A housekeeping trolley is the room-turning cart: it carries fresh linen, guest toiletries, water bottles, room-prep supplies, cleaning equipment and an attached bag for used linen — everything one attendant needs to strip and reset a room after checkout without walking back to the store. A janitor cart is the cleaning-only version — chemicals, mop, bucket, caution sign — for corridors and public areas. Kit it once, colour-code it, and a new hire is productive on day one.
What a housekeeping trolley carries
For turning rooms after checkout, the trolley is loaded so the attendant never breaks the round:
- Fresh linen — sheets, pillowcases, towels, stacked by size.
- Used-linen bag — the attached soiled-linen sack; strip into it, don't pile on the floor.
- Guest toiletries + room amenities — soaps, shampoo/conditioner bottles, dental/vanity kits, slippers, laundry bags.
- Water bottles — for the in-room replacement.
- Room-prep supplies — tissue, toilet rolls, tea/coffee tray refills, stationery.
- Cleaning equipment — cloths, a caddy of chemicals, gloves.
The janitor / cleaning cart is the lighter cousin: it carries the chemicals, mop and bucket, cloths and a caution sign for washroom and corridor cleaning, not the linen-and-amenity load.
The full recommended kit
| Item | What it's for | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Housekeeping trolley | Room turning (linen + amenities + prep) | Sizes/config on request — ask us |
| Housekeeping / store caddy | Carries the chemical bottles + cloths on the trolley | Ask us |
| Microfibre cloths | Surface wiping, colour-coded by zone | ₹35–₹500/pc, 180–500 GSM |
| Wet mop set | Floor washing | ~₹590 incl. heavy-duty aluminium handle |
| Wringer trolley (janitor side) | Mop wring + dirty-water separation | ₹1,800–₹7,600 (single/double/triple bucket, 10/15/20 L) |
| Floor wiper (squeegee) | Pulling water off wet floors | ₹90–₹800; run double-rubber |
| Dusters | Glass, surfaces, general | Check duster ~₹10/pc |
| Dilution bottles | Trigger bottles for diluted chemical | Label per R-number/zone |
| Garbage bags | Room + washroom bins, used-linen backup | ₹100/kg + GST (priced by weight, not size) |
| Caution sign | Wet-floor / maintenance safety | Plastic ~₹350 · SS 304 ~₹2,200 |
Trolley, caddy and accessory rates are internal — tell us your setup and we'll quote them with the order.
A note buyers get wrong: garbage bags are priced by weight, not by size. A bag is ₹100/kg + GST; how many pieces you get per kg depends on the bag's dimensions and gauge. Compare on ₹/kg and the gauge you actually need for the load, not the headline pack count.
For caution signs, the plastic board at ~₹350 is fine for a low-wear back area; the SS 304 at ~₹2,200 is the one that survives daily knocks, damp and cleaning-chemical splash in a lobby or public washroom for years — buy the steel where guests see it and it takes abuse.
Code it to a colour system
The trolley works best when the cloths, mops, buckets and dustbins on it follow one colour system, so a housekeeper doesn't carry a toilet cloth onto a basin. The minimum that actually gets followed in a mid-size property is three colours: red for washrooms, yellow for general/day-to-day dusting, green for kitchen (the Head Chef owns green). Adoption trick that works: put the colour choice into the material indent form, so the store asks which colour when it issues stock — the habit builds itself. Full breakdown in the cleaning colour-coding guide.
Pair the caddy with the R-series
Colour-coding stops germ transfer between zones; the R-number chemicals stop chemical mix-ups. On the trolley caddy, most rooms run on R1 (bathroom), R6 (toilet bowl) and R2/R7 (floors) in labelled 750 ml dilution bottles, refilled from 5 L canes in the store — not ready-to-use bottles, which cost several times more per litre of working solution. Which R-number does what, and the dilution ratios, is in the R1–R9 chemicals guide. Keep acidic R1/R9 off marble.
Buy better, buy less — a real example
Tirthankar Mahaveer University was buying about 100 floor wipers a month at ~₹200 each — single-rubber ones that wore out fast. They switched to our double-rubber wipers at ~₹590 each. The first order was bigger, then the repeat dropped to about 20, then to about 10, and now they're mostly buying replacement rubbers and handles, not full wipers. Net spend on wipers fell sharply. The same logic runs across the whole trolley: an aluminium-handled mop and a double-rubber wiper cost more up front and outlast the cheap ones several times over — so kit the trolley with equipment you refresh by the part, not the piece.
What to do next
- See the trolleys, carts, mops, wipers, dusters, caddies and caution signs on the cleaning tools page.
- We also do staff training and printable colour-coding charts for the housekeeping area on request.
- Tell us your room count and how many floors/stations you run, and we'll spec the trolley count, the caddy load and the colour system to match — and quote the trolley and accessory rates with it.