Search for a housekeeping checklist and you'll find long ones, built for hotels with a housekeeping department and a supervisor signing off each floor. A small property usually has one or two people doing the cleaning, sometimes the owner. The list below is sized for that.
Use it as a starting point, not a standard, add the things specific to your rooms, and drop anything that doesn't apply.
Turnover: after a guest checks out
Bedroom
- Strip the bed completely and remake with fresh linen, including pillowcases
- Check under the bed, in drawers and the wardrobe for anything left behind
- Dust surfaces, switches, the headboard and the TV remote
- Empty bins and replace liners
- Vacuum or sweep, then mop hard floors
Bathroom
- Clean and disinfect toilet, sink, shower and taps
- Check the drain for hair and slow drainage
- Replace towels, bath mat and toilet paper
- Restock soap, shampoo and anything else you provide
- Wipe mirrors and leave no water spots
Before you call it ready
- AC, fan, lights and hot water all working
- Wi-Fi details where the guest will find them
- Windows closed, curtains set, room smells fresh
- Anything broken or missing written down, not just remembered
Stay-over: while a guest is still in the room
Ask the guest how often they want service, some don't want anyone in the room at all.
- Make the bed (fresh linen on a schedule, not daily, unless the guest asks)
- Empty bins, replace towels the guest has left on the floor
- Restock toiletries and water
- Quick wipe of the bathroom
Weekly or between busy periods
- Wash or replace mattress protectors and pillow protectors
- Clean behind and under furniture
- Descale kettles, clean the fridge if rooms have one
- Check curtains, blinds and fan blades for dust
- Walk through each room as a guest would and note anything worn out
The part most checklists leave out: telling everyone it's done
A room can be perfectly cleaned and still cause a bad check-in, because nobody knew it was ready. In our own property, room status used to live in a phone call, when the person who needed to make that call couldn't be reached for an hour, a room sat uncleaned past a check-in time. What running NK Homes taught us has the rest of that story.
So whatever you use, make sure every room has one obvious status anyone can check without calling someone:
- Needs cleaning: the guest has left; the room isn't ready
- Cleaning: someone is working on it now
- Available: cleaned, checked, ready for the next guest
- Out of service: something is broken; don't put a guest in it
On paper, that's a column on a whiteboard. In Hostberg, it's the housekeeping board: marking a guest as checked out moves their room to Needs cleaning, your cleaner updates it from their phone as they work, and you can see what's ready before a guest arrives. More on how it fits with reservations and payments on the features page.
If you're still tracking bookings in a sheet, the free reservation spreadsheet template pairs with this checklist, sort it by check-out date each morning and you have the day's cleaning list.