The product that wears out the furniture

We were called to an aged care village of about 120 residents. The complaint was not about infection. It was about the furniture.

Chair arms were cracking and peeling. Benchtops looked etched. The stainless rails had gone dull. Staff put it down to age and heavy use, which is the usual explanation and usually the wrong one.

We walked the site with the facility manager and the cleaning lead and looked at what was on the trolley. The product was being used on every surface, every day. Its label said nothing about vinyl, laminate or stainless. Nobody had checked whether it suited what it was being used on.

That is more common than people think. A product gets chosen for what it does to microorganisms, and nobody asks what it does to the chair. Repeated daily, the damage builds slowly enough that it looks like wear.

We mapped and photographed the damage, checked each product against the actual surfaces, moved the site to products compatible with those surfaces, and retrained the team on the new process. The damage stopped.

The facility had been budgeting to replace furniture that was being worn out by the wrong product, not by time.

Every site is an asset as well as a workplace. Rails, chairs, benches, flooring and equipment cost real money, and a cleaning process should protect them, not shorten their life.

So part of every review is a simple question: is this product right for this surface? Read the label for surface compatibility, not just contact time. Look at the things that are wearing out early. Ask why.

Cleaning for health and looking after the building are not separate jobs. Done properly, they are the same one.