Back in the days when I owned a house cleaning service, cleaning checklists were how my staff kept track of their work. The cleaning checklists we used were printed on 3″x11″ sheets of paper and broke down household cleaning tasks into daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly jobs. Not only did these checklists keep us organized, it also reminded us and the customers of what jobs had already been done and what was left to do.
When it comes to keeping a kitchen clean, a cleaning checklist can help get you organized. Need some ideas of how to develop a kitchen cleaning checklist of your own? These ideas will help:
Daily Tasks. Daily tasks are those basic cleaning kitchen tasks that should be done on a regular, daily basis. Examples of daily kitchen tasks include:
* Washing dishes
* Scouring the kitchen sink
* Polishing the chrome (prevents the buildup of lime scale)
* Wiping down the countertops, kitchen table, high chairs and youth chairs
with a disinfectant
* Mopping the kitchen floor with floor cleaner
* Wiping down fingerprints on appliances, doors, cabinet doors, and door jambs with an all purpose cleaner
* Removing spills from the range, inside the oven, and microwave
* Wiping down the outside of small appliances such as the coffee maker, toaster, stand mixers, and blender with a window cleaning product. This prevents the accumulation of dried food which can be really hard to clean. To reach tiny crevices, an old toothbrush can help.
Weekly tasks are tasks that are slightly less urgent than the daily tasks. To avoid losing all of Saturday playing “catch up” on the weekly tasks, my staff used to combine a couple of different weekly tasks from the cleaning checklist with their daily cleaning duties. Examples of weekly tasks that should be on your cleaning checklist include:
* Waxing the kitchen floor
* Cleaning countertop canisters, decorative stands, dish rack, drip tray, etc.
* Wiping out the refrigerator shelves and the top of the refrigerator with an all purpose cleaner
* Taking a toothbrush to the trapped gunk found in the seams of the large appliances and behind the kitchen sink
* Wiping down the cabinet fronts and handles with the proper cleaning product.
* Pouring boiling water down kitchen drains to kill bacteria and mold growing beneath the rim
* Scrubbing the trash can with a disinfectant
* Soaking and cleaning hood vents
* Dusting for cobwebs
Monthly cleaning checklist. Certain kitchen cleaning tasks just don’t need a lot of cleaning, and can be saved for once a month. Again, these monthly tasks can also be worked into your daily cleaning schedule with large tasks be spread out over several days if necessary. Your checklist of monthly kitchen cleaning tasks might include jobs such as these:
* A complete wipe down of the inside of the refrigerator and freezer
* Cleaning the oven (using auto clean mode or a commercial oven cleaner)
* Washing baseboards, painted wood doors, shelves, and other painted surfaces
* Stripping old floor wax before waxing
* Washing windows, window tracks, jambs and hardware
* Washing & polishing light fixtures, door knobs, and drawer pulls.
* Using a wood cleaner on the kitchen table and chairs, and other wooden kitchen furniture.
* Cleaning the inside of the kitchen drawers and shelves with a disinfectant, and relining with shelf paper (if needed).
* Cleaning and mopping the pantry, reorganizing messy shelves, and tossing old outdated food
* Running cutlery trays and organizers through the dishwasher
* Taking a toothbrush to all cracks and crevices in the kitchen (including grout) to remove buildup gunk.
Yearly tasks for the cleaning checklist. Keeping on top of the daily, weekly, and monthly tasks means that yearly tasks can be kept to a minimum. The yearly tasks my staff used to do were along the lines of
* Washing the walls and ceiling
* Pulling out floor appliances and cabinet drawers to clean the floor and walls in these hard-to-reach places
While this kitchen cleaning check list may seem intimidating, it’s really not as bad as it seems. In listing all the jobs it takes to keep a kitchen clean and then breaking those jobs into manageable time frames, you’ll discover that keeping the kitchen clean really isn’t that time consuming at all.
