Breakroom Cleaning Best Practices: Is the Employee Breakroom Doing More Harm Than Good?

Unger Enterprises Marketing | October 5, 2022

Often underrated, breakroom cleaning can impact a company’s bottom line.

Who doesn’t look forward to a little ‘water cooler talk’ to break up the workday? For the most part, the employee breakroom is an opportunity. It encourages engagement, improves workplace culture, and gives people a reason to talk to colleagues they’d otherwise never meet.

But the breakroom is also a kitchen and a dining room. Put food preparation, high-touch surfaces and close quarters in one room and you have ideal conditions for bacteria. Without a cleaning plan built for the space, a casual environment becomes a risk to everyone who uses it.

Quick answer: Breakroom cleaning best practices come down to disinfecting high-touch surfaces daily, deep-cleaning appliances and the refrigerator weekly, and using tools that don’t spread contamination: microfiber cloths, enclosed spray systems and dual-chamber mop buckets. Office breakrooms harbor more germs than restrooms because they are cleaned less often and their hygiene depends on the people using them.

Why Is the Breakroom Germier Than the Office Restroom?

Three things make it worse than the restroom: the breakroom is cleaned less often, nobody outside the company ever sees it, and its cleanliness depends on the handwashing habits of the people using it.

Workplaces are no stranger to the common cold, stomach flu and other viral illnesses, given the constant contact between people and contaminated surfaces. Businesses don’t escape the cost either. Employee illness means lower productivity, higher absenteeism and rising health care spend.

Restrooms get cleaned on a schedule. Breakrooms often don’t.

You’d assume the shared restroom holds most of the workplace’s germs. It doesn’t. A 2012 study conducted by Kimberly-Clark Professional, carried out in consultation with Dr. Charles Gerba, Professor of Microbiology at the University of Arizona, swabbed nearly 5,000 surfaces across office buildings housing more than 3,000 employees. It found the break room and kitchen to be the bigger germ-spreading culprits.

The reason is scheduling. Restrooms get cleaned and disinfected on a fixed rotation. Breakrooms usually don’t, because facilities assume the space looks after itself. Employees eat in there, so surely they keep it clean.

Breakrooms are private, so nobody inspects them

The breakroom is an employee-only space. Clients don’t walk through it and building visitors never see it.

That privacy is the problem. Facilities allocate cleaning attention to the areas they get judged on: the lobby, the entrance, the restroom. The breakroom sits outside that list and quietly slides down the priority order.

Breakroom hygiene depends on the people using it

Even a well-cleaned breakroom depends on the people walking into it. Are they arriving with clean hands before they touch the microwave, open the refrigerator or turn a faucet handle?

When handwashing slips, no cleaning schedule fully makes up for it. Gerba’s own summary of the study put it plainly: the break room, not the individual desk, is the center of germ transfer in an office, because everything in it is shared. That makes preventing cross-contamination a breakroom priority, not just a restroom one.

What Are the Dirtiest Surfaces in an Office Breakroom?

Food plus foot traffic makes the breakroom one of the dirtiest rooms in the building. The 2012 Kimberly-Clark study measured contamination across office surfaces and ranked them by the share carrying high germ levels:

Surface	Share with High Contamination	Why
Break room sink faucet handle	75%	Touched before and after eating, by everyone, all day
Microwave door handle	48%	Food remnants plus a handle nearly every employee touches
Keyboard	27%	Personal, but rarely cleaned and often used while eating
Refrigerator door handle	26%	Touched continually and rarely disinfected
Water fountain button	23%	Shared contact point at hand height
Vending machine button	21%	Shared contact point, no cleaning routine
Cotton dishcloth	Not measured	Gets wetter with every spill, which is what bacteria want
Trash receptacle	Not measured	Discarded food makes it the worst spot in the room

What Are the Best Practices for Cleaning a Breakroom?

Who is responsible for cleaning the breakroom?

Consistent, effective cleaning keeps the breakroom a healthy, enjoyable place. The effort is twofold. Employees handle personal hygiene, while cleaning professionals handle the deeper clean with the right tools.

Responsibility splits two ways, and both halves have to hold.

Employees handle the basics: washing hands regularly, using sanitizer, and wiping up after themselves whenever they use the space.

Cleaning professionals and facility managers handle the deeper clean, using the right commercial cleaning tools to keep the breakroom welcoming while protecting employee health and limiting virus transmission.

Use microfiber cloths on high-touch surfaces

High-touch surfaces and constant foot traffic make microfiber cleaning cloths the right tool for handles, faucets and knobs.

Research by Dr. William Rutala found that extremely fine microfiber, roughly 0.37 micrometers in diameter, removed up to 98% of bacteria and 93% of viruses from a surface using water alone. Cotton, tested the same way, removed about 30% of bacteria and 23% of viruses. Separately, EPA guidance on microfiber mops in hospitals documents lower water use, lighter handling loads and reduced cross-contamination risk.

Cutting chemicals out also helps indoor air quality. And it makes microfiber the obvious choice for the inside of the refrigerator, where mishandled food creates foodborne illness risk and chemical residue near stored food isn’t an option.

Minimize airborne chemical spray on tables and counters

Tables and counters need more than a wipe-down, but every spray bottle puts chemicals into the air people are about to eat in.

In Unger’s own testing, the Unger Stingray uses as much as 39% fewer chemicals than a cloth and spray bottle. Its enclosed nozzle keeps what you do use from going airborne.

Mop with clean solution only

Germs and debris travel on the floor as employees move between areas. Mopping helps, but only if the solution in the bucket is actually clean.

Traditional mopping moves dirt from the floor into the bucket, then straight back onto the floor. A single-cavity bucket guarantees it, because the wash water and the soiled rinse water are the same water.

Dual bucket floor mopping systems separate the two. Paired with a microfiber flat mop, they stop both surface and mop-head re-soiling.

The difference shows up in the bacteria left behind. In an EPA case study at UC Davis Medical Center, microfiber mopping cut bacteria by 99%, against a 30% reduction for a traditional wet loop mop. The same program cut water and chemical use for mopping by 95%.

Ready to Increase the Health and Hygiene of Your Break Room?

Breakroom cleaning can look like a lower priority than restroom cleaning, but it earns more attention than it usually gets. Keeping employees healthy keeps them engaged and, more to the point, keeps them at work.

Sourcing equipment designed with hygiene in mind goes a long way toward stopping illnesses from spreading through one shared room. It is one of the easier wins available to facility managers and BSCs.

For more than 50 years, Unger has helped facilities clean faster, safer and to a higher standard. If you’d like help reviewing your current process and where it could be more effective, contact us.

FAQs

How often should an office breakroom be cleaned?

High-touch surfaces like microwave handles, faucets and refrigerator doors should be disinfected daily. Appliance interiors, the refrigerator and floors need a weekly deep clean, and areas behind and under appliances should be addressed monthly. The busier the breakroom, the more often high-touch surfaces need attention.

What is the dirtiest surface in an office breakroom?

The break room sink faucet handle. A 2012 study consulted on by Dr. Charles Gerba of the University of Arizona found 75% of break room faucet handles carried high contamination levels, the highest of any office surface tested. Microwave door handles came second at 48%, followed by keyboards at 27% and refrigerator handles at 26%.

Is the office breakroom really dirtier than the restroom?

Yes. A Kimberly-Clark Professional study that collected nearly 5,000 swabs from office buildings housing more than 3,000 employees found break rooms and kitchens to be bigger germ-spreading culprits than restrooms, largely because restrooms are cleaned on a fixed schedule and breakrooms often are not.

Can you disinfect breakroom surfaces without chemicals?

Largely, yes. Research by Dr. William Rutala found that extremely fine 0.37-micrometer microfiber removed up to 98% of bacteria and 93% of viruses from surfaces using water alone, against roughly 30% and 23% for cotton. That makes microfiber especially useful inside refrigerators and on food-prep surfaces, where chemical residue is a contamination risk.

Who is responsible for cleaning the office breakroom?

Responsibility is shared. Employees handle personal hygiene and cleaning up after themselves through handwashing, sanitizing and wiping their own spills. Facility managers and cleaning professionals handle scheduled disinfection of high-touch surfaces, appliances and floors using commercial-grade tools. Relying on employees alone rarely holds up over time.

Sources

• Kimberly-Clark Professional, The Healthy Workplace Project. Where the Germs Are: New Study Finds Office Kitchens and Break Rooms are Crawling with Bacteria, May 23, 2012. Conducted in consultation with Dr. Charles Gerba, Professor of Microbiology, University of Arizona.
• US Environmental Protection Agency Region 9. Using Microfiber Mops in Hospitals, Environmental Best Practices for Health Care Facilities, November 2002.
• Rutala, W. Microbiologic evaluation of microfiber cleaning materials, Disinfection, Sterilization and Antisepsis, 2006. Source of the 98% bacteria and 93% virus figures. Cite by publication: no live public URL located.