Yes. And not just by a little. Flexibility is your best mate when you’re scrubbing bins, wiping down toilets, and dodging punters at outdoor events. The kind of work I do isn’t your average dust-and-hoover session. This is proper action-packed, full-volume, often chaotic event cleaning. One minute you’re refilling loo roll in the portaloos, the next you’re sweeping up glitter, broken cups, and someone’s leftover jacket potato. I’ve worked festivals where the mud came up to your ankles and dance parties where half the crowd wore nothing but mesh and body paint. Through it all, the one thing that saves your day—every single time—is how quickly you can adapt. Planning has its place, sure. But when you’re elbow-deep in bins and it starts bucketing rain or someone mistakes the disabled toilet for a bathtub (true story), planning goes out the window. What saves you? Being flexible. Being quick on your feet. And knowing your team’s got your back. That’s how you survive a 3-day grime fest in Hyde Park or a boozy two-nighter in Brockwell Fields.
It Always Starts With Chaos
Outdoor Events Have One Thing in Common: Total Unpredictability
The biggest characteristic of large outdoor events? They never go as expected. You can have the best schedule written in multicoloured markers stuck on the staff noticeboard, but you’ll still end up chasing loose bin bags across a field at some point. I’ve cleaned at music festivals across London—Wireless, All Points East, even the occasional pop-up rave in Peckham Rye—and every one of them taught me that surprises are the only guarantee.
Let me paint the scene: you show up, bright-eyed, with your gear packed and boots laced. You’re ready. Forecast says “light drizzle”, so you’re thinking: easy day. Then, halfway through the shift, the sky falls apart and it’s practically a monsoon. The paths flood. Your gloves are soaked. People start abandoning their wet shoes in the middle of the dance area. You can’t plan for that. You can only respond. That’s why flexibility trumps preparation nine times out of ten.
Don’t Try to Outthink the Sky (Or the Crowd)
Some Things Are Out of Your Hands – Accept It
I used to be one of those people who’d spend hours trying to plan every tiny thing before an event. I had spreadsheets, colour-coded kits, and little sticky notes for who gets what task. Then came my first proper outdoor gig in Clapham Common, and let’s just say all that planning went out with the leftover noodles and chicken wings.
Here’s the truth: the weather doesn’t care about your prep. The crowd doesn’t care about your checklist. People will get drunk. People will get messy. Sometimes they’ll tip entire bins over for reasons that defy logic. You can’t predict how 15,000 people will behave when the DJ drops a remix of some ’90s banger. You’ll see grown men chucking pints, women crying in toilets, and some poor soul sleeping in a recycling station. You can’t out-plan that.
So what do you do? Stop wasting energy worrying about the things you can’t control. Don’t try to organise the unpredictable. Just show up ready to bend, twist, pivot, and roll with whatever madness the day brings.
Experience Helps—But Don’t Let It Trap You
Old Tricks Are Handy Until They Aren’t
There’s no doubt that experience makes a difference. You learn where to set up the toilet roll restocks so you’re not sprinting across the site like a contestant on Gladiators. You get a feel for crowd flow—how the foot traffic shifts after sunset or when the headline act hits the stage.
Still, don’t get cocky with experience. I’ve seen cleaners who’ve done Glastonbury five years in a row get completely thrown off by a sudden route change at Field Day. Just because it worked last time doesn’t mean it’ll work now.
One year, I was on toilet duty at a daytime dance party in Blackheath. By 4 p.m., one whole row of portaloos had flooded. Completely unusable. I thought, “Right, I’ve seen this before.” I started redirecting people to the second bank of toilets. But that just caused a queue longer than the bar. In the end, a rookie on my team suggested rotating two temporary cubicles in from a storage area I didn’t even know existed. Worked like a charm.
So yes, lean on experience—but don’t let it limit how you react. Sometimes the fresh eyes of a newbie spot the fix quicker than your years of doing things the same way.
It’s All About the Crew
Trust Your Team or You’ll Lose Your Mind
If flexibility is the muscle, teamwork is the spine. At big events, no cleaner works alone—not if they want to stay sane. You need people you can shout to when the bins are overflowing faster than the staff can empty them. You need someone to back you up when there’s a hygiene emergency in the family zone. And you definitely need someone to pass you wet wipes when your hands are covered in ketchup and soap foam.
I’ve worked with teams from all over—Polish, Jamaican, Romanian, you name it. And when everyone’s moving like a unit, the shift goes like a dream. One of my best crews was at a summer indie festival near Croydon. It rained, obviously. But instead of moaning, everyone got stuck in. We set up a tarp system near the loos, used leftover fencing to cordon off the really muddy patch, and even got the event manager to bring in sandbags. Not one of us planned that—but every one of us chipped in like it was second nature.
Trusting your team means knowing they’ll do their bit—and not throwing blame when it gets messy. You win together, stink together, and laugh together at the end of it.
Real-Life Lessons from the Mud and Mayhem
From Catford to the Main Stage
Living in Catford, I know my way around London’s green spaces and event zones. From Brockwell Park’s family festivals to big-budget shows in Hyde Park, I’ve scrubbed down the backstage areas and trudged across more soggy fields than I can count. Every event teaches you something new about being flexible.
There was one unforgettable weekend where I got booked for a two-day music event in Greenwich. Gorgeous setting. Weather forecast? Warm and dry. Of course, Saturday morning brought full-on fog and drizzle. I ended up wearing bin bags over my boots and swapping gloves every hour. Half the bins disappeared under a layer of mist and pizza boxes. But the crew stayed upbeat. We split into little squads and did rapid rotations, which kept everyone moving and dry-ish. We even turned a rubbish run into a bin-bag sack race at lunch. Madness. But we left that park cleaner than when we found it.
So, Is Flexibility Your Biggest Asset?
Absolutely. It’s more than helpful—it’s survival. Forget perfection. Forget your fancy prep list. The only way to stay afloat (sometimes literally) during big outdoor events is to flex with whatever hits you. Stay cool when the crowd doubles. Keep your wits when the wind takes off with your plastic gloves. Laugh when the portaloo door falls off its hinge mid-clean. And know that your team’s got you—even when it’s 11 p.m. and you’ve still got one final bin run before heading home to Catford.
Being flexible isn’t a personality trait, it’s a work requirement. Especially if you’re the kind of cleaner who shows up, stays till the end, and leaves every patch of field better than it started. You might not get a shoutout from the DJ or a thank you from the glitter-covered dancers. But you’ll know you handled it, adapted, stayed standing, and didn’t lose your mind along the way.
And that, my friend, is the real win.