Children who start center-based care face two to three times the risk of stomach and respiratory illness, according to a cost-of-illness study indexed at the National Institutes of Health. That is not a knock on childcare — it is simply what happens when a lot of small kids share a lot of small spaces.
If you have searched for daycare cleaning tips, you have probably seen the same advice over and over. Wipe the high-touch surfaces. Use child-safe products. It is fine advice, but it will not get you through a licensing visit in Minnesota.
Here is the good news: licensing puts its expectations in writing. The centers we work with rarely fail an inspection because they are dirty. They get tripped up by details — a changing pad that lost its smooth surface, a cleaning caddy parked in a classroom, training chairs that got rinsed instead of disinfected.
This guide walks through what licensing typically asks for, what it means for your daily routine, and how to tell whether your cleaning partner really understands childcare.
Why Daycare Cleaning Deserves Its Own Playbook
A daycare is not a small office. The people using it move differently, touch different things, and get sick more easily.
- Kids get sick a lot, especially early on. The American Academy of Pediatrics puts typical respiratory infections at eight to ten per year during a child’s first two years.
- Germs travel by hand and by toy. Shared items go straight into mouths, which is why toy care shows up in the licensing rule by name.
- Little kids live low. Most of the action happens between the floor and about 36 inches, which is exactly where an office cleaning spec pays the least attention.
- Your license depends on it. Cleanliness is not just a nice-to-have here. It is written into the rules that keep your doors open.
You cannot clean your way out of every cold going around. But the surfaces that carry the load are well known and pretty limited, and that is where a good routine earns its keep.
What Licensing Asks of Your Daycare Cleaning Routine
Specific requirements vary from state to state, but they cover remarkably similar ground. We work under Minnesota’s child care licensing rules, and the categories below show up in some form nearly everywhere. Pull up your own state’s rules for the exact language — what inspectors look at will look a lot like this list.
One thing worth checking: which agency administers licensing in your state, and whether that has changed recently. Minnesota moved child care licensing to a new department in June 2025, and plenty of guidance online still points at the old one. If your written health policies name an agency that no longer handles this, update them.
Here is what those rules generally cover, and where centers most often slip:
| Area | What it requires | Where centers slip |
| Cleanliness | Indoor and outdoor space and equipment kept clean | Outdoor equipment gets forgotten entirely |
| Toilet facilities | Toilet rooms cleaned daily. Training chairs emptied, washed with soap and water, and disinfected after each use. Toilets and seats washed and disinfected when soiled or at least daily | “After each use” gets treated as end-of-day |
| Diaper changing area | Separate from food storage, prep, and eating. Hand sink with hot and cold running water within three feet. Smooth, nonabsorbent surface and floor covering. Sanitary container for soiled diapers | Worn changing pads lose their nonabsorbent seal |
| Diaper procedures | Written procedures developed with a health consultant, posted in the changing area | The posted copy is faded or missing |
| Child handwashing | Soap and water after diapering and toileting, and before meals. Common basins and standing water are prohibited | Shared rinse bins during busy transitions |
| Toilet articles | Toilet paper, liquid hand soap, facial tissues, and single-use paper towels or warm air dryers, accessible to children | Restocking gaps mid-week |
| Hazardous items | Medicines, plastic bags, poisonous plants, and chemicals — including household supplies — stored out of reach of children | Cleaning caddies parked in classrooms |
| Equipment condition | Toys likely to be mouthed by infants and toddlers must be made of disinfectable material, and cleaned and disinfected when mouthed or soiled and at least daily | Fabric and plush items in infant rooms |
| General maintenance | Areas free of debris, flaking paint, crumbling plaster, and holes in walls or floors. Rugs nonskid, with no tears or curled edges | Curled carpet edges near doorways |
Two of these deserve a closer look, because they change how your cleaning contract should be written.
Chemical storage is a cleaning issue, not just a facilities issue. If a crew stages product in a classroom or leaves a cart unattended while children are in the building, that is a finding waiting to happen. Anyone working in your building during care hours needs a storage plan, not just a product list.
Daily toy disinfection is a floor, not a ceiling. Mouthed toys get disinfected at least once a day. When something is going around, once a day stops being enough.
Pro Tip: Print the rule and walk your building with it once a quarter, room by room. It takes about an hour and it is the cheapest inspection prep there is.
Cleaning, Sanitizing, and Disinfecting Are Three Different Jobs
These three words get used interchangeably all the time, and mixing them up is the single most common mistake we correct when we take over a daycare account. The national health and safety standards for child care treat them as three separate steps with three separate purposes.
| Step | What it does | When you need it |
| Clean | Soap, detergent, or all-purpose cleaner and water lifts away germs, dirt, oils, and sticky residue | Always first. Dirt blocks whatever comes next |
| Sanitize | Reduces germs to a safe level after cleaning | Food contact surfaces, and anything children put in their mouths |
| Disinfect | Kills the germs left on a surface | Toilets, training chairs, diaper changing surfaces, high-touch hardware |
Skip the cleaning step and your disinfectant lands on soil instead of the surface. It simply does not work.
Those same standards add two points that are easy to miss:
- Do not use these products while children are nearby, and keep fresh air moving while you work. This is really a scheduling rule, and it is why serious daycare cleaning happens before open or after close.
- Post your cleaning schedule where staff and families can see it.
Give Your Products Time to Work
Every EPA-registered disinfectant has a required contact time — the number of minutes a surface has to stay visibly wet for the product to do its job. Spray and immediately wipe, and you have mostly just moved things around.
Contact times run anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes depending on the product. The dilution and dwell time for sanitizing are usually different from disinfecting, even with the same concentrate.
Only products carrying an EPA registration number can legally claim to kill or reduce germs. No registration number means it is a cleaner. Treat it as one.
One more that surprises people: disinfectants should not be used on items children put in their mouths. Those need a food contact sanitizer instead. Appendix J from the American Academy of Pediatrics and American Public Health Association walks through how to choose.
Pro Tip: Ask your crew leader what contact time their main disinfectant needs. If they cannot answer, the product is probably not being used correctly.
Why Daycare Cleaning Isn’t Office Cleaning With Smaller Furniture
The surfaces that matter in a childcare room are not the ones an office crew is trained to prioritize. Four differences do most of the work:
- The touch zone sits low. Chair rails, cubby edges, table undersides, and the bottom third of doors carry the germ load. Standard office specs focus on desks and door handles at adult height.
- Soft surfaces are everywhere. Nap mats, floor cushions, dress-up bins, and area rugs all need a laundering or extraction plan, not a quick wipe.
- Product choice is driven by biology. Children breathe faster relative to their size and spend the day at floor level, closer to settled residue and heavier vapors.
- Winter pushes everything indoors. In cold climates, centers spend months running with limited ventilation and no outdoor play relief. Salt and grit tracked into entryways grind into flooring and shorten the life of every finished surface in the building.
That last one is why we treat entryway matting as an infection-control measure in our cold-weather accounts, not just a floor-care nicety.
Pro Tip: Walk your classrooms on your knees once. You will spot a dozen surfaces at kid height that nobody has been cleaning.
A Daycare Cleaning Schedule You Can Post on the Wall
Use this as a starting frame, then check it against your own state’s requirements. Your health consultant reviews and approves the actual policy — annually for most centers, and monthly for programs serving infants.
| Frequency | Tasks | Why |
| After each use | Toilet training chairs emptied, washed, disinfected. Diaper changing surface disinfected | Required by state licensing |
| When mouthed or soiled | Infant and toddler toys cleaned and sanitized | Required by state licensing |
| Daily | Toilet rooms. Toilets and seats. Mouthed toys. High-touch hardware at child height. Floors in all care areas. Restock soap, tissue, and towels | Required by state licensing |
| Weekly | Cubbies and storage. Nap mats and cots. Baseboards and chair rails. Low walls in high-traffic rooms | Best practice |
| Monthly | Carpet extraction in high-traffic zones. Vents and returns. Window sills and blinds. Upholstered furniture | Best practice |
| Quarterly | Hard floor strip and refinish. Deep extraction of all soft surfaces. Light fixture cleaning | Best practice |
| During an outbreak | Increase sanitizing and disinfecting frequency across all touch surfaces | National health and safety guidance |
Pro Tip: Posting the schedule is a federal recommendation, and it doubles as the fastest way to answer a licensor’s question. Tape it inside a cabinet door if you would rather it not be the first thing families see.
Seven Questions to Ask a Cleaning Company Before You Sign
These answers tell you quickly whether a vendor really uses childcare-friendly methods or just added it to a services page.
- Which of your staff are background checked, and can you show me? Anyone working in a licensed childcare facility should be, no exceptions.
- How do you store chemicals on site during operating hours? Listen for a specific protocol, not a shrug.
- Do you use a food contact sanitizer on mouthed items? If they only name a disinfectant, they do not know the standard.
- What contact time does your main disinfectant require? A trained crew leader will know this cold.
- Will you sign a checklist on every visit? You want a record of what was done and when.
- How fast can you respond before a licensing visit? Hours matter here, not days.
- Can you work around our hours? Products should not be in use with children nearby.
If you are weighing a vendor change more broadly, our guide to hiring local business cleaning services covers the wider evaluation process.
How We Handle Daycare Cleaning at Mountain Group
We are a commercial cleaning company based in Edina, serving businesses across the Minneapolis and St. Paul metro. Our daycare cleaning work sits right alongside our medical and clinic cleaning, which shapes how we approach any room where infection control is the whole point.
Here is what we bring to a childcare account:
- Background-checked, trained staff. Every team member is background checked and trained on confidentiality and privacy before entering a client facility.
- Commercial general liability coverage. We are bonded and insured. Ask any vendor for a certificate before they start.
- A signed checklist on every visit. Our staff sign off on each visit, so you have a paper trail when a licensor asks.
- Product flexibility. We use eco-friendly products including vinegar-based solutions as a baseline. For stronger disinfecting agents or calcium removal, we ask first — and in a childcare setting, your health consultant should help make that call.
- Two-hour response and a 24-hour re-clean guarantee. If something gets missed, we come back and fix it within a day, at our cost.
- Month-to-month terms. No long contract. Cancel any time.
- 24/7/365 scheduling. Which is what makes before-open and after-close windows workable in the first place.
If your facility also has offices, a kitchen, or shared common areas, our janitorial cleaning services cover those under one scope. Two related reads worth a look: our breakdown of restroom sanitation and restocking, which covers the supply-stocking side, and our piece on green janitorial services if product choice is on your mind.
We work throughout the Twin Cities — see our service areas — and quotes are free. Call (952) 856-0613 or request an estimate, and we will walk your facility, compare your current routine against what licensing expects, and show you where the gaps are. No obligation.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often does a daycare need professional cleaning?
Most state licensing rules require daily cleaning of toilet rooms, daily disinfection of mouthed toys, and disinfection of diaper changing surfaces and training chairs after each use. Centers typically meet this with daily professional service for the deeper tasks, plus staff handling the after-each-use items during the day.
What is the difference between cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting in a daycare?
Cleaning removes dirt and germs with soap and water. Sanitizing reduces germs to a safe level and is used on food contact surfaces and mouthed items. Disinfecting kills the germs that remain and is used on toilets, training chairs, and diaper changing surfaces. Cleaning always comes first, because soil blocks sanitizers and disinfectants from working.
Can you use regular disinfectant on daycare toys?
No. Disinfectants should not be used on items children put in their mouths. Those need a food contact sanitizer instead. Licensing rules also commonly require that toys likely to be mouthed by infants and toddlers be made of a material that can be disinfected, and cleaned and disinfected when mouthed or soiled and at least daily.
What do licensing rules require for daycare cleaning?
Requirements vary by state, but the common categories are daily toilet room cleaning, disinfection of training chairs after each use, diaper changing area construction and separation, a ban on common wash basins, accessible toilet supplies, chemical storage out of children’s reach, and daily disinfection of mouthed toys. Check your state licensing agency for the exact language that applies to your center.
How much does daycare cleaning cost?
Pricing depends on square footage, number of classrooms, diapering rooms, service frequency, and whether soft surface care is included. Mountain Group provides free on-site estimates across the Minneapolis and St. Paul metro and works month to month with no long-term contract.
Should daycare cleaning happen during operating hours?
National child care health and safety guidance says cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting products should not be used when children are nearby, and that fresh air flow should be maintained. Deep cleaning belongs in before-open or after-close windows, with staff handling spot tasks during the day.
Start With One Thing This Week
Good daycare cleaning is not complicated, but it is specific. Licensing tells you what it expects, the national standards tell you how the steps fit together, and the rest is consistency.
Start with one thing this week. Post your cleaning schedule, or check that your training chairs really are being disinfected after each use, or walk a classroom on your knees. Small fixes add up fast — and a center that cleans with licensing in mind is a center that stops worrying about inspection day.