Shower cleaning safety is a must for all maids, house cleaners and housekeepers. Shower cleaning safety begins with awareness with bathroom cleaning. It’s easy to zone out when cleaning houses for a living. And housework errors create common shower scares.
Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru shares DIY shower cleaning safety tips and talks shower shoes.
Today’s Ask a House Cleaning sponsors are Savvy Cleaner Training (for house cleaners and maids.) HouseCleaning360 (Where you can find a housekeeping help.) My Cleaning Connection (A resource hub for all things cleaning.) And Savvy Perks (a perks program for small business owners to keep more of the money you earn.)
Listen: Shower Cleaning Safety
Watch: Shower Cleaning Safety
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer.
Question: Shower Cleaning Safety
“Hey, Angela, this is Julia. I work with a cleaning company and love your podcast, enjoy listening to all your little tips and tidbits. I just have a quick question that we’ve run into the past several months. Some of our women have been slipping and falling when cleaning showers and tubs.
Obviously, this is a huge safety issue. I was wondering if you have any tips both for getting in and out of the showers and tubs, and also for a while we’re actually standing in them and cleaning. Thank you so much.”
Shower Cleaning Safety Starts with Awareness
All right. So, when we talk about slipping and falling in a shower, there are a couple of different things that are going on.
The first consideration is how tired are you while you’re cleaning?
Because as a house cleaner, you use a lot of physical energy. So, if you’re cleaning houses and you’re at the end of the day and you’re tired, your awareness slips.
When you get inside a shower, you should go on red alert. Pay attention because this is a slippery area, and you could slip and fall.
Shower Cleaning Safety Includes Prevention
Now, I’ve done this before where I’m down scrubbing the corner of the shower and there’s a soap dish that’s hanging on the side of the wall. As I come up without paying attention, I’ll bang my head on that soap dish. And I’m like, “Whoa.” Little stars go around my head, and I’m like, “I shouldn’t have done that.”
You want to make sure that you know where stuff is around you. And when you are aware, you can prevent accidents from happening.
So, if there is water on the shower floor, you want to make sure that you’re aware of that before you step in.
Now, when you’re cleaning the shower, my recommendation is that you do it with tennis shoes on. Because the tennis shoes, while they have great support for your back, they also have rubber soles. And so, it will grip the bottom of that floor plate of the shower to keep you from slipping.
Shower Cleaning Safety Includes the Right Type of Shoes
Now, in my company, we do wear shoe covers. But when we climb in the shower, we take them off so that we don’t slip around. We don’t want something between us and that hard rubber sole. That rubber sole is going to ground us to the fiberglass at the bottom of the shower plate so that we don’t slip and fall.
Or if it’s ceramic tile in a great big fancy house, we want to make we want to make sure that we don’t slip on that. So, the rubber soles of your shoes will keep you from slipping.
Shower Cleaning Safety Means Teaming Up
Another thing I might recommend is that if you are having a fumbling sort of day, or your biorhythms are down, team up. Women have on average, one of these days a month. You pick up something and it falls out of your hands. Or you bump into walls you normally don’t bump into.
Or you drop something and break something. Being super clumsy is a natural thing. Most women go through it one day, a month.
If you have a clumsy day – swap the shower with a cleaning partner so you don’t have any slipping accidents. And then on their clumsy day, swap with them. This way all the showers and tubs get cleaned, and no one gets hurt.
If you work by yourself – red alert. You don’t want to have any liability issues on the clock. And you don’t want to crack your spine.
Shower Cleaning Safety Means Using Your Tools Properly
If the customer is lucky enough to have a shower head on a hose, you will be spraying the inside of the shower walls. The walls will be wet and the shower head can fall out of the hanger and bang you on the head.
So, you have to be careful about it all.
After the shower is clean and the walls are wet, take two white cloths and put them on the shower floor. Stand on those while you dry the walls. This will give you some traction without slipping. Dry the walls. Then get out of the shower and try the floor with the towels you just stood on.
Everything looks brand new, and it’s shiny and polished and all that stuff.
Ignoring Shower Cleaning Safety Costs Money
If you have a shower accident, that is a hazard for everyone. Now, the homeowner is not responsible if you slip and fall while you’re cleaning. You would think that their homeowner’s insurance or something would cover that. But as a paid employee, a paid person coming into their home, that’s what your insurance and your worker’s comp covers. You are responsible for your own safety inside a customer’s home. So, pay attention. And as a house cleaner, easy to zone out.
Big Bath Tubs or Garden Tub Safety
Leaping into a big bathtub in a single bound may seem like a good idea but it’s not. To clean a garden tub, sit on the edge of the tub. Swing your legs up and around inside the tub. Use your hands on the edge of the tub to push yourself to a standing position.
Once inside the tub, you can clean it. Reverse the entry process for getting out of the tub. You don’t want to bang your shins or topple over because of the height of the tub walls or the lack of anything to hang on to for balance.
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Resources For This Episode
Drillbrush Bathroom Surfaces Tub, Shower, Tile and Grout All Purpose Power Scrubber Cleaning Kit – https://amzn.to/2M3CEu6
Bio Clean: Eco Friendly Hard Water Stain Remover (20oz Large)- Our Professional Cleaner Removes Tuff Water Stains From Shower doors, Windshields, Windows, Chrome, Tiles, Toilets, Granite, steel e.t.c – https://amzn.to/2MtavZH
OXO Good Grips Extendable Tub and Tile Scrubber – https://amzn.to/2AR4GE4
OXO Good Grips Deep Clean Brush Set, Orange – https://amzn.to/2KAOvKT
Grout Cleaner Brush – Tile Joint Scrubber Brush (4 in 1 Super Value Pack) with Nylon Bristles – Great Use for Deep Cleaning Bathroom, Kitchen and the Rest of the Household – https://amzn.to/2KCAWu6
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