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April 20, 2020

The Importance of Safety & Sanitation in Multi-Housing Laundry Facilities

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There’s no doubt that Coronavirus/COVID-19 has us all thinking more about healthy, safety, and sanitation. Pandemic or not, keeping your laundry room clean and sanitary should be a top priority for landlords and managers of apartment buildings and other multi-housing facilities. With that in mind, we wanted to highlight the importance of health and safety in your shared laundry room and offer some sanitation tips to keep you and your residents safe now and in the future. 

Why Safety & Sanitation is Important

Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, germs that lead to a cold, the flu, and other illnesses like COVID-19, are commonly spread through contact and spray from coughs and sneezing. 

  • When people live in close quarters (such as an apartment building) and share common areas (like the laundry area) it’s easy for tenants to unknowingly spread illnesses throughout the building and beyond, especially if they’re not yet showing symptoms.  

  • While someone who is symptomatic may be able to stay home from work and avoid public places, the apartment complex is their home. They ‘ll be spending more time there while they’re sick and may have no choice but to do laundry in the shared laundry area or utilize other shared areas of the building.

  • People are often not as cautious about wearing masks, gloves, or following proper hand-washing procedures when they’re at home, and may not think about it even while using shared areas of the building, such as the community laundry room. 

  • While they may clean and disinfect their living space regularly or following an illness, residents are generally not in charge of cleaning common areas. That falls on the property manager. 

All that being said, it’s easy to see why illnesses can spread quickly through apartment buildings, condominiums, universities, and other multi-housing facilities. 

How to Keep Your Community Laundry Room Clean & Sanitary

  • Disinfect the laundry room as often as possible, especially areas residents frequently touch (door handles, washer and dryer doors and control panels, coin or money changers, vending machines). 

  • Encourage residents to use hot water and drying cycles on appropriate loads, which have been shown to kill germs and bacteria. 

  • Install a sink in the room, provide antibacterial hand soap, and use signage to encourage proper hand-washing techniques.  

  • Provide hand sanitizing stations in common areas of your property, such as entryways, fitness centers, and the laundry room. 

  • Consider upgrading your machines to more advanced commercial laundry equipment, like Speed Queen washers and dryers, that have state-of-the-art design features and controls that get clothes cleaner.

Landlords and property managers play a big role in keeping their buildings, including the laundry room, safe and sanitary for residents and staff. If you have questions or are looking for a laundry equipment upgrade for your multi-housing facility in Illinois or Indiana, we’re here to help.  

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