A Turnover Checklist You Can Hand to Your Cleaner

If you host guests in a short-term rental, the cleaning between checkout and check-in is the part of the stay you never see and your guests always judge. A cleaner can only match your standard if the standard is written down. A one-page turnover checklist does that, and it saves you the text thread where you explain the same thing for the fourth time. Here is what belongs on it, in roughly the order guests notice things.

What guests notice in the first minute

Before anyone opens a drawer, they have smelled the place. Stale air, a bin that was emptied but never wiped, or a heavy air freshener covering something up all register at the door. Ask your cleaner to open windows or run a fan during the turnover, take every bag of trash out, and leave the place smelling like nothing in particular. Fresh linen and clean surfaces are the smell you want.

The next thing is light and glass. Guests walk straight to the windows, especially when there is a view. Fingerprints on a slider, a smeared mirror or a dusty sill show up in daylight in a way they never do under evening lamps. Put glass and mirrors on the list by name, so they are a line item and not an afterthought.

Bathrooms get the most scrutiny

Complaints about cleanliness are mostly complaints about bathrooms. Hair is the classic one, and it hides in the places a quick wipe misses: the base of the toilet, the shower floor near the drain, the edge of the vanity and the floor behind the door. Ask your cleaner to check the bathroom from a guest's height, standing in the shower or sitting on the edge of the tub, because that is the angle where problems show.

Grout lines, shower door tracks and the underside of the toilet seat hinges deserve a mention too. So does the shower curtain or glass, where soap film builds up between stays. Restock the paper goods in the same pass, so a guest never has to hunt for a spare roll at the wrong moment.

Beds, the kitchen and the details between

Bed presentation sets the tone for the whole stay. Say exactly how you want the bed made: sheets tight, pillows squared, one folded throw at the foot, decorative pillows in a set arrangement. A photo saved in a shared note answers more questions than a paragraph of description. Ask the cleaner to pull back the covers and look for stray hairs on the sheets and the mattress protector. A quick look at the bed is cheaper than a lost star.

In the kitchen, guests open the fridge, the microwave and the dishwasher before they open anything else. Wiped shelves, an empty dishwasher, clean coffee maker parts and a sink with no water spots all read as care. Check under the lip of the counter and around the stove knobs, where grease and crumbs collect between stays.

A checklist you can copy today

Here is a version to paste into a note and trim to fit your place. Keep it to one page. A list a cleaner can scan in the doorway gets followed, and a list that needs a coffee break does not.

• Open windows or run fans on arrival. Trash and recycling out, bins wiped and relined.
• Bathrooms: toilet base and behind it, shower floor and drain, glass door and tracks, mirror, sink and faucet, floor edges. Check for hair at guest height.
• Beds: strip, remake with fresh linen to match your photo, check the mattress protector and under the pillows.
• Towels: one set per guest, folded the way you show in the photo.
• Kitchen: fridge shelves, inside of the microwave, dishwasher unloaded, counters, stovetop, sink, coffee maker.
• Glass: sliders and their tracks, windows within reach, mirrors.
• Floors: vacuum under beds and sofas, mop hard floors last, shake out the mats.
• Final walk: lights off or set, blinds and curtains set, welcome card in place, anything left behind by a guest photographed and reported.

Tell the cleaner what you want to hear about

The best checklists end with a reporting line: a stain that will not come out, a burned-out bulb, a broken glass, an item a guest left behind. A cleaner who finds these first saves you from learning about them in a review. Agree on how you want to be told. A text with a photo works for most hosts, and it leaves a record if something needs to be sorted out with a guest later.

An Airbnb host who uses Shelly's Home Services, frank gross, put the result this way in a Google review: “We consistently get high marks for cleanliness, and our customers are so pleased with her services.” A written standard is what makes that kind of consistency possible, whoever does the cleaning.

If you host in Elkhorn, Delavan or around them and want a cleaner who works around your bookings, Shelly's Home Services does short-term rental turnovers. Call (262) 812-9137, or read about the service at /services/short-term-rental-turnovers.