Daycare cleaning checklist
In a childcare centre the users are on the floor, and they put things in their mouths. That moves the whole standard down about four feet, onto surfaces an office checklist never looks at. This one is written for the cleaning company holding the contract and for the director who has to sign off on the work.
Most daycare cleaning lists you find online come out of a licensing handout. They tell you to sanitise toys and disinfect surfaces without saying which toys, how often, or what clean looks like when you check. A cleaning company cannot score any of that. Every line below is written as something a supervisor can look at and call Pass or Fail on a walk through the building.
Three things make a centre different from an office of the same size. Surfaces below four feet carry the load, so wall marks along a mat edge and cabinet pulls at child height matter as much as a counter. Fabric is everywhere: cot bedding, dress-up clothes, cloth books, cushion covers, and none of it can be surface cleaned. And the change station has to be cleaned in a fixed order with its own tools, every time, by whoever happens to be on shift.
Entry and Sign-In Area
- Entry door glass, handles and the keypad or fob reader wiped at adult and child height
- Sign-in counter, pens and tablet screen wiped
- Cubbies emptied of loose paper, shelf surfaces and hooks wiped
- Stroller parking area swept, no grit tracked toward the play floor
- Parent notice board glass clean, floor under the board free of dropped handouts
- Entry mat vacuumed and lifted, nothing trapped underneath
Infant Room
- Floor damp mopped to the wall line, crawl area clean enough to sit on
- Crib rails, mattress covers and frame joints wiped
- High chair trays, seat crevices and straps wiped, food residue removed from the tray lip
- Bottle prep counter, sink and drying rack cleaned, no formula residue at the tap base
- Soft toys and cloth books collected for laundering, not wiped and re-shelved
- Hard toys washed, rinsed and air dried, returned to clean bins
- Wall surfaces clean to 4 feet, no handprints or food marks along the mat edge
Toddler and Preschool Rooms
- Tables and chair seats, backs and legs wiped, dried food removed from chair joints
- Toy bins emptied, bin interiors washed, contents sorted and washed on the posted rotation
- Dress-up clothes, fabric puppets and cushion covers sent to laundry
- Sensory table drained, scrubbed and refilled or left dry and labelled
- Art area counters and paint sink clean, no dried paint ring in the basin
- Book bin surfaces wiped, damaged books pulled rather than left in the bin
- Light switches, door handles and cabinet pulls wiped at child height as well as adult height
- Floor vacuumed and damp mopped under tables and along the baseboard
Sleep Area
- Cots and mats wiped top and underside, then stood or hung to dry
- Cot stacking rack wiped, floor under the rack clean
- Bedding bagged per child and sent to laundry on the posted schedule
- Floor damp mopped after cots are cleared, corners included
- Blackout blinds and window ledges dusted
- Sound machine, night light and their cords wiped and free of dust
Diaper Change and Toileting
- Change pad wiped, disinfected and left wet for the product's labelled contact time before drying
- Change table frame, drawer fronts and the wall behind the pad cleaned
- Diaper pail emptied, liner replaced, pail body and lid washed inside and out
- Hand sink, tap and soap dispenser cleaned, paper towel stocked
- Child toilets, seats, flush handles and the floor seam at each fixture clean
- Step stools and potty chairs washed and dried
- Floor mopped clean-to-dirty, change area mopped last with a dedicated mop head
- Gloves, wipes and bags restocked at the station, not in a cupboard down the hall
Kitchen and Food Prep
- Counters, sinks and taps cleaned, no food debris in the drain basket
- Fridge exterior, handles and gasket wiped, interior spills removed
- Microwave inside and out, including the door seal and turntable
- Dishwasher door, gasket and filter clean, racks free of food
- Floor swept and mopped, corners and the area under the prep counter included
- Garbage and organics emptied, bin bodies washed, lids wiped
- Cloth and mop for the kitchen kept separate from washroom cloths and stored dry
Staff Washroom and Janitor Area
- Toilet, sink, mirror and dispensers cleaned and stocked
- Floor mopped, seam at the base of the toilet clean
- Janitor closet floor clean, mop heads hung to dry, nothing stored on the floor
- Chemicals labelled and stored above child reach with the safety data sheets on site
- Spray bottles labelled with the product inside, no unmarked bottles
- Vacuum filter checked, bag or canister emptied
Outdoor Play Area
- Play structure handrails, steps, slide surfaces and panels wiped
- Sand box covered, surrounding surface swept, no debris in the sand
- Rubber surfacing and pathways swept, standing water noted
- Outdoor bins emptied, lids closed and latched
- Fence line and gate latch clear of debris, gate closing on its own
- Ride-on toys and outdoor bins wiped and returned to the shed
General checks (site-wide)
- All surfaces below 4 feet treated as touchpoints, not just counters
- Disinfectant left wet for the contact time printed on its own label
- Colour-coded cloths in use, with washroom cloths never reaching a food or play surface
- Toy washing logged with the date, not left to memory
- Garbage and organics out of the building, not staged in a corridor
- No chemical, cord or bag left within reach of a child at any point during the clean
- Deficiencies photographed and reported the same day rather than carried to next visit
How often to inspect
| Daily | Touchpoints, washrooms, change stations, floors, kitchen, garbage |
| Weekly | Hard toy washing rotation, cot and mat wipe-down, bedding laundry |
| Weekly | Soft toy and fabric laundering, toy bin interiors, sensory table scrub |
| Monthly | High dusting, vents, light diffusers, wall washing below 4 feet |
| Quarterly | Carpet extraction, hard floor strip and wax, blind cleaning |
What inspectors actually check in a daycare
The wall along the mat edge
Pass: the wall is clean to 4 feet where children sit against it, with no handprints or dried food. Fail: clean counters and a grey band of handprints running along the wall at sitting height. Crews clean at their own eye level out of habit, and the surface that gets touched most in the room is the one nobody is looking at.
Under the high chair tray, not on it
Pass: the tray lip, the underside and the crevice where the tray meets the seat are clean. Fail: a wiped tray top with dried food cemented in the seam. It takes a corner of a cloth and about ten extra seconds, which is exactly why it gets skipped when a crew is behind.
The toy bin, not just the toys
Pass: the bin interior is washed and dry, and the toys in it were washed and air dried rather than sprayed and stacked. Fail: clean toys back in a bin with grit and crumbs in the bottom corners.
Cot undersides
Pass: cots and mats are wiped on both faces and stood or hung to dry before stacking. Fail: mats wiped on top and stacked damp, which presses the underside of one against the sleeping surface of the next.
Clean to dirty, and why the change area goes last
The order of the route is part of the standard. Kitchen and bottle prep first while the cloths are fresh. Then the play and sleep areas. Washrooms and the diaper change station last, with a mop head and a set of cloths that never touch anything else in the building. Colour coding exists for this reason and it only works if the closet is set up so the wrong cloth is awkward to reach for.
Chemical storage is the other thing a licensing officer and an inspector will both look at. Everything labelled, everything above child reach, safety data sheets on site, and no unmarked spray bottle anywhere on the cart. A centre can be spotless and still fail on one unlabelled bottle.
There is no clean way to score the sand box. Sand cannot be disinfected, so the line is really about whether it was covered and whether anything is in it that should not be. Write it as a check on the cover and the surrounding surface, and leave it there.
For the contact time and clean-to-dirty rules in more depth, the medical office cleaning checklist goes further on both. The restroom cleaning checklist covers the fixture-level standard for the washrooms, and the cleaning inspection checklist is the general building version this one is built on.
Common questions
How often should daycare toys be cleaned?
Anything that went in a mouth gets washed the same day. Hard toys in general use run on a weekly rotation, washed, rinsed and air dried rather than wiped. Soft toys and fabric dress-up clothes go to laundry weekly, because a cloth toy cannot be surface cleaned. Log the date the rotation was done, because a toy rotation nobody records quietly stops happening.
What order should a daycare be cleaned in?
Clean to dirty, and food surfaces before anything near a toilet or a change table. Kitchen and bottle prep first, then play areas and sleep areas, then washrooms and change stations last with their own mop head and cloths. The diaper change area is mopped at the end, not in the middle of the route.
What should be cleaned daily in a childcare centre?
Every touchpoint at child height as well as adult height, all tables and chair seats, high chair trays, the change pad and change table, child toilets and sinks, the kitchen, all floors, and every waste and diaper container. Cots, mats and toy rotations sit on a weekly schedule alongside that.
Why does contact time matter on a change pad?
A disinfectant only works while the surface is still wet, for the number of minutes printed on its own label. Spraying a change pad and wiping it dry immediately leaves it visually clean and not disinfected. Spray it, leave it, then dry it, and put that instruction on the checklist so a new staff member does it the same way.
Do I need to give an email address to download the PDF?
No. The download is a direct link with no form. Print it, write the centre name at the top, and use it on the floor.