Daycare Cleaning: 3 Impactful Daily Cleaning Tasks

Have you ever visited a child daycare center and smiled at the sight? It’s that effect – the pure joy and innocence of happy children that daycare centers put at the core of their mission. It should go without saying then that making that sort of environment possible and sustainable means no corners are cut and no expenses spared.

As of early last year, this responsibility took on a whole new set of difficulties. Yes, a vaccine was developed to fight the pandemic and the worst seems to be behind us, but it’s not safe for children. It’s not just COVID-19 that puts children at risk in terms of the cleanliness and sanitary standard of daycare centers, it’s everything. That said, here are 3 impactful daily cleaning tasks you need to include in your daycare maintenance program:

Follow the .org Guidances 

Our first and best impactful cleaning task is moreso advice, or homework on where to learn about the absolute gold standard of cleaning. You’ll find the most useful information from websites ending in .org, including that of the Environmental Protection Agency and the American Cleaning Institute. Follow those links for published guidelines and information specific to daycare center maintenance!

Recognize the 3 Major Maintenance Tasks 

In daycare center maintenance, the three major procedures are cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting. Sure, some actual tasks within each of the three intersect, but this does not mean you should skip mutual tasks. Cleaning involves removing debris and washing surfaces with soap and water. Sanitizing is a more formal and deliberate version of cleaning, where your efforts involve the use of more industrial, regulated chemicals to target and reduce the presence of germs, bacteria, and viruses. Finally, disinfecting refers to the process and purpose of, “irreversibly inactivating pathogens.” You can read more detailed definitions from the EPA here.

Divide & Conquer

If it helps to use a war-time analogy, approach your daycare cleaning program by dividing and conquering. Applying specific methods, supplies, and maintenance schedules to your daycare center as a whole is ineffective. To sufficiently maintain a high standard of “clean”, divide your daycare center into different areas, and within each area, design an optimal process.

This is because each area within your daycare center is unique, and presents its own needs as well as the difficulties to address those needs. For example, you’ll want to isolate the food consumption area from other areas (play area, bathrooms, storage areas). Then, take inventory of sections within that area that are more contaminated – in other words, identify the high touchpoint and high traffic sections within each divided area. From a daily cleaning standpoint, it’s critical you do this so that the appropriate cleaning habits and routines can have a positive (and proactive) impact throughout the day. Good individual hygiene with kids is all but pointless if they immediately return to different sections in each area that haven’t been adequately cleaned.