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HOUSEKEEPING WITH HEART How a talented team keeps the Royal Ontario Museum looking its best
by Jessica Brill
H
ousekeepers are often the unsung heroes, heading into unoccupied guest rooms, empty offices, large-scale venues, and everything in between to refresh and replenish, leaving spaces clean and tidy. But what happens when the spaces are public-facing, attracting regular crowds and daily attention?
The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) first opened its doors in 1914 and features over 13 million works of art, cultural objects, and historic specimens among 40 gallery and exhibition spaces. The uniquely designed building occupies a large block at the corner of Queen’s Park and Bloor in Toronto, and as Canada’s largest museum, the ROM sees hundreds of visitors each day. With so many spaces and so much traffic, the ROM requires a large housekeeping staff with a particular skillset to navigate its labyrinth-like, ever-changing layout. In fact, the team is made up of 38 full and part-time unionized housekeepers who work 12-hour day and night shifts, so there is always a team member available when needed. “It’s certainly never a dull moment for the housekeepers,” says Housekeeping Manager, Jeanette Braund. Between the museum’s 16 / FACILITY CLEANING & MAINTENANCE / WINTER 2024
design, ever-present traffic, and fluctuating layout, cleaning the ROM presents a unique set of challenges for the housekeeping team. RISING TO THE CHALLENGES
Day and night-shift workers face different demands as they complete their regularly scheduled duties. For the daytime staff, much of the team is focused on cleaning the administrative space and labs located backof-house, spending their time deep cleaning and filling supplies. However, the gallery space is also attended to, along with maintaining the washrooms used by visitors. The housekeeping responsibility doesn’t stop there, though. Their day-to-day also means engaging with the public to answer questions, direct patrons to security guards and exhibits, and more. In many venues cleaners are unseen,
