When your nursery is your livelihood, and other people’s children are in your care, it is important to offer the best, well-equipped, nursery you can. Not only to attract customers, but to make your job easier and premises more welcoming. We’ve compiled a list of 9 things you can add to your nursery to ensure the best, most hygienic and compliant, service possible!

 

Hand Sanitiser

Children are especially at risk when it comes to germs. It is estimated that a child’s immune system isn’t fully developed until they are between 12-14. This makes them much more susceptible to contracting colds or other illnesses when exposed to a high amount of germs, like in a nursery environment.

A simple way of cutting down the amount of germs that are floating around your nursery, or left on your hands after dealing with a child, is to install simple hand sanitisers around your premises. Quickly sanitising your hands before and after cooking, using the toilet, or dealing with different children can help with the constant germ-free battle.

 

Ozone Units/Automatic Air fresheners

With a mixture of changing nappies, cooking lunch, cleaning up sick and other smells that all come part and parcel of running a nursery, some form of air freshening or odour eliminating system will go a long way, but the trouble with standard hand held canister air fresheners is that you need to remember to not only spray them from time to time, but also keep them out of reach of children.

With automatic wall mounted air fresheners, these problems are taken away. If an air freshener seems too overpowering in your nursery, then an Ozone unit may be for you.

 

Baby Changers and Nappy Bins

Buying a reliable and sturdy baby changer will make your job much easier in your nursery. Wall mounted foldable baby changers will offer stability, space and style to your changing facilities. Using a basic matt atop a table is potentially dangerous and unhygienic. Setting up a well equipped changing room will leave a good impression for potential clients coming to view your premises.

Nappy bins go hand in hand with baby changing facilities, to hold all the hazardous waste you’ll be throwing away. Whilst all nappy bins have the same purpose, looking for one that is in fitting with your washroom will stop it from standing out. You don’t always want a nappy bin jumping out at you when you enter a washroom.

 

Waste collection

You can’t produce waste without a waste collection. Your main waste products will be general waste and hazardous waste from your nappy waste.

The environmental health department states anything that comes into contact with bodily fluids (blood, plasma, mucus, etc.) that cannot be sterilised must be treated as hazardous waste. Nursery waste is considered biohazardous material, this means you cannot dispose of it into normal waste streams. Materials and equipment used by Nurseries that qualify as hazardous waste (after use) and cannot be sterilized include (but are not limited to):

 

  • Nappies

  • Protective gloves & aprons

  • Liners

  • Paper towels

  • Hand care

 

You’ll need to think about what waste your nursery produces – If you have a first aid kid, or regularly have to dispose of any medical waste for whatever reason, such as tablets, solid dose medicines, drug destruction kits, or cytotoxic and cytostatic waste then you’ll need to look into getting a Pharmaceutical waste bin and collection. Read more on waste collection for your nursery on our recent post.

Reliable cleaning machines

Children produce a lot of mess, and mess harbours germs. The best way to get rid of germs that wind up all over your floors and surfaces is to invest in a reliable vacuum cleaner and cleaning equipment.

To go one step further, investing in a steam cleaning machine, or renting one every month or so, would go a long way towards deep cleaning your nursery of germs.

 

Fully stocked First Aid Kit

Having a fully stocked first aid kit is required by law, and is also an incredibly handy thing to have on hand in your nursery. You never know when an accident may happen and first aid assistance is required. Make sure you always keep it in an easy to access place that is visible to everyone, not just those who know it’s specific location, but that is also secure from inquisitive and curious hands. Up on a wall mount, would be ideal.

 

Automatic taps

Automatic taps can not only help to cut down on germs by eliminating the need to turn them off after you’ve washed your hands, but also reduce the risk of water damage in your nursery, should the taps ever be left on by accident. They are often much easier to activate than standard taps, as well, as pressing a button once is a lot easier than twisting, flicking or leveraging standard tap handles on and off.

 

Plug covers

Safeguarding your nursery from potentially hazardous objects and edges is a thorough job, but one thing many people forget is the plug sockets. Because of their regular usage, it is often impractical to cover them up with anything even remotely permanent and time consuming to remove – that’s where plug covers come in.

Filling in all your open plug sockets with covers will help to protect children in your care from harming themselves and other around them, even if they get inquisitive and start to turn plugs on and off.

 

Wipes and disinfectant

No Nursery is complete without disinfectants and wipes to clean up all manner of mess and germs that will collect over the day. Be it for cleaning a table before and after eating or disinfecting all the toys at the end of the day, having a sterile and clean looking nursery will go a long way in keeping the children in your care healthy, and looking good to any visitors.

 

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