Coronavirus

A proactive approach to dealing with the virus and a message to our clients
The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has changed the lives of all of us. At Sparkling Palaces, we've been diligent in working through the challenges over the past couple years as the situation has evolved. We put systems in place to help keep our clients, and our employees, safe.

While we head toward the end of 2022, new reported cases are low. We have relaxed some policies such as wearing masks while during cleaning. However, we maintain certain policies to keep a more sanitized environment and protect everyone. Thank you to everyone who helped us work through the pandemic, as we move toward a cleaner and more sparkling future.

Sparkling Palaces
Proactive Approach
As we begin to see reported cases of Coronavirus in Oregon, I wanted to write a blog post discussing what we intend to do to address the situation at Sparkling Palaces. While there is still a lot unknown about the situation (as well as a lot of misinformation available), we intend to be proactive and use caution in our approach. We want our house cleaning service to continue to be beneficial to all of our clients.

Our Policies
The first thing that should be said: any sick employee stays home for the day. We never send a Sparkler who isn't feeling well to visit your home. This is keeping with our current policy but it's worth restating. All of our employees at Sparkling Palaces are provided great benefits and that includes sick pay. We very much encourage our Sparklers to take time off when they aren't feeling well to rest, recover, and not spread any germs to our clients. We take this policy seriously and have reinforced it to the staff while in the midst of the coronavirus situation.

The second thing worth mentioning about our policies: we don't clean when our clients are home sick. We do this for a couple reasons. One, to protect our Sparklers from getting ill; and two, to not spread germs to other houses we may be cleaning that day. We are very flexible about rescheduling cleans. Since Sparkling Palaces is a local house cleaning company we are easily accessible for communication. We pride ourselves on timeliness in responding to our clients and being able to promptly reschedule cleaning. Please let us know if you will be at home sick and we'll make arrangements to reschedule your cleaning.

We are also noticing that schools are using an "abundance of caution" when it comes to the virus and potentially closing schools down for days to clean and sterilize if there is a suspected case reported within the school. So, as a message for our clients, if your child is home alone from school and they are under the age of 16 we will have to reschedule the cleaning. Even if they aren't affected by the virus, in keeping with our policy we don't clean when there is a child present in the home unsupervised under the age of 16.

Additional Proactive Measures
We want to go above and beyond with some additional measures to help ensure the health of our employees and our clients. Research shows that one of the best proactive approaches is something tried and true: hand washing! Our Sparklers are quite diligent about hand washing while out cleaning houses. We wanted to expand this and set a new policy: wash after cleaning each bathroom and kitchen, and then once again when leaving the house. We're training Sparklers to follow the CDC guide to hand washing. Many Sparklers use hand sanitizers and we continue to support their use. We want to use hand sanitizers as a supplement to hand washing - not in place of. Also according to the CDC, an effective hand sanitizer must have at least 60% alcohol to be the most effective. These additional measures along with having our Sparklers stay home if they are feeling ill should help the situation.

Increased Sterilization
Some research suggests that hydrogen peroxide is effective against coronavirus. This is great news: we use hydrogen peroxide as one of our primary cleaning agents! Now, we aren't claiming that our cleaning products are 100% effective against the virus in every home - livescience points out that there hasn't been much testing done on this particular strain of the coronavirus, COVID-19. Research on other strains of coronavirus and hydrogen peroxide have shown effectiveness at inactivating the virus. I've written another blog discussing how this process occurs. Our intention is to continue using hydrogen peroxide and increase the number of surfaces we're disinfecting in the home. Doorknobs, handles, and light switches are some of the most touched surfaces in homes, therefore we are paying closer attention to disinfecting these surfaces. As a precautionary measure for the health of our clients we will be cleaning these surfaces at each recurring cleaning.

Going Forward
The news about coronavirus is changing day by day. Our intention is to be vigilant and to act for the benefit of both our employees and our clients. Sparkling Palaces will continue to serve both Portland and Lake Oswego with highly detailed, eco-friendly green house cleaning. This cleaning is both good for the environment and effective at eliminating germs within the home. For inquiries into Sparkling Palaces please use our contact page and get in touch. For all of our current clients we will accommodate special cleaning requests to the best of our ability. Feel free to reach out to us via phone or email. For more information about coronavirus COVID-19 look for reputable news sources such as the CDC website.
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