It’s no secret that working in the office can get a little tedious.
When stressed or distracted, people love to snack on sugary foods and drinks for that boost of energy, leaving cookie crumbs, sticky soda spills, and sweet wrappers all over their desks and floors.
This makes for quite a delectable snack for the pests. Given the professional atmosphere an office seeks to portray, the first step to keeping your clients highly impressed is to keep the vermin highly unimpressed.
Here are some general tips to make sure pests have no reason to lounge in your office:
1. Contain the Food and Snacking to a Single Area
Yes, we all know how comfortable it is for employees to whip out a chocolate bar in the comfort of his or her desk chair.
The thing is, you don’t want to be responsible for all the fruit flies buzzing in your clients and coworkers ears. So as a rule, it is necessary to emphasise the importance of keeping the snacking and cookie crumbs secluded to the designated eating area. Preferably one without any windows so the fruit flies have no way of spotting the food and entering.
Of course, out of courtesy and pest prevention, keeping the table tops and floors clean of food particles (especially anything high in sugar) is essential to avoiding these pesky flies. The less surface area exposed to food, the less likely they will pay a visit. Simple as that!
2. Keep Beverages Contained
It is quite common for most offices to offer beverages to the clients either in the waiting room or within the consultation room. It is important to make sure that these beverages remain sealed. However, if you choose to offer beverages in glass cups, it’s important to make sure the cups get thrown away before they can start attracting pests.
Spills do happen regularly, and sometimes spills are not cleaned up completely. The condensed sugar is one of the most obvious invitations for fruit flies – so rather than dealing with the mess, avoid the tragedy and invest in some cup seals. Matter of fact, invest in some fancy ones – give the office some style!
3. Cleaning maintenance and Proper Storage
Here’s a rather obvious one – just keep the office clean.
Always wipe down with some disinfectant after any kind of meal, especially a sweet one – no matter how small and insignificant the crumbs may appear, a swarm of fruit flies would be more than grateful to clean it up for you.
It would probably be best to hire a cleaner to wipe down the floors, table tops and desks once or twice a week, just in case some spots were missed by your messier coworkers. When it comes to fruits and sweet snacks like chocolate, cookies and sweets, keep them refrigerated.
Fruits tend to ripen much faster when they are exposed to room temperature, and the sugar from these over ripened fruits are the most obvious of bait for these flies.
As for the coffee, it is important to make sure that the sugar and sweetened creamers are sealed and kept in cabinets.
4. Rubbish Bins Sealed and Kept in Kitchen
Of course having the rubbish bins located in the kitchen doesn’t mean you need to head towards the kitchen every time you have some scrap paper you need to toss out. For decluttering purposes unrelated to food, having a recyclable bin or waste bin underneath your office desk can work wonders for overall office cleanliness.
Just make sure to keep organic waste within the sealed rubbish bins inside of the kitchen area. As long as the rotting treasure is kept hidden there will be little to worry about.
It is also a wise idea to purchase smaller rubbish bins since larger ones allow for waste to pile up over longer periods of time. Larger rubbish bins allow food to rot, producing a much stronger and foul odour, therefore better clues for the villainous fruit flies to find their way to their beloved stash.
On another note, it might come across as a bit unclean to some clients if they walk into your office and see (and goodness forbid, smells) a rotting banana peel in your waste bin. By keeping this kind of rubbish in a secluded environment, this improves the ambiance of the office in terms of appearance, smell, cleanliness and pest control.
5. Institute Daily Cleanup Teamwork
Most importantly, institute a culture where everyone feels responsible for their mess.Make sure to articulate the importance of a cleanup culture, where everyone cleans up after themselves after eating or making a coffee. Some of the strongest office dynamics are often built on the principle of taking ownership of your communal workspace. Radical self reliance is key, right?
Once this is understood and put into practice, the likeness of any kind of infestation coming about is zero to none. However, there will be times that your co-workers either forget to wipe down or throw out their rubbish – whatever the case may be, make a selfless effort to also clean after them.
Having a clean and presentable office should be more important than avoiding cleaning up after another’s mess. Do the good deed of first, and you might even see others start to follow in your footsteps.
6. Call a Professional
If the infestation gets out of control, call a professional. SPM offers some very effective solutions at an affordable price.
Final Thoughts
Given these tips, it should be rather easy to maintain a pest free zone within an office environment. Although it may be a little annoying to alter some eating and cleaning habits, it will be more than worth it in the end.
The absence of fruit flies in an office once infested with them will come as a great relief to everyone working there – it might even help build some teamwork to prevent any future pests.
On a final note, don’t forget to schedule regular pest control visits just in case there are some unidentified pest issues that need to be addressed and taken care of.
