The school year is in full swing, and now it’s winter break, which means it’s the perfect opportunity to prepare for the second semester. Use this time to reset and deep clean your school, ensuring a safer and healthier environment for students, teachers, and staff. But what exactly does deep cleaning entail?

How to Deep Clean your School

Create a schedule that fits best for your staff and prioritize accordingly.

Here's a checklist of essential areas to clean:

Restrooms

Products: Buckeye Eco^® Neutral Disinfectant or Buckeye^® Eco One-Step Disinfectant.

Procedure: Disinfect all fixtures, sinks, counters, and stall partitions. Mop floors with a disinfectant to eliminate bacteria and odors.

High-Touch Surfaces

Products: Buckeye Eco^® Hydrogen Peroxide Cleaner.

Procedure: Wipe down door handles, railings, desks, tables, and shared equipment with a microfiber cloth for thorough cleaning and germ removal.

Floors and Entry Mats

Products: Buckeye Clarion^® 25 for resilient flooring or Buckeye Eco^® Floor Cleaner for daily maintenance. For carpet care cleaning use Buckeye’s Jet Stream^™ .

Procedure: Deep clean carpets using an extractor, clean gym floors with wood-safe solutions, and vacuum entry mats to prevent dirt from spreading. 

Classrooms

Products: Buckeye Eco^® All-Purpose Cleaner and Buckeye Eco^® Neutral Disinfectant E23/S23.

Procedure: Clean desks, chairs, and cubbies. Spot-clean carpets. Then vacuum or steam clean for allergens and dust.

Gyms and Locker Rooms

Products: Buckeye Eco^® Muscle Cleaner for tough stains. For gym floors use Buckeye’s Screen Clean^® and for disinfecting in your gym try Buckeye’s Terminator^™.

Procedure: Mop gym floors with wood-safe solutions, disinfect benches and lockers, and sanitize athletic equipment thoroughly.

Buckeye Honors Program

If your staff needs additional guidance, Buckeye’s Honors Program is here to help. The program includes:

Training Modules: In-depth resources to teach proper deep cleaning methods. You and your team will have 24/7 access to video modules covering everything from floor care to disinfecting and more.

Training Materials: Detailed wall charts, and checklist that outline routine and deep cleaning protocols. Staff can also complete testing and earn certifications after reviewing these materials, ensuring they are confident and prepared to meet high standards of cleanliness.

More Ways to Keep Your School CleanThe school year can be challenging but maintaining a clean and safe environment doesn’t have to be. Winter break deep cleaning is just one part of the solution. Buckeye offers a variety of blogs, tools, and strategies on how to keep your school spotless year-round.

Curious to learn more? Explore these blogs to keep your school clean this year:

Floor Care and Mats: Learn about ways you can keep your floors and mats clean this winter.

Flu Season: Flu Season is here. Take a look at our recent flu season blog and learn about ways Symmetry can provide the best healthy hand hygiene practices for your school.

Winter weather is fast approaching, and one of the best defenses against the season’s challenges is the placement of mats. Mats help stop snow, salt, dirt, and debris from being tracked through your facility, keeping your floors cleaner and reducing the risk of slips and falls. However, to maximize their effectiveness, it’s essential to maintain your mats throughout the season.

Impact of Ice Melt on Finished Floors

Ice melt products, while helpful in preventing icy conditions, can be harmful to finished floors. The residue from ice melt can leave behind white, chalky stains, dulling finishes and sometimes even causing surface damage. This makes it essential to have high-quality mats in place, and to keep them clean, to catch as much ice melt residue as possible. Facilities should ensure they have enough matting at entrances, ideally 15-20 feet in length, to capture debris from multiple footfalls before individuals reach the main flooring area.

Combatting Ice Melt Stains and Scuffs

To reduce winter damage, facilities can adopt a floor care strategy that addresses both high-traffic areas and entryways.

Set a Regular Cleaning Schedule: Frequent sweeping and mopping are essential, particularly during and after major snow days. Regular upkeep prevents ice melt, dirt, and salt from embedding in floors.

Immediate Entryway Care on Snow Days: Remove mats temporarily from entryways if ice melt residue has built up under or around them. This allows for direct cleaning of the floor beneath, minimizing damage. Sweep away any debris, large ice chunks, or salt particles left by foot traffic.

Apply Buckeye Floor Cleaner: Select a cleaner from Buckeye's lineup that is designed for winter floor maintenance. For an eco-friendlier option, Buckeye offers two Eco Floor Cleaners. Buckeye Eco® Floor Cleaner Fragrance-Free E32 S32 and Buckeye Eco® Floor Cleaner E33 both provide a greener solution without compromising the effectiveness of the floor cleaner. Use the cleaner to restore shine, remove scuffs, and prevent buildup on finished floors.

Rinse Thoroughly: After mopping, clean the mop and empty the dirty water to prevent spreading residue on other areas. Rinse the floor with clean water, and mop thoroughly to eliminate any remaining product or salt residue.

Use an Auto Scrubber: For larger areas or where available, an auto scrubber can streamline this process by simultaneously cleaning and rinsing the floor, helping maintain a uniform appearance and removing deeper debris effectively.

Matt Maintenance Care

Outside Entrance Mats

To keep outside entrance mats effective, sweep the surrounding sidewalk and area daily to minimize tracked-in dirt. Spot-clean mats with a Buckeye carpet spot remover, like Gone H2O2 as needed. Apply the solution to the spot, allow it to dwell, and agitate the area with a brush or carpet bone from the outside toward the center. Blot dry with a clean, absorbent cloth to finish.

Inside Mats

Vacuum inside mats daily, ensuring to overlap each part of the mat by 2-3 inches for maximum soil removal. If needed, use a Buckeye carpet spot remover, like Gone H2O2 for stains. Saturate the spot, allow it to dwell, and then agitate with a brush or carpet bone, working from the edges inward. Blot dry to prevent moisture from soaking into the backing mat.

Interested in Learning More?

Buckeye’s Hard Floor Care Program offers customizable tools to help keep floors pristine, even during the harshest winter months. By combining matting and floor care solutions, Buckeye can help you keep your facility looking clean, safe, and inviting all season long. Reach out to your Buckeye representative to discover how our programs can support your winter maintenance efforts.

Advances in carpet design, manufacturing, and maintenance have made it a viable alternative to hard floors in many facilities. Carpets are natural filters, capturing most dirt and soil. However, they tend to hide dirt better than hard floors, so waiting to clean carpets until they look dirty is too late. To keep your carpeted floors looking their best, Buckeye offers routine, interim, and restorative maintenance procedures in their various maintenance training programs.

Buckeye’s training programs detail the maintenance needs of matting and wall to wall carpeting. Daily maintenance depends heavily on things like the amount of traffic in certain areas of your facility. Though daily maintenance can, for the most part, keep carpets and matting in your facility clean, interim and restorative procedures are also important. Over time, carpets can become soiled to the point where vacuuming and spot cleaning are not adequate. A more thorough surface cleaning or deep cleaning is needed. As winter approaches, winter weather may also require deeper carpet cleaning. Snow melt and other debris can quickly become embedded in carpeting or matting. Buckeye’s training programs supply a guide to deeper cleaning procedures as well.

Buckeye’s complete line of carpet care products can cover all of your facility carpet care needs. The Eco^® Proportioning Program offers several carpet cleaning products, including Eco Carpet Spotter E51 and Eco Extraction Cleaner E52. With Eco, Buckeye makes it possible to standardize your facility’s cleaning program. Eco proportioning systems automatically dilute super concentrated products accurately every time. Whether diluting carpet care products, food service area products, or restroom cleaning products, Eco provides standardized operating procedures to your maintenance staff. Beyond that, the Eco Proportioning Program considers space availability, the number of products your facility will need, and whether or not those products require additional security.

Depending on the needs of your facility, Buckeye’s carpet care training programs and products can be customized to fit your needs. Because dirt can easily get embedded in carpet, it is important to clean your carpets often and well. Contact your local Buckeye representative to learn more about how Buckeye can help with carpet care in your facility.

Some people avoid installing carpet in facilities because they think cleaning the carpet will be an unsurmountable challenge. Luckily, with a standardized maintenance program and Buckeye products, it doesn’t have to be. Buckeye offers a wide variety of carpet care products that can match any carpet care needs. Buckeye carpet care products remove stubborn stains, are cost effective, and extend carpet life!

Buckeye has carpet care products for extraction, shampooing, spot removal, traffic lane cleaning, surface cleaning and specialty spot removing. For example, Beta-Gone^™ Betadine^® Carpet Spotter is a carpet and upholstery spotter designed to remove Betadine stains. It also is great for daily cleaning, as a pretreatment before other cleaning procedures, and removes stubborn iodine stains. Another product, Touch & Go^™ Carpet Surface Cleaner, can be used to quickly remove surface soils (oil and water-based) when used with a bonnet cleaning system and is fast drying. It is even compatible with new generation carpets. If you need a soil retardant, Shelter^™ can extend the life of your carpet by protecting carpet fibers from the penetration of dirt, soils, and stains. Even oil-based liquids stay beaded on the carpet surface for easy removal. Shelter also won’t change the color of lighter carpets as other protective systems tend to do.

Buckeye also offers the Buckeye Carpet Spotting Kit. The kit includes all of the tools necessary for any carpet stain, all packaged in one convenient carrying case. It includes Gone^™ H₂0₂ Carpet Spot Cleaner, Beta-Gone Betadine Carpet Spotter, Stabilize^™ RTU Anti-Browning Treatment, and Gum, Tar, & Oil^™ Remover Carpet Spotter. It also contains a carpet bone, carpet brush, spotting cloth, rubber gloves, and a Spotting Guide.

For schools and universities, the Buckeye Honors Program includes a special section on Buckeye carpet care products and recommended training procedures. This program is a complete online custodial training program for schools and universities in routine cleaning, carpet care, and more. The website features the complete program and materials that are available 24 hours a day to meet any carpet care needs.

Carpeted flooring can be difficult to keep clean in any facility, especially in areas with high foot traffic. Buckeye Eco^® Carpet Spotter E51 and Eco Extraction Cleaner E52 can help, specifically, with carpeted floors. Both products can be used with the Buckeye Eco Proportioning Program and are Woolsafe^® approved.

Buckeye’s Eco Carpet Spotter E51 is a concentrated, full spectrum spotter that is effective on both oil and water-based stains. E51 uses an encapsulation technology to prevent re-soiling and is independently tested for the highest standards in performance and safety. It may be used on not only water-based stains, but oil stains too. Soil will become bonded to the chemistry for post spotting removal. There are many benefits to using E51 with your cleaning program. It can help any facility save on inventory and employee training dollars, all while being safer and effective to use.

Buckeye’s Eco Extraction Cleaner E52 is highly concentrated and designed to be used as a hot water carpet extraction cleaner at 1 oz. per gallon. The chemistry in E52 bonds with the oil, grease, dirt or other soil and removes it quickly with the aid of the hot water. E52 is effective on both oil and water-based soils, is low foaming, and leaves no residue to promote the re-soiling of carpet fibers. It can also help prevent the clogging of extraction jets, which saves time and money spent on costly machine maintenance. Be sure to check out Buckeye’s Eco Proportioning Program for a list of products that can be used together to provide your facility with the highest quality cleaning program.

For questions about this product or others, contact Buckeye International today.