Colour coding, and why professionals never carry one cloth
The commonest way to make a place dirtier is to clean it. A cloth that has been in one room is a delivery system for what was in that room.
In detail
Nothing in household cleaning advice addresses the risk that cleaning MOVES contamination rather than removing it, and it is the risk professional practice is organised around. A cloth, a mop head or a bucket that has been used in one area carries what it picked up into the next one, and the more thoroughly it was used the more it carries. The regulator's control is physical and requires no judgement in the moment: provide colour-coded equipment — buckets, cloths, mop heads — dedicated to different areas, and use disposable cloths for toilet areas. Colour is chosen because it works under fatigue, in poor light, in a hurry, and for someone who does not share the supervisor's language. It is the same logic as separate chopping boards, applied to a building. The household translation is not the colour scheme, which is overkill for one home, but the principle underneath: the cloth that did the toilet does not then do the basin, and a cloth that has done anything goes in the wash rather than back in the bucket. Where households get this wrong is the kitchen sponge and the bathroom cloth — the two items this catalogue already models as reservoirs.
Why
Sources for this page
Sources
Cleaning accommodation and facilities: COSHH essentials, control approach 1
Health and Safety Executive (HSE), United Kingdom · Government or regulator
Relied on for: That cross-contamination is prevented by providing colour-coded equipment such as buckets for different areas, and that disposable cloths are used for toilet areas. (states this directly)
Verification: a person has read the passage relied on.
Read on — The hazards list, the control procedures, PPE, skin care and the schedule. Supports the claim as stated. Supplies the professional pillar's spine. Everything a household reader does is chemistry and technique; what a regulator adds is dosing control, colour coding, substitution, ventilation rates and a written schedule — none of which this register held, and all of which are the actual difference between cleaning and being paid to clean. It also puts the never-mix rule in a regulator's words for the first time.
Last reviewed by a person on .