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Kitchen Cleaning Schedule Template

A free, printable cleaning schedule for NZ kitchens covering daily, weekly and deep-clean tasks — area, task, frequency, product, who did it and initials. Cleaning is part of running your Food Control Plan; recording the daily results is optional under MPI's guidance, but a written schedule keeps staff consistent and makes your standards easy to show a verifier.

Do NZ kitchens have to keep cleaning records?

Mostly, no — and it's worth being straight about this, because plenty of sales pitches get it wrong. Cleaning itself is part of your Food Control Plan, but under MPI's Record keeping guidance (February 2026), recording your daily cleaning results is optional: in MPI's words, “It's optional to record information about how, what and how you clean.” Nobody should scare you into thinking you're breaking the rules without a signed cleaning sheet.

So why keep one at all?

Because a schedule is how cleaning actually gets done the same way on Tuesday night as on Saturday morning, whoever's on shift. And when your verification visit comes around, a ticked-off schedule is quick, concrete evidence that your cleaning routine is real — verifiers can move through the review faster when it's there. Optional paperwork, genuine payoff.

Printable cleaning schedule

Pre-filled with common tasks — edit the rows to match your kitchen, add your products, and leave the last columns for whoever does the job.

Cleaning schedule — Week starting: ____________   Site: ____________

Area Task Frequency Product Done by Initials
Prep area Wipe and sanitise benches and boards Daily      
Prep area Wash and sanitise sinks and taps Daily      
Cooking line Clean cooktops, splashbacks and handles Daily      
Front of house Wipe counters and customer-contact surfaces Daily      
Whole kitchen Sweep and mop floors Daily      
Waste Empty bins, wash bin lids Daily      
Cool storage Wipe fridge shelves, check door seals Weekly      
Cooking line Degrease oven and grill Weekly      
Dry store Wipe shelves, check for pests Weekly      
Extraction Clean canopy filters Deep clean      
Cool storage Empty and deep-clean walk-in / freezer Deep clean      
Whole kitchen Walls, ceilings, behind equipment Deep clean      
           
           
           
           

Recording daily cleaning results is optional under MPI's February 2026 record-keeping guidance — this sheet is a working tool, not a legal requirement. Deep-clean frequency is whatever your plan and your kitchen need.

How to use this cleaning schedule

  1. Make it yours. Walk the kitchen once and rewrite the rows for your actual areas and equipment — a schedule that lists gear you don't have gets ignored.
  2. Name the product and dose. Writing the sanitiser and dilution on the sheet means casual staff don't guess.
  3. Tick as you go. Initials at the end of each shift, not a Friday catch-up. The sheet lives on the wall, not in a drawer.
  4. Review it at deep-clean time. If a weekly task is always skipped, either it doesn't matter (delete it) or it does (change when it happens).

Prefer ticking it off on a phone? KitchenSorted's cleaning checklists do the same job, each tick dated and saved — see how it fits into a full Food Control Plan app, or compare paper vs digital honestly. More printable sheets in our templates library.

Sources & review

Reviewed on 2 August 2026 by the KitchenSorted team. Regulatory pages are re-reviewed quarterly, and immediately when MPI announces template or policy changes. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.

This page is general information, not legal or food-safety advice. Always confirm requirements with MPI, your registration authority, or your verifier.

Cleaning Checklists on the Kitchen Phone

Log each clean on the kitchen phone: pick the area, tick the tasks you did, and every record is dated and initialled. Free forever for the daily diary.

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