Commercial Cleaning Services in Tempe, AZ, Fitted to the Building

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Tempe lies just west of our base in Mesa, and its offices, shops and corporate buildings are part of the East Valley we serve. As It Should Be Cleaning LLC has been at work in the Valley of the Sun since 1988. We clean offices and commercial buildings on daily, weekly or monthly plans, and we fit the work around the hours each business keeps.

In Tempe a university, a downtown walking district and corporate campuses share one city, and each asks something different of a cleaning crew. This page is about those differences: the calendar the city runs on, the three places where much of its office work happens, and what each means for the cleaning plan. The full list of what we do, service by service, is on our commercial cleaning page.

A city that keeps the university’s calendar

Arizona State University sets the pace. ASU expected about 51,200 students to call its Tempe campus home in the fall 2026 semester (ASU News). The businesses around campus feel it: coffee shops, copy centers, clinics, apartment leasing offices and restaurants fill up while classes are in session and go quiet during the breaks.

For cleaning, the calendar can matter more than the square footage. A leasing office that sees a handful of visitors a day in July may have a line at the counter in August, and its restroom, its entry floor and its trash all follow the crowd. A plan written for the quiet months falls behind in the busy ones. We would rather set the schedule with the calendar on the table: more visits, or longer ones, while the students are back, a lighter routine while they are away, and the change agreed in advance so nobody has to ask for it in the middle of the rush.

Game days bring a rhythm of their own. ASU’s page on the Novus Innovation Corridor lists Sun Devil Stadium among the venues there, with seven home football games a year. A business that opens its doors to that crowd needs a clean space before the gates open and another pass after the crowd has gone. We offer special event cleaning before, during and after an event, and a game day is exactly that kind of job.

Three places where Tempe goes to work

Tempe’s office space is spread across very different settings. Three of them show the range well, and the cleaning that suits one would be wrong for the next. These are not our clients. They are the kinds of building a Tempe cleaning plan has to be written for.

Downtown and Mill Avenue

Downtown Tempe is built for people on foot. Since May 20, 2022 the Tempe Streetcar has run a three-mile, 14-stop route along Mill and Ash avenues, from Rio Salado Parkway and Marina Heights to Dorsey Lane and Apache Boulevard, with stops near ASU’s Tempe campus, Gammage Auditorium and Sun Devil Stadium (KJZZ). A street like that brings customers to the door all day, and they bring the sidewalk in with them.

Downtown work means storefronts with offices above them, salons and studios in narrow suites, and restaurants next door to all of it. The entry is where the job is won or lost: the mats, the first few yards of floor, the push plate and the glass of the door. Retail store cleaning is one of our services, and in a store it is done before opening or after closing, so the sales floor is ready when the first customer walks in. In older buildings a few things are worth settling at the start: who cleans a stairway or a restroom that two tenants share, where the trash goes when the dumpster is shared with a kitchen, and what time the deliveries arrive, so the floor is not mopped just before a hand truck crosses it.

The Novus Innovation Corridor

Next to the old downtown, ASU and the city are building something new. ASU describes the Novus Innovation Corridor as a 10 million square foot mixed-use development embedded in its main campus in Tempe, with more than 4.5 million square feet of Class A office space, a main street retail district of over 275,000 square feet, about 4,100 planned residences and over 1,000 hotel rooms (ASU Economic Development).

Class A office buildings are usually run by a property manager with its own arrangements for the lobby, the elevators, the shared corridors and often the restrooms on each floor. A tenant who hires a cleaning company is hiring for the suite: the reception area, the private offices, the open work area, the conference rooms, the break room and any restroom inside the suite. Before the first visit it pays to get written answers from the building on a few questions. Which restrooms are the building’s and which are yours? Where do your trash and recycling go, and through which corridor? Which door, which elevator and which hours may after-hours cleaners use, and does the building issue them badges? Once those answers are in hand, the scope can start at your suite door and stop there, with nothing left in the gap between the two.

ASU Research Park

In the south of the city, at Elliot Road and Loop 101, ASU Research Park is home to about 50 companies employing more than 3,500 people, with work that ranges from cancer treatment to digital communications, semiconductors and satellite technology (ASU News). That is a corporate campus, not a downtown block, and it calls for a different plan.

In a technology building the cleaning divides in two. The offices, conference rooms, break rooms, restrooms, lobbies and entrances are ordinary commercial cleaning, done to the company’s specifications on the schedule it chooses. The technical rooms are another matter. A company that runs a lab, a test area or a server room has its own rules about who enters, what may be carried in and what may be touched. The cleaning plan should name each of those rooms and say plainly whether a cleaner goes in at all, and on what conditions. Where the answer is no, the door stays shut and the list says so, which protects the company and the cleaner alike.

Working around the hours a Tempe business keeps

We clean around the client’s schedule, and in Tempe schedules vary widely. An office usually wants the work done after the last person leaves. A store wants it finished before the doors open. A research company may have people at their desks well into the night, and a building near campus may stay busy until late in the semester and empty out over the break. The right time is whichever one leaves the space ready for the morning without getting in anyone’s way.

A few practical points go into the arrangement: the window in which the cleaning starts and ends, who we call if someone is still working when we arrive, how the alarm is set and who holds the code, and, in a managed building, how badges and keys are issued and returned. None of it is complicated, but each one is easier to agree on before the first night than after it.

Carpet in offices that see a crowd

Office carpet wears along a few lanes: from the door to the reception desk, down the main aisle, into the conference room and around the coffee. Routine vacuuming with HEPA vacuums keeps the dry soil down, edges and the space under the desks included. Over time the lanes still turn grey in a way that vacuuming cannot reach, and that is when carpet cleaning comes in.

We run our own carpet cleaning van and offer customized carpet care. In practice that means the carpet schedule follows the traffic: the entry and the main lanes more often, the private offices less. For a suite near campus, the weeks before a new semester begins are a sensible time for it, while the space is quiet and has time to dry before the crowd comes back.

New suites and spaces that change hands

A city that is still adding offices, shops and hotel rooms is also a city of build-outs, remodels and move-ins. Our post-construction cleaning covers debris removal, dusting and a deep cleaning of all surfaces, so a new or renovated space is ready for the people who will use it. Construction dust keeps settling for days after the trades leave, and it lands where nobody looks: the tops of door frames, light fixtures, vents, cabinet shelves and the tracks of sliding doors. That is why the cleaning should come as late as the schedule allows, after the last trade has packed up and before the furniture arrives.

We also provide move-in and move-out cleaning for commercial spaces. A tenant leaving a suite and a tenant arriving in one both want the same thing: an empty space, clean from the ceiling vents to the baseboards, that nobody has to apologize for. If your lease says how the space is to be handed back, have it with you when you call.

Products and equipment for buildings that stay shut

Through the hot months most Tempe offices keep their doors closed and the air conditioning running, so whatever goes into the air during cleaning tends to stay in the building. We use green cleaning with non-toxic, biodegradable products, HEPA vacuums that hold the fine dust instead of blowing it back out, and microfiber cloths that pick dust up rather than pushing it around. If someone in your office is sensitive to scents or to a particular product, tell us at the estimate, and the plan can account for it.

Getting started with a Tempe building

Call us and tell us three things: what kind of building it is, whether you are a tenant in a managed building or run the whole property, and the hours the space is in use. We will come out, walk it with you, answer your questions and give you a free estimate. From there we agree on a daily, weekly or monthly plan, and on anything that changes with the university calendar.

We are based in Mesa, the city next door, and our page on commercial cleaning services in Mesa, AZ covers our home city. Besides Tempe and Mesa we serve Gilbert, Scottsdale, Apache Junction, Queen Creek and San Tan Valley.

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