Controlling Behaviour? Am I becoming neurotic?

No, it’s not.

I am trying to verbalize what the usual expectation is from guests. I don’t think there is necessarily an expectation of privacy but I think there is an expectation of boundaries/respect. Inspecting a room is different from riffling through someone’s stuff, but nevertheless, the former should be known in advance.

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@Zandra - I only have a few house rules but one of them is: “Our entire property shares one, electrically heated hot water cylinder. For this reason, please limit showers to 10 minutes so there is enough hot water for everyone, thank you”. Works a treat.

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Nice wording Suzie I will add that to the rules :slight_smile:

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Yes I think guests expect that type of privacy and we hosts have turned it into… don’t ever enter the room, under any circumstances.
Since I’ve been making the bed daily I’ve caught blood on the sheets twice. I was happy to be able to get those sheets off the bed immediately as inboth cases the guests still had a few days left on their booking … and I wouldnt have wanted to come to it 4 days after it happened

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No, of course I am not claiming that you made up the review. I truely believe that there are some strange people out there. That’s the fun of hosting, isn’t it? You meet lots of interesting people who are doing things you couldn’t have thought were possible.

Installing a camera to prove that the host entered a room? Good grief. This certainly fits into the category “couldn’t have thought it was possible”. Look, if the guest entered my bedroom, which is right next to his, while I was away, I would certainly be very cross indeed. But if I enter his bedroom while he is away, this is a different story.

Airbnb have started something called “Homesharing Clubs”, because they are saying hosts are sharing their homes with guests. This made people think of a definition of “homesharing”. I think this is not “to share” as in “I am sharing an apple with you, and we both get halves that are absolutely identical”. It is “to share” as in “letting out” while keeping ownership.

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@Louise, we have since installed a heat exchange system and slashed our heating costs. :smiley:

The bills I spoke of were real, but that only ever happened for one year. Oil/propane prices were near $4 a gallon that year and we kept the house at a comfortable temperature. After that, fuel prices starting on a downward trend and us keeping the house cooler combined to lower our heating bills. Then we installed the heat exchange system and things are much, much better!

My point with my post was simply to illustrate that keeping houses warm in a cold climate can and does cost serious money at times, and that people like @Zandra are justified in terms of losing their mind when they know their guests are wasting heat/energy.

@KKC, I hear you. It actually gets warm enough here in the summer that A/C is necessary. Our heat exchange unit does a fabulous job of cooling most of our home at a very small cost, but we put a window unit in the guest room because the door is closed. Some guests are good, but some of them leave the unit running all day long, even when they are out. Like you, I don’t go in the room and turn it off, despite the fact it’s making me crazy.

On the topic of this thread, I believe guests deserve privacy in the private room they’ve paid for. I don’t go in the guestroom at all while I have guests, and I’ve set up the space to facilitate this. I understand @Zandra’s dilemma and I don’t think she’s overreacting. That being said, if my space were like hers, I’m not sure I would host, because I couldn’t comfortably offer what I felt guests would be paying for. I’ve done everything I can to set up my house and the guest space to make it easy for them to behave the way I want them to.

I avoid going in the guest room even when I see they’ve left the lights or AC on while they went out. But I feel I have every right to go in if I need to. I have a hard time imagining that someone set up a camera to simply capture the host entering their room. I’m imagining the guest was there for a long stay and suspected their things were being snooped in and as a consequence they set up a camera. I wouldn’t want to stay with a host that snooped but I wouldn’t want a guest that sets up a camera.

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There is a host who has posted on this board who went into a guest’s room and "just happened to see a court document, eagle eyes or maybe x-ray vision as she was able to read the document and then proceeded to publish the gist of the document here Ina public forum. It’s one thing to check re windows, a/c, safety, but we shouldn’t be poking in their private belongings. Last year I had my house up for sale. After one viewing I noticed my trinket box was left partly open, not as I’d left it. Scummy potential buyers way out of bounds. Agent advised me it was my fault!
Was

Oh that’s a bit shocking. I don’t even let my eyes stray towards personal stuff it’s not my business.

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sorry, tl;dr but many people these days travel with more than one pair of socks. In my part of the US, they are also known to carry multiple changes of clothing, often in rolling cabinets that they bring right to the room (I think you folks call them ‘suitcases’).

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Lol. Yes indeed most people do. I actually travelled for a 6 month trip with 4 pairs of socks and 4 sets of undies. Every 4th day was washday - and I never once attempted to hand wash anything in any of my hosts sinks.

Lol @ the rolling cabinets. :laughing::joy:

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Let me weigh in! Even though it’s all been said quite well.
As someone who’s visited England a lot and always stayed with friends, I know that most homes don’t have dryers. The friends I stayed with in Epsom hung their clothes over the radiator. Only in the most posh homes did they have dryers.

So people visiting England cannot hang wet clothes in Zandra’s apartment on wooden sills causing damage and humidity issues. Add it to the rules if it is starting to bug you. If enough people are doing it, put w stop to it and refer them to the nearest launderette.

I had to recently add a rule that you would think should be common sense. I often get divers… Some of these people bring their own gear. Enough of them were coming home from a dive, bringing their wet suits and other crap INTO the house, dragging their salty gear to my bathtub, rinsing it all off and then hanging it on my lines. I had to add it as a rule as it kept happening.

I also had to add no late showers. The pump and shower wakes us up. If it is happening enough make a rule.

You are not getting neurotic. Add the rule and then TELL them in person about the launderette.

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Now this surprises me! I was born and brought up in England (and lived there for half my adult life) and just about every home I’ve lived in or even been in had a dryer. And I spent many years as a kitchen designer so have been in thousands of kitchens. (In the UK the laundry facilities are often in the kitchen - posh people have laundry rooms).

However, in Zandra’s case, I imagine that small London flats there’s not a lot of space for any laundry facilities.

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That’s odd @jaquo I rarely see a drier. And the laundrette across the road is always full of people drying - so much so they now offer a service dry.

But yeah my flat wouldn’t have the space (or indeed I doubt I have the right to put one in) as it’s probably against the lease.

Now houses are often a different story and I’m going to guess you’ve been in more houses than flats.

Yes, more often in houses. (And in Yorkshire, not in the south :wink: )

My apartment here is 450 sq. ft. so we have a shared laundry room for the entire complex.

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Lol I went to university in Sheffield. Leeds is probably my fave place for good chips.

But…maybe because I was a student I never saw a drier but I did see a good deal of slugs on the kitchen wall.

Buy them one of these, and put it outside near the gardenhose:

http://csimg.koopkeus.nl/srv/NL/29075966velhed100065/T/340x340/C/FFFFFF/url/speciekuip-65-l-kunstof-.jpg

You should be able to buy them at any hardware store for a few dollars.
They are used a lot to mix cement. Your divers will be very happy when they can use it to rinse the salt water out of their suits.

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I lived in Leeds for many years. Great pubs and fantastic curries too. :slight_smile:

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Only in the biggest homes will there be a separate dryer.
In most homes including ours and several flats we stayed In we hadn’t a washer-dryer in one - similar to this (they’re cheaper in the uk)

Appreciate the suggestion…But… I don’t want to purchase more items for the apartment. I’ve spent way too much money on this enterprise as it is. I instruct them to rinse their gear when they leave the charter. There must be a place to do this on the boat or docks. Why bring it to my place? Also I am on rain catchment where we must conserve water.

In any event, I think the behavior i object to is that of thinking it was perfectly okay to drag wet salty gear into my home and rinse it off in my tub without even asking me if this was OK. Had to put a stop to it and don’t want to encourage any more rinsing. Either inside or out.

I’m a room for rent not a full service dive and recreational center. :smiley:

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