Surry Hills NSW 2010

Dishes, cups and the staff sink in a Surry Hills workplace

No single item generates more quiet disappointment than the kitchen sink. Everyone assumes somebody deals with it, and in a standard cleaning scope nobody does, because washing up belongs to the people who used the cups. Saying so in advance settles it permanently.

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In short

A standard scope covers the sink itself, the bench around it, the splashback, the tap, the bin, the floor and the appliance exteriors. It does not cover washing dishes, loading or unloading a dishwasher, drying, or putting crockery away. Cupboard fronts and handles are included as touchpoints.

Items left in a sink stay there and are cleaned around. That is not indifference; a cleaner cannot tell which cup is finished with, and a workplace that discovers washing up happening quietly overnight stops doing it themselves. Clean Best states this in the fixed written proposal so it is settled from the start.

Why washing up is excluded on purpose

Once a cleaner starts washing up, it becomes the arrangement, and the volume grows. A team that knows the sink will be empty in the morning has no reason to deal with a cup at four in the afternoon, and within a month the task is substantial and unfunded. It also displaces the cleaning tasks the visit was actually priced for, which is where the cost lands.

There is a practical problem too. Personal crockery, items soaking deliberately, containers belonging to specific people and things left for a reason all end up in the same sink. A cleaner washing everything makes decisions about somebody's property. The workable and honest position is that the sink and its surrounds are cleaned around whatever is in it. Cleaning around what is in the sink is the only rule that works consistently.

What the kitchen scope does deliver

The room is still properly cleaned. Benches wiped and cleared of crumbs and spills, the sink itself cleaned and left dry where it is empty, the splashback and tap done, appliance fronts and handles wiped as touchpoints, the bin emptied and relined, the table cleaned, and the floor swept and mopped. In most offices that is the difference between a kitchen that works and one people avoid.

The one adjustment worth making is the bin. Food waste makes a kitchen bin a hygiene item rather than a cosmetic one, so wiping it internally as well as relining is worth naming. Similarly, the area behind and beside the bin collects spills that are easy to miss, and calling it out specifically produces a noticeably better result for very little extra time. Both are small additions that a busy office notices immediately, and neither adds meaningfully to the time the visit takes.

Making it work in practice

The arrangements that succeed are simple. A dishwasher that somebody stacks and runs at close of day, a roster if the team is large enough to need one, or a rule that personal crockery goes home. What matters is that the arrangement exists and is known, because the kitchen sink is a shared-space problem and shared spaces need an owner rather than an assumption.

It is also worth telling staff what the cleaning arrangement covers. Most complaints about an office kitchen come from people who assumed washing up was included and never checked. A single line on a noticeboard explaining that the cleaner does the room and the team does the dishes resolves it more effectively than any change to the scope. It costs nothing and prevents almost every complaint about the room.

Kitchen boundaries for a Surry Hills workplace

Washing up, dishwasher handling and crockery excluded in writing
Sink, bench, splashback and tap included and named
Appliance exteriors treated as touchpoints
Bins wiped internally as well as relined
The area behind and beside the bin named specifically
An internal arrangement agreed and communicated to staff

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Working in Surry Hills and the Inner City

Surry Hills in the Inner City holds creative offices, hospitality, retail and medical suites, with a large number of small and medium workplaces operating from converted terraces and warehouse floors. Kitchens in those premises are often shared by more people than the fit-out anticipated and have limited bench space, so an unattended sink dominates the room within a day. Because teams are small, an informal arrangement usually works if somebody establishes it. Clean Best services Surry Hills from Seven Hills and states the kitchen boundary before the first attendance.

Questions about Surry Hills

Do cleaners wash the dishes?

No. Washing up, loading and unloading a dishwasher, drying and putting crockery away are staff tasks. Items in the sink are cleaned around. A cleaner cannot tell which cup is finished with, which item is soaking deliberately or which container belongs to a particular person, so nothing in the sink is handled.

Could it be added to the scope?

It is not a task a standard scope takes on, mainly because the volume grows once it becomes the arrangement. A team that knows the sink will be empty by morning stops dealing with cups during the day, and within a month the task is substantial and displaces the cleaning the visit was priced for.

What does the kitchen scope actually include?

Benches wiped and cleared of crumbs and spills, the sink cleaned and left dry where it is empty, splashback and tap, appliance fronts and handles as touchpoints, the bin emptied and relined, the table cleaned and the floor swept and mopped. That covers the room properly without touching anyone's crockery. That is what a kitchen line in the scope should actually say.

Are kitchen bins treated differently?

They should be. Food waste makes a kitchen bin a hygiene item rather than a cosmetic one, so wiping it internally as well as relining is worth naming in the scope. The area behind and beside the bin also collects spills that are easy to miss, and calling it out specifically improves the result noticeably.

How do other offices solve the sink problem?

Usually a dishwasher someone stacks and runs at close of day, a roster where the team is large enough, or a rule that personal crockery goes home. What matters is that the arrangement exists and staff know it. A single note explaining that the cleaner does the room and the team does the dishes resolves most of it.

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