The Big Clean Up: 3 Ways to Optimise Your Post-Event Clean Up Operation

No matter the type of event you’re organising - whether it’s a large-scale corporate gathering at a five star hotel or an intimate music gig featuring a local up-and-coming artist - naturally, the event itself is likely to be your number one priority. This can leave you with little to no time at all to think about the clean up process that is also a key factor in the overall efficiency of your event.

Repeatedly neglected by event planners as a last-minute nuisance, cleaning up the venue once the event has successfully come and gone can often be unnecessarily rushed. As a result, this can leave venues with a poor taste in their mouths and reduce your chances of having enough time left to catch up with guests and reflect on the event’s success. So, in order to help you keep ahead of the game, the business packaging experts over at No1 Packaging are sharing their top tips for planning a successful event clean-up, providing you with 3 key ideas to streamline your event in the process.

Prepare in advance

A key weapon in every event planner’s arsenal, planning in advance is sure to ease your inevitable pre-event nerves and serve you well in the long-run as a result. In terms of the clean up, make life easy for yourself by ensuring you have all the necessary cleaning supplies with you before the event, rather than relying on the venue to provide this type of equipment. Having this available to you will prove to be essential to the overall triumph of the day - firstly, it will allow your team to be prepared to deal with urgent mess as it happens, and secondly, it will give them the opportunity to tidy up immediately after your attendees have left.

In your arsenal of cleaning supplies, we’d suggest always having commercial bin bags to hand, as well as carpet or upholstery cleaner, cloths, paper towels and rubber gloves. Then, start writing up an action plan for how you expect each section of the venue to be tackled and by who - printing this out and making each individual team member aware of their responsibilities ahead of the big tidy up. After sorting out the internal arrangements amongst your staff, look to arrange your waste removal (if required) - choosing a time that you predict you’ll be finished by to create a deadline for your team to work towards, helping them feel more motivated to complete the job within a specific time period.

Visit your space with clean-up in mind

In most instances, the venue that you’ll be using to host your event will be rented. While familiarising yourself with the venue is important in terms of logistical factors on the day, like seating and performance arrangements, you’ll find that getting to grips with your space will prove invaluable when it comes to the cleaning up process, too. Subsequently, before even choosing your location, make sure you’ve identified all hidden corners and left no table unturned as one missed space could add an additional 30 minutes onto your cleaning up routine - delaying your chances of getting off home on time.

By getting to know your event’s space ahead of time, you’ll be able to efficiently plan out where your relevant cleaning supplies will go ahead of time, allowing you to quickly grab them as soon as all your guests have left.

Encourage your attendees to help

While, of course, your team are employed to help carry out the post-event clean up, actively encouraging attendees to do their part on the day shouldn’t go amiss either. Consequently, make sure you provide and accurately label waste disposal areas throughout the venue, including recycling points and general waste bins.

In addition to this, for those of you hosting a larger, perhaps more corporate event, why not implement a green initiative to encourage attendees to tidy away their own litter? For example, by serving drinks in reusable cups for a minor surcharge, which guests can claim back having returned their cups at the end, will provide them with an incentive to clean up, leaving you with less mess to discover underneath tables at the end. Not only this, but, coupled with using paperless ticketing technology, it will ensure that both you and your attendees are actively doing your bit to help Mother Earth.

Regardless of whether you’re clearing up the guest bedroom ahead of family staying over at the weekend or you’re cleaning up after a rowdy music gig, we’re sure you’ll agree that tidying up can be a nuisance. So, ensure you’re well-equipped to leave the venue as you found it by following the above tips - leaving you feeling slightly more relaxed about the big day as a result.

Author bio:

Alex Jones is a content creator for No1 Packaging - one of the UK’s lowest cost packaging providers. Photo by Teemu Paananen on Unsplash