Insight Series: How we keep the shelter clean

Life in shelter can be messy. It’s part of the work of helping to get people through difficult times. Sometimes we get questions about how we handle some of the challenges. We’ve started a series, to give some real insight about what happens in shelter.

The staff at the YES Shelter for Youth and Families work hard to keep the Emergency Shelter building clean and tidy for people in a housing crisis who come to find safety. We’re in an old building, with a lot of repair work required, but we do our best to keep it in good shape for the young people and families staying in shelter.

Here are the details of our cleaning process so you can get a better idea of how the shelter functions.

Client rooms

The rooms in the shelter are checked daily by staff to ensure cleanliness. If there are issues with cleanliness, the youth staying in the room may be issued a notice to clean their room within 24 hours.

But sometimes that can be hard. Instead of telling youth to just clean up their mess, we’ve started hosting bi-weekly cleaning parties. We blast music in the hallways, and everyone cleans their space all at once. There is a staff person coordinating, and that person is guiding youth, to ensure they have a task that will help improve their personal shelter space.

This not only helps keep rooms clean, but helps to build the really important life skill of keeping your space clean and tidy. Making it fun can be a really big part of gaining this skill. We also received funding last year to buy shelving and lockers for all of the rooms. This helps people staying in shelter feel safe in that their belongings are secure, and keeps items off of the floor.

When a room is vacant

At times rooms may be vacant. When this occurs, staff sanitize the room for the next person coming in to use the shelter bed. This includes wiping down all surfaces, mopping and sweeping floors, and cleaning windows. Our maintenance team will also use this time to patch the walls and repaint where necessary.

We try to deep clean rooms at least once/year. This is coordinated by our Maintenance Coordinator, and will often include community volunteers.

Common areas

All public areas (like bathrooms) are kept tidy through the day by shelter staff, and then cleaned thoroughly each night by a staff person whose sole job is cleaning the shelter common spaces. Other common shelter spaces include the kitchen, dining room, hallways, foyer and offices.

Volunteer Shelter Crew

The role of a shelter worker is very challenging and involves everything from addressing the frequent emergencies in shelter to making meals for all youth and families staying here. So at times, things can fall through the cracks. When this happens, we have a Shelter Crew volunteer team able to jump in and tackle projects that shelter staff can’t get to. This might include cleaning all the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen, washing the curtains, or cleaning the exterior of the shelter windows.

YES Staff and Volunteers care deeply about their workplace and the people that YES serves everyday. That being said, the Shelter Worker role is very challenging, and the nature of the work can be difficult and emotionally taxing.  The volunteer team works to alleviate some of the on-the-job stress that shelter workers tend to face, by taking care of some of the cleaning tasks for them.

We hope this gives you some insight on cleaning works in shelter! The YES Emergency Shelter is here to keep people safe when they’re in a housing crisis. YES Staff are always working on keeping the space safe and available to any young person or parent with children needing this help.

Next up in the Insight Series: Bugs in Shelter – Protocols the YES Shelter has in place to keep control over this issue.