Dosing charts staff actually follow

When we compare what a site orders against the area it cleans, the number that comes back is usually somewhere between 1.4 and 1.8 times what the dilution chart implies. That gap is not carelessness. It is what happens when a chart is written for a chemist and used by someone with a bucket at six in the morning.

Why eyeballing wins

A housekeeper deciding how much to pour is solving a different problem from the one the chart solves. The chart optimises for cost and residue. The housekeeper optimises for not being sent back to redo a room. Given uncertainty, pouring more is the rational choice — it is only wrong if someone has explained that more product means more residue, and that residue is what makes the floor look bad next week.

So the first fix is not a stricter chart. It is telling people what over-dosing actually costs them, in terms they care about: a dull floor, a sticky surface, a complaint.

Make the right dose the easy one

Then remove the decision. A pump calibrated to the canister turns "about a capful" into two presses. A fill line marked on the bucket turns ten litres into a line you stop at. Neither requires anyone to remember a percentage.

Where we have fitted pumps and marked buckets, consumption typically falls about a fifth in the first quarter without any change in cleaning standard — and the standard usually improves, because the residue goes away.

Write the chart for the room it lives in

Put it where the bucket is filled, not in a folder. Use the units on the equipment: pump presses and bucket lines, not millilitres and percentages. Put it in the languages the team actually speaks. And keep it to the three or four dilutions the site really uses — a chart listing every dilution the product supports is a chart nobody reads.

Check it with the invoice

Consumption per square metre is the honest measure, and you already have the data. If it drifts up, something has changed on the floor — a new starter, a broken pump, a bucket that lost its marking. It is a cheap monthly check that catches problems before they show up as a complaint.