Office Kitchen & Breakroom Cleaning Checklist

The office kitchen is the second slowest area per square metre after bathrooms, and the one staff complain about most. Here’s a checklist that covers it properly.

Every visit

Surfaces

• Benchtops cleaned and dried
• Splashback wiped
• Under the kettle, toaster and coffee machine
• Tables wiped
• Chairs wiped, including backs

Sink

• Sink scrubbed, including the rim and any overflow
• Tapware cleaned and polished dry
• Plughole and strainer cleared
• Behind the tap base
• Dish rack emptied and wiped

Appliances

• Microwave interior including roof and turntable
• Microwave exterior and handle
• Fridge exterior, handles and top
• Dishwasher exterior and handle
• Kettle exterior
• Toaster crumb tray emptied
• Coffee machine drip tray emptied and wiped
• Water cooler or filter tap wiped

Waste

• Bin emptied and re-lined
• Bin lid wiped
• Recycling emptied
• Food waste removed from the building, daily, no exceptions

Floor

• Swept
• Mopped, including under the table and along the kick boards

Weekly

• Bin washed out inside and disinfected
• Cupboard doors and handles
• Fridge seals cleaned
• Dishwasher filter checked and cleared
• Dishwasher door seal wiped
• Microwave interior deep-cleaned
• Skirtings and kick boards
• Rangehood or extractor face

Monthly

• Fridge interior, shelves out, washed, replaced
• Freezer checked and defrosted if needed
• Cupboard interiors wiped
• Behind and under the fridge
• Behind and under the dishwasher
• Rangehood filter degreased
• Drain treated
• Small appliance descale (kettle, coffee machine)

The shared fridge problem

Every office has this, and no cleaning contract solves it, because a cleaner cannot decide whose lunch to throw out.

What works:

1. A published clear-out day. Same day every week, e.g. Friday 4pm.
2. A sign on the fridge stating it. "Anything unlabelled is removed Fridays."
3. A named person, not the cleaner, doing the removal. It’s a management task.
4. Labels and a marker on top of the fridge.
5. A monthly full clean-out written into the cleaning specification, after the staff clear-out has happened.

Trying to make the cleaner responsible for this creates conflict and doesn’t work. They have no authority to discard someone’s food.

The dishwasher question

Decide explicitly and write it into the specification:

• Cleaner loads and runs it: costs you time on the contract but the kitchen is always reset
• Cleaner empties it if run: the common middle ground
• Staff responsibility entirely: cheapest, and works only if someone owns it

The worst outcome is leaving it undefined, which reliably produces a full dishwasher, a full sink, and a complaint.

Where the smell comes from

An office kitchen that smells is nearly always one of four things, in order of likelihood:

1. The bin itself, emptied but never washed. Weekly wash fixes it.
2. The sink drain, food waste and grease. Monthly treatment.
3. The dishwasher filter, checked far less often than it should be.
4. The fridge, something at the back, or the seals.

Air freshener addresses none of them. If the kitchen needs freshener to be tolerable, one of these four is the actual problem.