cleaning-sop

---
name: cleaning-sop
description: Turns how you clean the property into a timed, room-by-room changeover standard with the safety checks built in, printable, signed off per changeover, that a brand new cleaner can hit on their first day. Use when you are handing the keys to someone new, when the reviews have started mentioning cleanliness, or when nobody has ever written down how the property gets turned around.
---

# A standard a brand new cleaner can hit on their first changeover

You give this whatever exists: the list you text your cleaner, the photos you send when something is wrong, the complaint that came in last month, the time you think a changeover takes. You get back a room-by-room standard with a time against each room, the safety checks that have to happen on a changeover written into the rooms they happen in, a photo list so the next damage claim has its evidence, and a one-page sign-off sheet the cleaner initials and dates. It is written for a person who has never been in the property.

## What it does

1. **Time the real changeover before you write a single line of the standard.** Walk the property with a phone timer and record how long each room actually takes, not how long it should take. Write the times down per room: hall, kitchen, bathroom one, bathroom two, bedroom one, bedroom two, living room, outside, laundry. Add the travel, the key collection, the linen swap and the bin run. That total is the changeover, and everything after this depends on it being honest. A standard built on a two-hour estimate for a three-hour job produces a cleaner who skips the last room every single time, and the last room is almost always the one with the safety checks in it.

2. **Write each room as a sequence with a finish line, not a list of nouns.** Order within a room is top to bottom and dry to wet, so dust never lands on a surface already cleaned. Each room ends with a stated finish condition that can be looked at and judged: "bathroom is finished when the mirror has no spots under the light with the extractor off, the shower screen has no water marks, the toilet brush holder is empty and rinsed, and there are two spare toilet rolls visible." Anthropic's public process documentation guidance makes the point that the most valuable part of any written procedure is the "usually we do X, but sometimes Y" case, so capture the exceptions in the room where they happen: what to do when the previous guest left the oven filthy, when the bed has a stain, when there is a dog hair problem.

3. **Build the legionella checks into the changeover, because the empty weeks are the risk.** A short let sits empty between bookings and that is exactly the condition the water system dislikes. HSE's guidance on landlords' legionella responsibilities, updated 30 September 2024, lists control measures including "flushing out the system prior to letting the property", "setting the temperature of the hot water cylinder (calorifier) to ensure water is stored at 60°C", "regularly clean showerheads", "make sure any redundant pipework identified is removed", and that "outlets on hot and cold water systems should be used at least once a week". Put the flush in the standard as a timed physical act: run every hot and cold outlet, including the outside tap and the second bathroom nobody uses, for the stated number of minutes with the window open and the extractor on, and descale the showerhead on the stated cycle. HSE is equally clear about what you do not need: "Health and safety law does not require landlords to obtain or produce a 'legionella test certificate.'" So the standard records the flush being done, not a certificate being bought.

4. **Put the fire and alarm checks in the rooms they belong to, with a test button press.** GOV.UK's guide for small paying guest accommodation, published 20 January 2025, says interlinked domestic smoke and heat alarms "should be provided in all areas where a fire might start", and on escape routes it says: "You need to make sure that any escape routes can be used safely. An escape route includes any rooms, corridors, and stairs that people must go through to escape from a building." Translate that into cleaner's actions: press and hear every alarm on the stated cycle and log the date; check the hall and stairs are clear of the previous guest's shoes, buggies, bikes and boxes; check the escape door opens without a key from the inside; check the fire blanket and extinguisher are present and in place. A cleaner is in that property more often than anyone else, so these checks belong to the changeover or they do not happen.

5. **Add the furniture, appliance and CO checks that only a person in the room can do.** Furniture supplied in a let has to meet the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, SI 1988/1324, which set requirements for upholstery, filling materials, covers and labelling. Scotland's licensing requirements say furniture must comply and that "You must be able to prove this with labels, receipts or photographs", and require "adequate heat, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms". So the standard carries a line per changeover: report any torn or missing fire label, any damaged plug, frayed flex, scorched socket or cracked appliance casing, and confirm the carbon monoxide alarm beside the gas appliance sounds when tested. Reporting is the cleaner's job. Deciding what to do about it is the owner's.

6. **Decide the food question once, and write the answer into the standard.** If the property is self-catering and you supply nothing to eat, a food business registration is not in scope and the kitchen work is cleaning. If you leave a welcome hamper, make breakfast, or supply anything prepared, that is a different question entirely, and GOV.UK's guidance on starting a food business says: "When you start a new food business, or take over an existing business, you must register with your local authority. You should do this at least 28 days before you start trading." It also says "Registration of your food business is free and can't be refused", and that businesses "must use Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) procedures or a HACCP-based Food Safety Management System such as the Safer Food Better Business Guide." Put the answer in one line at the top of the kitchen section so nobody has to work it out on a Saturday, and if the answer is yes, say plainly that food safety is a separate standard this document does not cover.

7. **Write the photo list, because it is the only evidence your next damage claim will have.** Fixed list, same angles every time, taken at the end of the clean with the phone's date stamp on: each bed made, each bathroom, the sofa, the dining table, the hob and oven interior, the floor of each room, the garden furniture, and any item that has been damaged before. Name the folder with the property and the date in the form `propertyname-2026-09-14`. This costs a cleaner about ninety seconds and it is the difference between a claim that pays and one that dies for want of a before photo.

8. **Put the sign-off sheet on one page and make it initialled per room.** Columns: room, time started, time finished, finish condition met yes or no, problems found. Bottom of the sheet: the safety checks with a tick and a date, the photo folder name, the cleaner's name printed and signed, and the date. Initials per room, not one tick at the bottom, because a single signature at the end tells you nothing about which room got squeezed when the cleaner was running late.

9. **Test it with somebody who has never cleaned the property, then fix what they got wrong.** Hand over the standard and the keys, stay out of the way, time them, and then walk the property against the finish conditions yourself. Every place your judgement differs from theirs is a finish condition written too vaguely, and it gets rewritten in concrete terms. Every question they asked out loud is a missing line. Two rounds of this is enough. A standard that has never been used by a stranger is a description of what the owner does, which is the thing it was meant to replace.

## Then it checks

1. Every room has a time in minutes, a numbered sequence, and a finish condition written as something a person can look at and judge, with no room described only as "clean and tidy".
2. The room times plus the linen, bins and travel add up to the stated changeover total, and that total matches the timed walk from step 1.
3. The legionella flush appears as a timed physical action naming which outlets and for how long, and the standard nowhere asks for a legionella test certificate.
4. The alarm test, the escape route check and the carbon monoxide check each appear inside a named room with a date field, not in a general notes section.
5. The kitchen section opens with the food answer stated as yes or no, and where it is yes the standard says food safety is out of scope and names it as a separate document.
6. The photo list names each shot, the folder naming format, and the point in the changeover at which the photos are taken, and the sign-off sheet has a per-room initial rather than one signature.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never write a time you did not measure. An invented changeover time is the fastest way to build a standard nobody can meet, and a standard nobody can meet gets abandoned in week two along with the safety checks inside it.
- Never give a cleaner a task that requires a qualification. Testing an alarm button is a cleaner's job. Gas work, electrical work, working at height and anything behind a panel is not, and the standard says report it rather than fix it.
- Never mix cleaning chemicals, and never write an instruction that has a cleaner decanting a product out of its labelled container. The label carries the safety information and the container it came in is the only place it is guaranteed to be correct.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's insurer, letting agent, environmental health officer or council licensing team to check before it is used. It sets out cleaning practice and records checks the owner has asked for. It is not legal advice, it is not a fire risk assessment, it is not a legionella risk assessment, and it does not certify compliance with anything.

## Built from
- Health and Safety Executive, "Legionella - landlords' responsibilities", https://www.hse.gov.uk/legionnaires/legionella-landlords-responsibilities.htm, updated 30 September 2024, read 14 September 2026: the flushing, temperature, showerhead and weekly outlet measures in step 3, and the statement that no test certificate is required, which is why the standard records an action rather than a purchase.
- GOV.UK, "Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire (accessible)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-your-small-paying-guest-accommodation-safe-from-fire/making-your-small-paying-guest-accommodation-safe-from-fire-accessible, published 20 January 2025, read 14 September 2026: the alarm coverage and escape route wording that became the per-room checks in step 4.
- mygov.scot, "Legal requirements for short-term let accommodation", https://www.mygov.scot/short-term-let-licences/legal-requirements, last updated 9 October 2025, read 14 September 2026: the heat, smoke and carbon monoxide alarm requirement and the furniture proof by "labels, receipts or photographs", both in step 5.
- The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988, SI 1988 No. 1324, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1988/1324/contents, read 14 September 2026: the labelling and upholstery requirements behind the fire label report line in step 5.
- GOV.UK, "Starting a food business", https://www.gov.uk/guidance/starting-a-food-business, published 10 January 2023, last updated 19 August 2026, read 14 September 2026: the 28 day registration rule, the free and cannot be refused position, and the HACCP requirement, which is the whole of step 6.
- Anthropic, `operations/skills/process-doc/SKILL.md` in the knowledge-work-plugins repository, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/main/operations/skills/process-doc/SKILL.md, read 14 September 2026: the instruction to capture the "usually we do X, but sometimes Y" exceptions, which shaped step 2.

# cleaning-sop

## You are given

Unsorted notes on how one UK short-let property is turned around between guests: texts to a cleaner, a bullet list, complaint emails, photos, an inventory, possibly a timed walk. The room list may be inferred.

## Produce

Into `./cleaning-sop-output/`:

1. `changeover-standard.html` - A4 print stylesheet, 12pt body, each room on a new page. Per room: name, target minutes, numbered actions top to bottom and dry to wet, a FINISH CONDITION a person can look at and judge, and an EXCEPTIONS block for the "usually X, sometimes Y" cases in the input. The kitchen opens with `Food supplied to guests: YES` or `NO`; where YES, add "Food safety is a separate standard and is not covered by this document."
2. `signoff-sheet.html` - ONE side of A4, landscape. Table `Room | Time started | Time finished | Finish condition met (Y/N) | Problems found`, one row per room. Below it a SAFETY CHECKS block, each with a tick box and date: flush all water outlets, descale showerhead, hot water stored at 60°C, test every smoke and heat alarm, test carbon monoxide alarm, escape route and stairs clear, escape door opens from inside without a key, fire blanket and extinguisher present, fire labels on upholstered furniture, damaged plugs or flexes reported. Then photo folder name, cleaner name, signature, date.
3. `rooms.csv` - columns: `room_id,room_name,target_minutes,step_number,action,finish_condition,exception_note,safety_check`. One row per action.
4. `photo-list.csv` - columns: `shot_id,room,subject,angle_note,when_taken`.
5. `timing.md` - room times, linen, bins and travel allowances, the changeover total in minutes, and whether it came from a timed walk or is `NOT MEASURED`.
6. `gaps.md` - numbered questions: rooms with no time, finish conditions inferred, safety checks with no recorded location.

## Rules

- Never invent a room time. Write `NOT MEASURED` and leave `target_minutes` empty.
- Never write a finish condition as "clean", "tidy" or "to a high standard". Name a surface, a viewing or lighting condition, and what must not be visible.
- Gas work, electrical work, working at height and anything behind a panel is `REPORT ONLY`.
- Never instruct anyone to mix chemicals or decant a product out of its labelled container.
- British English. £ for money. Dates DD Month YYYY. No em dash characters. No emoji.
- Plain HTML with inline CSS. No JavaScript, no external fonts, no network calls. Both HTML files must print correctly unstyled.

## Return

The six file paths, the room count, the changeover total and whether it was measured, the safety checks placed inside a named room, and the open question count. State that the standard is a working document for the owner's insurer, letting agent, environmental health officer or council licensing team to check before use, and is not legal advice, a fire risk assessment or a legionella risk assessment.