Best Cleaning Rags for Schools and School Districts

Students spill drinks. They get upset stomachs. Sometimes they sneeze on surfaces. 

This means teachers get a crash course in battling germs and messes, especially during flu and cold season. 

Most schools employ professional cleaners, but not every teacher can wait for the end-of-day standard room cleaning. To slow the spread of germs, they often need their own supplies to clean with throughout the day.

Rags We Recommend for Cleaning Classrooms

Those plastic canisters of disposable sanitizing wipes — the ones you can pick up at the closest grocery store or pharmacy — can provide a first line of defense against invisible germs in many classrooms. 

But this retail product won’t contain heavy or sticky spills that need immediate attention. These wipes can also introduce skin allergens, and they may exacerbate asthma or other diagnoses. Plus, for most schools, this product costs too much to use in bulk. 

At All Rags, we stock a variety of cleaning rags that are ideal for schools. Professional cleaners use these rags every day, but more and more schools are buying them, too.

Cotton Rags in General Classroom Cleanups

It’s hard to top standard cotton rags. They fight a variety of classroom messes, including sticky juice or soda spills on desktops and floors.

Thin cotton rags won’t take up much room in the teacher’s desk or storage closet, or in the janitor’s supply closet. They’re durable enough to be washed and reused repeatedly for years. 

Microfiber Rags for Electronics and Dry Messes

Microfiber rags excel at wiping dust and grime away from a classroom’s electronics, including Prometheus boards and student tablets and keyboards. 

Microfiber also combats dust and spider webs that collect over the summer, and they can make quick work of a Dry-Erase board that’s starting to look too cloudy.     

Recycled Rags for Saving Money

Most schools must stretch their budgets for cleaning supplies, so we recommend using recycled rags when possible. 

Recycled cleaning rags are a great way to save money. They were originally T-shirts or pullovers or towels. The material has been reclaimed and turned into cleaning rags.

These rags cost less, and they will typically vary a little in size and color, but they still perform well. In fact, some cleaners prefer recycled rags since they’re already soft and absorbent. 

Disposable Paper Wipes for Emergencies

Teachers can always use a box of disposable wipes. These rags are more durable — and much cheaper — than sanitizing wipes. 

One paper rag will do a lot of work. This product excels at covering and containing bulky messes. They can also gather up the worst of a mishap, preparing the surface for scrubbing and sanitizing.  

Tips for Keeping a Classroom Clean

In a perfect world, teachers would never be their classroom’s primary cleaner. Instead, they’d have a professional cleaning staff always at the ready to step in and eliminate messes.

In reality, most schools’ cleaning crews are stretched too thin, or they come in later in the day to clean after the school day, making them unavailable in the mornings.

This means many teachers add “classroom cleaner” to their list of jobs. Or, at some grade levels, they can assign some cleaning duties to their students.

Whatever it takes, a classroom should be left clean at the end of the day. Here are some easy ways to make it happen:

Prevent Messes and Germs

Children of all ages can learn healthy habits that keep them safer in the classroom. Hand washing, for example, can become part of a classroom’s — or a school’s — morning or before-lunch routine. Old fashioned soap and water is a proven way to stop germs.

Classroom rules can also help prevent messes. Teachers who allow students to drink only water, instead of cans of soda or bottles of juice, will usually need to clean fewer sticky spills. 

Another key to prevention: Make cleaning up easier. For example, placing two or three different large trash or recycling bins around the room makes it easier for students to clean up after themselves.

Clean Even When the Surface Looks Fine

Most everybody will clean floors, desktops, and touchscreens when they look dirty. These appearances, of course, are often deceiving. 

Germs live and spread everywhere, especially in places where children gather. Anything students touch throughout the day should be cleaned regularly.  

Use Soap and Water (Sometimes, at Least)

All classrooms should keep alcohol-based hand sanitizers available. They’re easy to use, they require no running water, and they kill a lot of germs.

But soap and water still works better. Hand sanitizers are better than nothing, but hand washing with soap and water should also be part of the school day. 

All Rags Provides A+ Customer Service

At All Rags, we provide best-in-class customer service and the widest variety of cleaning rags. We still outperform the huge big box stores and online retailers by knowing our business and knowing how to treat our customers. 

If your school or school district needs a reliable source of cleaning rags, with savings available with bulk orders, contact us today.  

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