The Office Restroom Stocking Checklist: What Each Fixture Needs, the Par Level per Restroom, and the Ten-Minute Weekly Walk

The short answer: an office restroom stocking checklist has three parts, and most versions online only give you the first. Part one is the list of what each fixture needs. Part two is the par level for each restroom, which you get from the dispenser’s capacity divided by the day’s use, not from a guess. Part three is the walk: ten minutes a week with the list, so a par is a number that gets checked rather than a number on a spreadsheet. Below is all three for a typical office, with every assumption labelled so you can swap in your own count. OSHA fixture counts, ADA dispenser heights and worked par levels for a whole 50-person building are on our office supply guide; this page is the restroom-by-restroom version.

Start by counting fixtures, not people

Headcount tells you how much paper the building uses in a month, and our per-employee build does that arithmetic. Stocking is done per restroom, and a restroom is a set of fixtures: stalls, urinals, sinks, and the dispensers and bins hung near them. Walk each restroom once and write down the counts: the stall count sets tissue par, the sink count sets soap and towel par, and the bin count sets liner par.

The checklist, by category

Paper. Toilet tissue in the format the dispenser takes: standard cored rolls, coreless high-capacity rolls, or jumbo rolls, which are not interchangeable; a jumbo spindle will not seat a standard roll. Hand towels in the format the towel dispenser takes: multifold, C-fold or hardwound roll, and the same rule applies. Both are in paper and tissue; the count-it-once method is how you find out how much you use.

Hand care. Soap in sealed cartridges that match the dispenser, foam or liquid, and hand sanitizer at the exit. The dispenser decides the dose and the dose decides the cost; our gel vs foam sanitizer guide shows it. Stock from soaps and hand care.

Waste. Can liners sized to each can. A restroom usually has one 8 to 10-gallon can at the sinks and a small sanitary receptacle per stall; the liner sizing guide explains how to read a can’s dimensions, and the mil vs gauge guide explains why a restroom liner rarely needs to be heavy. Order from trash liners and bags.

Odor. A metered aerosol unit with refills, or a passive gel or fan unit, plus urinal screens; screens vs blocks explains why we stock screens. See air fresheners.

Hygiene. Toilet seat covers where a dispenser is mounted, and sanitary receptacle liners or bags in women’s and all-gender stalls. Both are expected by staff and both are cheap to keep.

The cleaning kit that lives in the closet. Bowl cleaner (acid for mineral scale on a schedule, non-acid for the daily clean; which one, which day), an EPA-registered disinfectant for touchpoints, glass cleaner, microfiber cloths colour-coded to the restroom, nitrile gloves, a bowl brush and caddy, and a wet-floor sign. Stock from cleaners and aerosols and janitorial supplies.

Par levels per restroom, from dispenser capacity

A par is the quantity you never want to drop below in that restroom’s closet. The right way to set it is days of supply, and days of supply comes from the dispenser. Assumptions, labelled so you can replace them with your own count: 2 restroom visits per person per working day, 15 sheets of 2-ply tissue per visit, 1.5 towels per hand-dry and one dry per visit, one handwash per visit at 0.4 mL a shot from a foam dispenser or 1.5 mL from a liquid one, and 21 working days a month. Manufacturer counts used below: Scott Professional 04460 at 550 sheets a roll and 80 rolls a case; Scott Essential 07006 jumbo at 1,150 feet a roll and 12 rolls a case, which is about 3,450 sheet-equivalents at a nominal 4-inch sheet, an assumption because jumbo rolls are sold by the foot; Scott Essential 01804 multifold at 250 a pack and 16 packs a case.

Take a women’s room with two stalls and two sinks serving 40 people: 80 visits a day, 1,200 sheets a day, 600 per stall. A standard single-roll dispenser at 550 sheets is a refill every day in each stall, and a par of one backup roll is not enough because a run-out at 4 p.m. is a complaint. A jumbo dispenser at about 3,450 sheet-equivalents is a refill every five to six days per stall. Towels: 80 dries at 1.5 towels is 120 towels a day, so a 250-towel multifold pack lasts two days per dispenser if the room has one, four if it has two. Soap: 80 washes at 0.4 mL is 32 mL a day, so a one-litre foam cartridge is about 31 working days, or six weeks; on liquid at 1.5 mL it is 120 mL a day and eight working days. Our jumbo vs standard dispenser guide has the same arithmetic at 60, 300 and 800 visits a day.

Now the par rule: keep in the restroom closet enough to cover two refill cycles beyond the next scheduled delivery, and reorder when the closet drops to one cycle. For the room above on jumbo rolls, that is two spare rolls per stall (four), two multifold packs per towel dispenser, and one spare cartridge per soap dispenser. On standard rolls it is closer to two rolls per stall per day, which is why the dispenser choice is really a labour decision.

A closet inventory for a 50-person office

Three restrooms, 50 people, the assumptions above, and the monthly totals from the per-employee build: about 31,500 sheets of tissue, 3,150 towels and 2,100 handwashes a month. In cases, that is roughly 0.72 of an 80-roll case of standard tissue (57 rolls) or about nine jumbo rolls (three-quarters of a 12-roll case), 0.79 of a 4,000-towel multifold case, and 0.84 litres of foam soap or 3.2 litres of liquid. Add liners at one pull per can per cleaning visit, so three sink-side cans and four sanitary receptacles at one visit a day is about 147 pulls a month, and a monthly standing order becomes one case of tissue in the dispenser’s format, one case of multifold, one or two soap cartridges, one case of restroom-size liners and a box of sanitary liners, with the cleaning kit topped up quarterly. The supplies calculator runs the same numbers for your headcount.

The ten-minute weekly walk

1. Push every dispenser: tissue feeds, towel pulls, soap pumps, sanitizer pumps. A dispenser that jams is a run-out with a full roll inside it.
2. Read the level in each dispenser against the par. If a stall is under one day, refill now, not on the cleaning visit.
3. Open the closet and count against the par list. Write the count on the list; a par that is never counted drifts.
4. Check the bin liners fit: a liner folded double over the rim is oversized and wasting bag; a liner stretched to tearing is undersized.
5. Note the date on urinal screens and air freshener refills. Replace on the label’s cycle, not on smell.

Once a month, add the audit: compare the last delivery invoice to what the closet actually needed. Tissue arriving faster than the count says means the sheets-per-visit assumption is low; towels piling up means the par was set before the office changed.

Frequently asked questions

What supplies does an office restroom need?

Per stall: toilet tissue in the dispenser’s format, seat covers if a dispenser is mounted, and a lined sanitary receptacle in women’s and all-gender stalls. Per sink: a soap cartridge, a towel dispenser or dryer. Per urinal: a screen. Per waste can: a correctly sized liner. Plus sanitizer at the exit, an air freshener unit, and a cleaning kit in the closet with bowl cleaner, disinfectant, glass cleaner, microfiber, gloves and a wet-floor sign.

How do I set a par level for a restroom?

Work out days of supply per dispenser: sheets, towels or millilitres the dispenser holds divided by the day’s use in that room. Then keep enough in the closet to cover two refill cycles beyond the next delivery, and reorder when it drops to one. For a two-stall room serving 40 people on jumbo rolls at the labelled assumptions, that is about four spare rolls, two multifold packs per towel dispenser and one spare soap cartridge.

How often should office restrooms be restocked?

It depends on the dispenser, not the calendar. At 80 visits a day a standard 550-sheet roll is a daily refill per stall while a jumbo roll is a refill every five to six days, a 250-towel multifold pack lasts about two days per dispenser, and a one-litre foam cartridge lasts about six weeks. Check dispensers on a weekly walk and refill anything under one day of supply.

How much toilet paper does an office go through?

At two visits per person per day and 15 sheets per visit, about 630 sheets per person per month, so a 50-person office uses roughly 31,500 sheets, which is 57 standard 550-sheet rolls or about nine 1,150-foot jumbo rolls at a nominal 4-inch sheet. Those are assumptions; a one-week count of your own restrooms replaces them.