Commercial cleaning checklist (Sydney businesses)

This is the working checklist ANZ supervisors carry. It's split by frequency (daily / weekly / monthly / quarterly) and by zone (office floor, washroom, kitchen, common areas, exterior). Use it as a scoping baseline when negotiating a contract, or paste it into your facilities folder.

Daily

Office floor

• ☐Vacuum all carpeted areas, focus on high-traffic walkways
• ☐Mop hard floors (entry, lift lobby, kitchenette)
• ☐Dust workstation tops and monitors with microfibre
• ☐Wipe touchpoints — door handles, light switches, lift buttons, photocopier panel
• ☐Empty bins, replace liners, separate paper/co-mingled recycling
• ☐Wipe shared meeting-room tables and chairs
• ☐Glass: reception desk, internal partition fingerprints
• ☐Spot-clean walls for marks at door-handle height

Washroom

• ☐Toilets — bowl, seat, exterior, base of pedestal
• ☐Basins, taps, mirrors
• ☐Sanitary disposal — empty if scheduled
• ☐Re-stock toilet paper, hand soap, paper towel
• ☐Refill hand sanitiser at entry
• ☐Mop washroom floor (sanitising solution)
• ☐Wipe partitions, door handles, light switches
• ☐Empty bin, replace liner

Kitchen / breakroom

• ☐Wipe benches, splashbacks, taps
• ☐Sink — scrub, rinse, polish tap
• ☐Wipe appliance exteriors (microwave, kettle, fridge handle)
• ☐Empty bin, replace liner
• ☐Re-stock dishwashing liquid, hand soap, paper towel
• ☐Mop floor

Weekly

• ☐Full mop of all hard floors, including under desks where possible
• ☐Detail vacuum — edges, corners, behind doors
• ☐Internal glass full clean (partitions, reception, meeting-room walls)
• ☐Skirting boards dusted
• ☐Wipe down all chairs (office and meeting)
• ☐Fridge interior — top shelf + door, full clean monthly
• ☐Detail clean of washroom — descale taps, polish chrome
• ☐Bin exteriors wiped
• ☐Vent grilles dusted

Monthly

• ☐Carpet spot-treatment for stains accumulated through the month
• ☐High dusting — light fittings, top of cabinets, picture frames
• ☐Full fridge clean — all shelves, drawers, door seals
• ☐Microwave interior — full degrease
• ☐Sanitise dishwasher (run empty cycle with cleaner)
• ☐External-facing window frames wiped
• ☐Sanitise telephones, headsets, shared keyboards
• ☐Lift internal walls and mirror polished

Quarterly

• ☐Professional carpet steam clean
• ☐Hard floor strip + reseal (where applicable)
• ☐External glass clean (street-facing windows)
• ☐High-pressure clean of entry pathways
• ☐Air vent and ducting external dust removal
• ☐Detail clean of stairwells
• ☐Pest inspection (especially kitchen and waste areas)

Zones to add for specific industries

The base list above is for a standard Sydney office. Vertical-specific add-ons:

• Medical centres: TGA-grade disinfection of all consult-room surfaces every visit, terminal cleans between infection cases, biohazard waste disposal.
• Gyms: equipment sanitisation every visit, deep-clean change rooms and lockers daily, sweat-zone hot-spots flagged for hourly attention during peak hours.
• Childcare: floor and toy sanitation with WWCC-cleared staff, sleep-room linen rotation, kitchen to commercial-food-safety standard.
• Warehouses: scrubber pass on main aisles weekly, dock area degrease monthly, racking dust quarterly.
• Strata: lobby floor + glass daily, lift internals daily, bin room twice weekly, car park twice monthly.

How to use this checklist when hiring a cleaner

Hand it to every cleaner you ask for a quote. Ask them to mark off what they include, what costs extra, and what they don't do. The cleaner who annotates the list seriously is usually the one you want. The cleaner who says "yeah we do all of that" without engaging line by line is usually the one who'll miss half of it.