carried a good stock of products. Yes, there’s real supply challenges right now. But a lot of us literally have in concentrate form, hundreds and hundreds of gallons worth of disinfectant in our inventory.”

The company is even offering “misting” services in commercial spaces, meaning they’re going in with a fogger or misting unit that can cover everything.

For those isolating at home, he has a few recommendations including using the sanitizing settings on home washing machines and dishwashers and using products that are advertised as killing nearly 100 per cent of viruses.

“You want to get all the touchpoints; things that human fingers are touching. Lights, keypads. Leave disinfectant on those surfaces for as long as possible, but I’ll refer you to the manufacturer instructions.”

He adds that while he and his staff are tired right now, they are happy to do something to help combat the virus.

“We’re just hoping that we can do some real good in the community, for our customers and just people in general.”