We were engaged to clean for a high-profile client at the National Building Museum in Washington D.C. for a black-tie gala from 4am until 11pm for 500 people. Long day. The event involved six cleaners on overlapping shifts. Two cleaners came in at 4am as well as a power washer to blast stains on the stone on the outside entryway. Two cleaners came in at 10am and two more at noon, all four of which stayed until 11pm. The 4am shift left at 6pm, right as the event began.
As I said, long day.
Because multiple vendors and a rehearsal were involved in the pre-event setup, and because the National Building Museum is an old building, there were few outlets for everyone to go around and we had to bring cordless vacuums in addition to the regular plug-in variety with 50 foot extension cords.
The biggest concern of the client was the oodles of flower arrangements pouring from the fifty-four tables like giant islands of petals, and not in vases. The client wanted to make sure the chairs eating areas, and floors didn’t look like the bottom of a forest. Or that stray petals wound up in crystal champagne flutes. Because The National Building Museum is an old building with fewer electrical outlets than modern structures, we used cordless handheld vacuums to sweep the tables and chairs and under the tables. Corded vacuums covered the outside and in between table areas of the 22,000+ square foot of carpet in the room.
While PopUP offers the ability to buy wholesale supplies from us (toilet paper, hand towels, hand soap, trash liners, and more), our client wanted hand-rolled cloth towels, upscale soft toilet paper, and bespoke hand soaps in the bathroom. Our cleaners were tasked with rolling the towels and the bathroom attendants with making sure the guests did not abscond with them.
Throughout the event, our cleaners attended the bathrooms, cleaned up discarded beverage and food receptacles, and emptied overflowing trash. The bulk of the work was in the lead up to the event as multiple vendors from caterers to lighting experts and sound system engineers set up and we were asked to continue to maintain cleanliness.
PopUP CleanUP services large scale events for major marketing firms and event production companies.
