A Day in the Life of Era Living Staff: Housekeeping

Photo credit: The Seattle Times, Ellen M. Banner

What is it like to work in a retirement community during the coronavirus pandemic? How has the pandemic shifted how staff members care for and engage residents? We want to give you an inside look into how our various Era Living teams operate, and what pivots they are making to continue serving our communities with compassion and dedication.

Today, we are highlighting the work of our housekeeping team at Aljoya Mercer Island. Proper cleaning and sanitation are essential to help protect our communities, and we are so grateful to have an incredibly dedicated team stepping up to help keep our residents and staff safe. Many of our residents are, too. As one resident from Aljoya Mercer Island shared when asked about living at our community during the pandemic, “It’s the safest place, the healthiest place, and the most enriching place I could imagine living.”

Here’s a quick look into how housekeeping is serving our community. 

Daily Routine

One of the benefits of living in an Era Living retirement community is that most of the housework is done for you. Residents are responsible for putting away their belongings and keeping surfaces clear. But our team helps ensure surfaces, fixtures, and floors stay clean and sanitized. This is especially important during the coronavirus pandemic, when all of our teams are working hard to help protect our residents.

During a typical housekeeping shift, staff members are responsible for cleaning five apartments each. Cleaning an apartment can take anywhere from 45 minutes to 1-1/2 hour depending on the size of the space. During this time, our housekeeping team will complete the following tasks:

• Dusting, polishing, and wiping down surfaces
• Vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping floors
• Replacing linens
• Removing garbage and placing recyclables in commercial recycling containers
• Sanitizing counters, fixtures, and door handles

Each housekeeper is also responsible for cleaning one whole floor of the community for the week. This includes cleaning communal areas like lobbies and bathrooms.

Sanitation Products

Our housekeeping team works with a variety of products created for cleaning windows, countertop surfaces and fixtures, and floors. But products designed just to remove dirt and dust are not enough. To help protect our residents against the spread of illness, we want to ensure our team is working with the products best designed to protect against this virus. That’s why our housekeeping staff uses the Clorox Total 360 System. This system is designed to deliver Clorox solutions to the front, back, and sides of surfaces. And it specifically kills norovirus germs in two minutes or less. You can learn more about this solution here and watch the video below to see our staff using the solution at our Aljoya community. Our team also uses Q.T.3, which is disinfectant spray/wipes used when people are very sick with the flu or other infectious illnesses, and Lysol.

Housekeeping During the Coronavirus Pandemic

Cleaning and sanitation have always been an essential part of our services here at Era Living senior living communities. Because of this, the housekeeping teams have not had to make drastic changes to their typical routine. At Aljoya Mercer Island, Housekeeping Director Maria Johnson says that the biggest change their team has made is increasing frequency of sanitation. “We now perform deeper sanitation of all touchable surfaces and have increased the sanitizing frequency on campus. And, along with the universal personal protective equipment they typically wore pre-COVID-19, my team also now wears KN95 masks when going through their standard cleaning routine.”

Thanks to the important work of our housekeeping teams, Era Living residents can feel more at ease knowing their home and community are being properly cleaned and sanitized during these extraordinary times. If you have questions or are interested in learning more about our housekeeping team’s work, please contact us today.