Tuesday, June 3, 2014

Who Cleans Your Child Care Program (and When)?

Regardless of whether you have a cleaning service that cleans your program, your staff does it by themselves, or some combination of the two, it’s very important to know who is responsible for doing what and when.  If you hire an outside cleaning service, you need to have someone who manages the contract—makes sure that the contract includes all necessary tasks and that those tasks are being completed according to the agreed-upon schedule.

If your staff is responsible for all or part of the cleaning, as is the case in most programs, they need to know who does what and when.  Someone should do a walk-through of the program in the morning, before the first children arrive, to make sure everything is clean and prepared for the day.  Many sanitizing solutions need to be prepared daily.  Is each classroom responsible for their own solution or is it prepared in a central location for all rooms?  How do you make sure items that are soiled during the day are removed and cleaned before being available to children again?  Who is responsible for any cleaning that needs to happen before and after meals and/or snacks?  Is someone assigned to do a walk-through at the end of the day to make sure that everything is cleaned up and ready for morning?


Assigning specific tasks to specific individuals (or job titles) with time frames in which they are to be completed will help you to ensure that your program stays clean.  And, as with a commercial cleaning contract, tasking someone to oversee the cleaning ensures that the cleaning is happening as it should and when it should.  If you don't already have a Cleaning Schedule, check ours out here.
Misty

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