Clean Up

  When a work order is completed. Do yourself a favor. Don't just leave. I mean, we need to leave the apartment, but before you leave, go to the door and, and exit the unit. Stop. Take a look back at where you worked. Ensure that you have left behind no trace, that you are even present. And what that means is for us as maintenance technicians, if we're working on something like an electric stove, the parts of an electric stove, I don't understand why, but for some reason there's a whole bunch of bags that are inside of a bag that's inside of a box that's inside of a bag that each layer has some separate documentation.

If you happen to be doing something like that, that has a lot of packing material, when you're getting ready to leave the apartment, ensure that you've left none of that packing material behind. If you're performing a plumbing repair, particularly around a toilet, it's a good idea to ensure that not only do you actually clean up after yourself, but you do it in such a way that relays to your resident that you did.

Clean up after yourself. And by that, one of the best tips I ever received was when I would work on either a bathtub or a toilet. I always had with me a small spray bottle, diluted bleach. When I got finished, I'd wipe down the toilet, the floor, the bathtub, wherever it was I was working on. And not only did that do a good job of cleaning.

Probably the best part of it was when my residents came back home, they were able to smell the bleach, smell that clean smell. Doing things like that just before we leave an apartment, can provide your resident the peace of mind that we are thinking enough about the details. At the end of our cleaning event or the end of our work order, that the work that we did is they could be confident enough.

The work that we did was good. Finally when we're leaving the apartment, as you close the door, it's a good idea to get into a habit on how you lock every door. If you happen to be in a community that has physical keys, always lock it the same way. And in my instance, because my uniform shirt had a a pocket on on my chest, I used to take the physical keys.

Put them in my pocket and then I would pat it. It was a habit I got into and there were a couple of times I would realize walking down the breezeway that I pat my chest and the key's not there. Why isn't the key there? I actually left it behind 'cause I set it down when I had to grab something out of my toolbox.

So the end result is be sure you leave no trash behind. Clean and do it in such a way that gives your resident confidence that not only did you clean, you did a great job, and the third have the key with you at the end and develop a good habit on how you're going to leave the apartment.