How To Remove Bad Smells At The Office

When you stop to think about it, there are a lot of different things in an office environment that can contribute to the overall aroma. While scented candles and spray deodorizers might help take the tang out of the air, bad smells in the office are a constant and all too common problem for most professional spaces.

With so many people moving around the office, employees eating lunches at their desks, and clients popping in to enjoy some snacks during a stunning business presentation, there are bound to be accidents. With all these nasty little spills, overly full trash cans, and lingering office debris, there are sure to be plenty of different places your foul office odors are coming from.

Sure emptying garbage cans and quickly wiping up spills helps, but these tend to just be highly visible tips of the odoriferous iceberg when it comes to ferreting out all the causes of bad office odors. That’s why so many office managers rely on a professional cleaning company to find and eliminate those lingering, disgusting smells frequently.

Common Causes Of Bad Office Smells

There are a few different things that can contribute to the bad odors in your office. Some you and your employees can handle on your own without having to call in a professional cleaner. Though others need sterner measures.

Individual Office Trash Cans

A lot of personal office spaces and meeting rooms have small trash cans. Most of the time, employees are left to police themselves when it comes to emptying out and caring for these cans. While many people take out their trash, it doesn’t resolve the problem. Especially if you have employees eating their lunch in their office.

When there’s a problem taking out the garbage isn’t enough as things can spill outside the bag. You will need to clean the trash can by removing it and scrubbing it with a good cleanser and deodorizer. Then it needs to air dry to make sure the smell is gone.

The Cafeteria Garbage Can

These days a lot of office managers are banning food in offices in hopes of preventing spills on expensive office equipment. This drives employees to use the communal cafeteria or kitchenette to eat their lunches.

This can lead to a lot of food debris, plastic forks, and discarded containers with sharp edges that can pierce the can liner. Once food debris and bacteria escape the liner it can lead to severe odors and dried-on microbial food stains in the bottle that need professional disinfecting and deodorizing.

The Office Kitchenette & Refrigerator

The office kitchenette and its communal fridge are yet another area where employees with good intentions leave their lunch from home. Then they change their mind and order out or step out for lunch, leaving their old lunch behind.

If they fail to take it home with them after a day or two the food can start to turn, grow bacteria or even develop mold! Every time someone opens the door the odor escapes leaving everyone turning up their nose at lunchtime!

Of course, foods and beverages that are spilled and not cleaned up immediately can also leave stubborn bacterial deposits in your office refrigerator. In a severe case, the cleaning and deodorizing products sold at the retail level might not be potent enough to remove the foul odors of food stains from your office refrigerator.

One way to combat this is to set an office policy that says all food will be discarded on Friday afternoon. This might take some getting used to, but hopefully, people will remember to remove their forgotten meals.

Though some office managers find it’s easier to simply assign someone to clean the fridge each Friday afternoon. However, this is a duty that most people feel isn’t on their job description, and can even lead to office resentment issues. Especially if you have one person who has a knack for leaving messes in the refrigerator and not cleaning up after themselves.

Kitchen Sinks & Drains

There are a lot of things that get washed down an office kitchenette sink with reckless abandon. Sometimes the errant food and sauce remnants don’t get rinsed entirely down, causing the drain to smell bad.

One way to deal with these sink odors in the short term is to pour a combination of water, baking soda, and vinegar. Let the combination of baking soda and vinegar bubble up and sit for a few minutes, and then rinse with hot water. Hopefully, this is enough to wash the foul sink odors away.

The Office Kitchenette Microwave

Microwaves have a knack for making food spatter when cooked. A lot of employees are remiss to clean up their own spatters and simply leave them for someone else. Especially if you have someone with a bad habit of not covering their food when they use the microwave. These messy microwave splatters and stains cause bad smells.

One possible way to deal with this in the short term is to heat a bowl of water, vinegar, and lemon slices in a microwave for five minutes. Most of the time this will loosen some of the grime, allowing you to wipe down the microwave with a clean microfiber cloth.

Bathroom Odors

Office bathrooms see a lot of foot traffic, which can lead to miniscule bacterial deposits on the floor. If the floors are insufficiently cleaned, it can simply add the water that bacteria need to grow. As they reproduce, they release foul odors that can escape far beyond the bathroom door.

This is one of those times where it helps to hire a professional cleaning company to tackle your foul-smelling office bathrooms. Professional cleaners have access to proper equipment, treatment, and techniques to treat and remove tough bathroom odors.

Chemical Cleaners & Dirty Carpets

A lot of the cleaning products that are sold at the retail level leave behind toxic fumes that can be trapped in the air of your office for days before dissipating. When you hire a professional cleaning company like Building Services to maintain the condition of your office, you can choose our green cleaning system, which leaves behind fresh natural aromas instead of toxic cleaning chemical fumes.

We also use commercial-grade vacuum cleaners. They have state-of-the-art HEPA filters that trap particulate matter, rather than letting it redistribute back into the air. This prevents a secret major cause of not just office odors, but indoor air pollution problems!