Storage cages and bike rooms in Newington residential buildings

A storage cage is private property inside a common area, and its contents belong to a household that has no relationship with the cleaning contractor. Entering one, even to retrieve something that has fallen or to clean a floor that is visibly dirty, is not acceptable. The rule has to be absolute so that it is easy to apply and impossible to misunderstand. It also protects the crew from any suggestion that something went missing.

That is straightforward when a cage is locked and less obvious when one has been left open. The instruction is the same either way: the aisle side of the mesh is cleaned, nothing beyond it is touched, and an open or damaged cage is reported to the building manager. A cage left open is usually an oversight the owner would want to know about. The same applies to a cage with a broken latch or a missing panel.

Storage cages fill up and their contents lean, sag or protrude through the mesh into the common aisle. That narrows the route, prevents the floor being cleaned properly and in some buildings affects access to services or an exit. It is also a matter between the owners corporation and the lot owner rather than something a contractor can resolve. Bikes chained to the mesh from outside create the same problem.

So the response is to clean what is accessible and report the rest with a cage number, a date and a description. Over a few attendances that record shows which cages are consistently overflowing, which is exactly what a building manager needs in order to write to an owner. Removing or repositioning the items would be handling somebody's property without authority. Photographs make the letter considerably easier to write.

Bike storage rooms accumulate more than bikes. Prams, boxes, unwanted furniture and items nobody has claimed all end up there, because a shared room with no allocated spaces has no owner for anything left in it. The floor beneath becomes unreachable and the room stops functioning for its intended purpose. Over a year a bike room can lose most of its usable space to items nobody claims.

Cleaning covers the floor that is exposed and the accessible surfaces, and reports the accumulation. Clearing a shared room is a decision for the owners corporation, usually preceded by a notice period and a process for owners to claim items. Nothing is removed by a cleaning crew, since an item that looks abandoned may belong to somebody who is simply away. The report should describe the extent rather than simply noting that the room is full.