Vacation rental cleaning checklist

A free room-by-room turnover checklist: 10 areas, 70 tasks, with the photos to take, what to restock, and how to report damage and lost-and-found items. Print it, or download the CSV and make it your own.

Download the checklist (CSV)

How to use it

  • Start with the walkthrough and photos of the home as you found it — before anything is moved.
  • Strip the beds first so laundry runs while you clean the rest.
  • Clean top to bottom and back to front, finishing at the door.
  • Take the photos marked Photo. They are your proof the home was ready, and the record if a guest reports a problem.
  • Report damage, broken items and anything left behind the same day, with photos.
  • Adapt it per property: remove what doesn’t apply, add the home’s own quirks.

The checklist

Tick items as you go — or print it for the cleaning caddy.

1. Arrival and entry

2. Kitchen

3. Bathrooms

4. Bedrooms

5. Living and dining

6. Laundry

7. Outdoor, hot tub and grill

8. Restock and supplies

9. Damage, maintenance and lost and found

10. Final walkthrough

Photo proof points

The photos worth taking on every turnover. Shoot each room from the doorway so the next person can compare like with like.

  • Arrival and entry: walk through before you start; photograph any damage, mess or missing items as you found them
  • Kitchen: counters, sink, stovetop and inside the fridge
  • Bathrooms: toilet, shower or tub, vanity and towel setup
  • Bedrooms: each made bed
  • Living and dining: a wide shot of the living area
  • Outdoor, hot tub and grill: deck or patio, and the hot tub with the cover on
  • Damage, maintenance and lost and found: photograph and report any damage, with the room and the item
  • Damage, maintenance and lost and found: log lost-and-found items with a photo, where they were found and the date; bag and label them
  • Final walkthrough: take the final photo set of every room

Check the clean before the guest does

A cleaning checklist covers what the cleaner does. A short inspection after the clean — by a different person when you can — catches what was missed and checks the home is safe and working.

Free vacation rental inspection checklist

Download or print

No sign-up. The CSV opens in Excel, Google Sheets or Numbers with one row per task: area, task, whether a photo is required, a done column, initials and notes. The print button gives you a clean copy with a box for each task and room for notes.

Download the checklist (CSV)

VacayOps turns this into a photo checklist on the cleaner’s phone

In VacayOps, a clean is created the moment a reservation is confirmed, dated to checkout and flagged when the next guest arrives the same day. Build this checklist as a form — paste the items, or upload the printed copy and let the AI rebuild it — and it travels with the cleaning task: forms can require a minimum number of photos, the task cannot close until the form is in, and photos taken without signal wait on the phone and upload when it returns. Linen counts with missing-item reporting, lost and found with claim links, and turning a guest’s text about a problem into a maintenance task with its photos attached are built in. The VacayOps app for field teams is on Google Play for Android. The iPhone app is coming soon; until then, crews and managers use the browser and add it to the home screen.

Checklists as forms in VacayOpsBook a 30-minute walkthrough

Questions about turnover cleaning

How long does a vacation rental turnover clean take?
It depends on the size of the home, the number of beds and bathrooms, laundry on site or off, and extras like a hot tub. Time a few cleans of each property with this checklist and set a standard per property rather than one number for all of them.
What should a cleaner photograph?
The home as found (before cleaning), each finished room — kitchen, every bathroom, every bed, the living area, outdoor space and hot tub — any damage, and every lost-and-found item. Photos of the finished rooms settle most guest complaints; photos of the home as found back up damage claims.
What is the difference between a cleaning checklist and an inspection checklist?
The cleaning checklist is what the cleaner does. An inspection checklist is a shorter check, done by someone else after the clean and before the guest arrives, that the result meets your standard and the home is safe and working.
How do I adapt this checklist to each property?
Download the CSV, delete the rows that don’t apply (no hot tub, no grill), and add the property’s own items: where the spare linens live, which lights stay on, the trash day, any quirks. Keep one version per property.
What should cleaners do with items guests leave behind?
Photograph each item, note where it was found and the date, bag and label it, and report it the same day. Have a set place to store items and a policy for how long you keep them.