Ahhh the things we see!

So yesterday at my condo cleaning I had anticipated a quick turnover! The guest mentioned when they booked they are particular, both professionals and traveling with their college aged daughter and her friend. (Daughter goes to school somewhat near our beach condo). They mentioned a couple times how clean they are… this may have been stated so we wouldn’t worry about the care taken to our property, but my husband and I both braced for a nit picker, and we actually consider not accepting the booking, but hey we got nothing to hide. The guests stay was uneventful, and there were no calls with issues whatsoever. BUT when I showed up to clean I stripped the bed and the mattress pad was stained , it was an accident and I assume the daughter got her cycle while sleeping. Sheet had been washed but mattress pad was ignored (no warning given or apology made) but there went a brand new pillowy $40 pad as it stained, and had it been washed immediately it likely would have come clean. I brushed it off as a cost of doing business, but then I went in to spray down bathroom and noticed the Rug was also stained, and it was all over the rug (gross). I went to or deck and the beach chairs were put away with heavy sand, not even a try to get the sand off, had to vacuum out the storage box, I thought one of my beach towels was missing, but found it wadded up in the bottle of the storage box with the beach chairs (absolutely not where they found it) last straw for me was finding 2 glasses with water in them wedged between blankets in a basket that I keep rolled lap blankets in. They had moved it next to the Murphy bed, I assume to hold water glasses, when I picked it up to move it they of course spilled all over my basket and blankets.

I didn’t charge these people of the horrible way they do things, as some people are just that way, but I took a rare opportunity to rate these guest. 3 on cleanliness, I never do that and it needs to be extremely bad , I felt almost a little guilty, as most of the weird rude things seemed to be the daughters doing, but isn’t it correct to assume since the dad and mom made the reservation they would be responsible for their adult daughters behavior? They left us a great review… and I appreciate that, but I home they do better in the future, this was their first Airbnb stay

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Chances are, the parents might not even have been aware of those things the girls did. I could see mom saying "I’ll get the breakfast dishes washed, you guys tidy up the patio, and the daughter and her friend grabbing up everything and stuffing it in the box, including the wet towel, and not bothering to brush the sand off the chairs before folding them up.

This is exactly the kind of thing that makes hosts wary of hosting the 18-20 year old crowd, no matter how responsible mom and dad think their adult kids are.

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Since I got a cleaner I don’t deal with these things anymore. She is very skilled in dealing with spots using Shout and she doesn’t even tell me how bad or good guests are. Just sends me pictures after all is done.
Even old spots come out with Shout. I think main reason why guests don’t report bodily fluids is because they are embarrassed.

I would rate them as 1 for cleanliness and 1 for communication since they didn’t notify you of the stains.

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The whole scenario doesn’t seem too bad to me. If one of the girls started her period, and that can happen unexpectedly to any female of childbearing age, then the parents might not have even known about it.

Sand on beach chairs is about every tenth guest for me so that wouldn’t surprise me as it’s relatively normal. I don’t have rugs to be stained.

As the for the water in the basket thing I’d probably a) laugh at their ingenuity or b) realise that I should supply somewhere for glasses of water for people using the murphy bed.

So bear in mind that the parents might not have known about any of these things. Yes, in an ideal world they should have checked everywhere before they left but if they are new to Airbnb they probably didn’t realise. Either that or they were running late for their train, plane or ferry.

I would have sent them a private message assuming that they didn’t know.

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Hydrogen peroxide may still work on blood, even “set in”

Worth a try

RR

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I just love playing hunt the missing thing through my 5 bedroom 2.5 bath home.

Even worse when I find swaps, my thing gone and their similar thing left behind. My missing thing is always better than the left thing.

Some things gone/ swapped include top quality pillows, 1000 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, pool toys, chess pieces, towels, blankets decorative items, sharp knives, teaspoons
And everything is denied despite the ugly lumpy worn pillow is on the bed!

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I have called guests and asked for my pillow back, Hi this is your host I just started the laundry and you left a pillow behind by mistake and took mine. Have you left town yet I need you to bring that back. I have also messaged the day after if I do not catch it fast enough.

I just recently asked a guest to check their stuff fo my USB C cord that was removed from the bluetooth speaker. Hi Guest, I was going through my check in list and and one of the things I do every time is make sure the bluetooth speaker is plugged in and the cord is missing. The way I phrased that tells them I checked it before their stay so no it was never there bs…

She blamed her BF and offered to pay for it, I did not bother collecting the $5 but dammit I wanted her to know I knew they took it. Make them squirm.

RR

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Made me laugh, reminded me of the “guests swap stuff out” post from a couple of years ago. Toasters, toaster ovens, kitchen items, towels. The list was fascinating.

I have friends who owned a historic Inn on Cape Cod. Years ago I worked a wedding they had and the bridesmaids were taking everything - Inn decorations and telling me that “the bride paid for it!!!” and being drunkenly rude. We had to get the father of the bride to tell them to put stuff back and they threw it at us.

People can suck

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You can still get the blood out. I’ve removed blood from stuff that’s been washed and dried multiple times already so that it would seem like the stain was set. However, because blood is organic it will come out with an enzyme cleaner regardless of how long it’s been there. I recommed the Bac-Out by Biokleen. It will take out the blood. It will be easier if the mattress pad is cotton but can still be done even if it’s poly or a poly-blend, it will just take longer.

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Yep peroxide was my first try, I have also tried dawn dish soap and baking soda, and finally I am giving it one last try with shout (I have never had great luck with shout on blood).

I am trying not to be annoyed by this, it isn’t the guests fault that they just happened to be using a BRAND NEW mattress pad, I put it on there before their stay as I needed to have a second one and I wash them between stays. I guess what I am annoyed at is that they obviously washed the sheets, those didn’t have a stain on them, but didn’t even attempt to get the blood out of the mattress pad, or even mention it. I highly doubt that the adult kids would have taken the sheets off and washed them without mom or dad knowing, it’s a 650 square foot 1 bedroom condo and the bed is a Murphy bed in the livingroom.

I guess I have a new really clean (but stained) mattress pad for my guest house at home! It’s a really plush one so my visiting family will appreciate it, but going forward I think I will go with a slightly more affordable waterproof mattress pad, I can get them for $18 rather than $40 they just aren’t as plush…

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Who with, and can anyone play?

:rofl:

JF

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Yep! I have had a guest take 2 band new beach towels, and replace them with cheap shabby beach towels that they probably brought from home. We just started offering beach towels a month before that stay, and the beach towels I had were plush and embroidered with Always 5 O’Clock (our condos name) they were a splurge item and we paid $179 for 4 of them. And that was a discount because we bought 4, they were originally $50 per towel. I reached out to the guest and asked them what happened 2 the towels, sent the pictures of the tweety bird towel and the dolphin towel that now are in their place… the woman said that her kids must have grabbed the wrong towels, (kids were 5 and 3) hello! Well she asked that since they did leave 2 towels would it be ok if they just kept the ones they took by accident and we could keep the cheap ones they left. I told her that they were customized towels and that to replace just the 2 of them it would be $100, sent her the invoice from when I origami ordered them and she elected to mail them back to me, but wanted me to mail her towels back to her…… um ok, I mailed her towels back and told her I needed to have the towels back within 10 days (to insure I had time to put in a claim if they were not returned) about 95% of the condos in Gulf Shores are cleaned by cleaning services, I clean my own, had I not been the one cleaning the unit I am 100% sure that those towels would have been forever gone. BTW, the towels never came back and I did end up making a claim that was paid immediately, I guess the $100 souvenirs were worth it to them. I now have ordered 4 more, and I do have a sign in the condo that offers the towels for $120 per set or $200 for 4, but do ask that they let me know in advance so I can be sure to have replacements. I’ve sold 2 sets! I now have a local lady that will embroider them for me and it makes a good but expensive take home from the condo.

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To play devil’s advocate here, they may have thought the mattress pad couldn’t be thrown in the washing machine without totally ruining it.

And menstrual blood is one of those personal things that many people are just embarrassed about mentioning. It’s different than mentioning that they accidentally broke a plate or a chair leg.

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I broke a chair leg in the kitchen over Christmas. Fortunately, I didn’t have guests, so it was just my pride and rib cage that got injured.

There I was, seated at the kitchen table in an older bentwood chair. As I reach to my left for a cookie, the chair leg breaks!

Down I go, boobs stopping my fall to the floor and pride injured, and I decided the chickens could have the cookies and I needed new chairs.

FB Marketplace to the rescue with 4 metal bistro chairs at a deep discount.

I’m glad it was me and not a guest!

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Chickens are great, they eat everything, and everything eats chickens… Except me

RR

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Next door neighbor has 4. I feed them the appropriate scraps and I get eggs. Plus, my grandson thought they were the best thing ever.

I seem to be the odd one out here- I can’t stand chickens. When I was 18 I went and did the kibbutz thing in Israel. One of the jobs they gave me was cleaning out the chicken house. (They had hundreds of chickens).

Then they were going to kill the black chicks for some reason, so I took pity on one and adopted 3 yellow chicks and a black one. I put them in a box in my room with a light bulb to keep them warm. In the morning when I looked in the box, the black chick was dead- the others had attacked it and pecked it to death.

Chickens make great pets. When I was 12 yrs old I lived in the countryside and had a few chickens as pets. They were awesome pets. Thanks to them I became a vegetarian.

The worst thing we’ve had swapped out were two cheap Ikea towels for two of our new much higher-end bath towels. Which takes work, there’s no Ikea in Iowa.

The other happened just yesterday. Just launched the other half of my duplex as an AirBnB. Ran & unpacked the dishwasher, there’s a knife cover with no chef’s knife. Look through all the cupboards and drawers, no knife. My husband was checking the garbage cans to make sure they put the trash in the right one. There was the missing knife, inside a pizza box inside the yard waste can. I’m debating on how I’m going to rate them, as they were nice people otherwise. It wasn’t an expensive knife, but it’s just the oddness of it all. It’s a big, orange chef’s knife in a entirely cream kitchen. Some days I just hate people. :roll_eyes:

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