If I were you, I would be more specific about what clean means. One of many things I’ve learned through hosting is that there is quite a difference in people’s definition of cleaning the kitchen. To me it means rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Hand wash the dishes that can’t go in the dishwasher. Wipe the counters, refrigerator and freezer shelves and stovetop if you’ve left crumbs or spills. Put all leftover food in sealed containers. Wipe the outside of any jars you’ve used. I’m always surprised that my guests don’t have rats in their houses as few of them clean crumbs or wipe things like honey jars.
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Hi @EllenN,
True, “clean” is rather vague/general. The question is whether the correct place for details is in the house rules - I could end up with guests thinking I’m some kind of clean freak, which could not be further from the truth. I could put more details into the small guest guide I send to people. At that point they will already have booked. Bwah-ha-ha-ha.
Does anyone else have thoughts on that?
Anyway, my guests so far have hardly used the kitchen area at all. For the most part they seem to prefer to eat outside. Except for the few who have eaten meals we’ve provided. So the issue hasn’t come up much.
And in India you get rats/mice whether you are clean or not. There are tons of them around.
I put in my rules: please clean dishes immediately after meals, floor from crumbs and spills, and sink from left overs of food.
And even if i dont clean my dishes right away, guests still should clean theirs, because i am not cleaning up after them, only myself. When i am a guest i clean my dishes if any, and sometimes if i have time, i wash hosts dishes also. But i dont add my dirty dishes to the pile
What do you mean by “rinse” dishes and you will put away? Do you mean “rinse” and you will put in a dishwasher? Or they need to wash their dishes and you will put away in cabinets?
HI @cabinhost,
The post you’re replying to has nothing about rinsing dishes, so I assume you are referring to my earlier message with a proposed addition to the house rules on my listing, i.e.
Please make sure not to leave dirty dishes / partially eaten food lying around - this attracts vermin. Please scrape uneaten food into the rubbish bin in the kitchen, rinse out the utensils, and leave them in the kitchen sink. We will put them away.
Anyway, no, we don’t use a dishwasher. We have one sitting there, but nobody uses it. And I don’t know if it works. I didn’t buy it. The idea is that they don’t need to clean dishes properly - and we can’t be sure that they will. So, if they just rinse it and leave it in the sink, someone will wash it properly and put it away. In a cabinet or wherever.
But this is all way too much stuff to include in a listing. The stuff about throwing away leftover food is important, though. Redundant though it should be.
OK…then if you greet each and every guest I would only explain this during walk through and show them. And then you can mention why it is important. Hell…you see my guests don’t care about the grill attracting bears!
Then if they refuse to scrape their food in the bin…you can leave in a review that they were asked to scrape off dishes and you would wash them; however, they disregarded your request. I don’t think it needs to be in a house rule.
Hi @cabinhost,
I was thinking of putting it in my guest guide. Or rather, possibly expanding what I have already written there, which currently is:
When disposing away the remains of food, please don’t leave them
lying on kitchen counters. Please scrape the remains into the
kitchen rubbish bin, rinse out the plates, and leave them in the
kitchen sink.
I’m not sure I’d have the presence of mind to cover this in a walkthrough, and like I said, most of my guests, who as of right now are mostly very short stays, show little or no interest in the kitchen. And I don’t allow cooking, anyway.
Yes, i do, otherwise guests just clean dishes but not around them, and i ma the one who needs to do floor and sink.
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faheem, you have stated that this is your current wording in your guest guide:
“When disposing away the remains of food, please don’t leave them
lying on kitchen counters. Please scrape the remains into the
kitchen rubbish bin, rinse out the plates, and leave them in the
kitchen sink.”
To me, it does read a little stilted and may not be very clear to some guests.
This is your proposed revised wording:
“Please make sure not to leave dirty dishes / partially eaten food lying around - this attracts vermin. Please scrape uneaten food into the rubbish bin in the kitchen, rinse out the utensils, and leave them in the kitchen sink. We will put them away.”
Although improved, Kona is correct…er, make that “korrect”. I would eliminate the reference to “vermin” which conjures up all sorts of “kreatures” and apparently is an automatic refund magnet.
Do you really want your guests to only rinse (suggesting use of only water) utensils and dishes and leave them in the sink or do you want them to wash (using soap)? Also, do you really want them to leave the cleaned items in the sink or put them on a rack or towel to air dry…or do you want them to put everything back where they got them?
You need to be as clear in your directions as you are in your forum posts…which are always very clear and well-written!
P.S. I have NO idea why some of my text is blown up to mega-size…some sort of editing glitch I guess. Apologies to all for any possible resulting eye-damage and/or irritation.
Hi @SandyToes,
Thanks for the comments. There seems to be a bit of (understandable) confusion here. I’ve been talking about putting the information about the kitchen cleaning in two different places: the listing on Airbnb (which is public), and my guest guide, which I send out as an email PDF attachment to people who have booked. The current versions of these two are:
Listing (see http://towerroom.net)
Please keep the kitchen clean, wrap up leftover food tightly, and dispose of it in the kitchen rubbish bin. Thank you.
This originally had different wording, as mentioned in this thread, involving use of the dreaded word “vermin”. Following @konacoconutz’s advice I altered it to use her wording.
Guest guide:
When disposing away the remains of food, please don’t leave them
lying on kitchen counters. Please scrape the remains into the
kitchen rubbish bin, rinse out the plates, and leave them in the
kitchen sink.
Rinsing with water and leaving them in the sink is fine. I guess they could use soap if they wanted.
I suppose I could make these two more consistent. The main idea with the first (listing) version is to keep it brief (since people browsing through the listings aren’t interested in minutiae) but still establish the main point, which is to keep the kitchen clean and not keep food lying around. I think @konacoconutz’s wording does a reasonable job of that.
If you think this wording could be improved, let me know.
Some sort of HTML artifact, possibly. Sometimes the forum software (Discourse) interprets certain characters as markup instructions.
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Thanks Faheem, glad it was useful! Do you think scraping it in the trash unwrapped could still attract vermin? It would in Hawaii!
Hi @konacoconutz,
I think scraping it into the trash unwrapped is Ok. We don’t normally wrap stuff up. And our garbage gets thrown out daily. I guess it makes a difference if that doesn’t hapen. But it doesn’t hurt to tell them to wrap stuff up before disposing of it. Especially as the chances are that it will be food from outside.
Hmm, the two versions do say somewhat different things. I guess I need to think about how to make them more consistent.
Mine is a shared space and I totally have a deposit. There are many things in their room that could get damaged and I would have to replace. Microwave, toaster, TV, everything.
Dishes were a bit of an issue for me until I got an idea. I put a dishpan on the counter off to the side out of the way. I put my dishes in there and wash them when I feel like it. This leaves both kitchen sinks free for others to use.
I put a dishpan in each bedroom, so if the guest chooses to they can put their dishes in it, bring it out to easily carry the dishes to the kitchen, wash them and take them back. There’s no table in my kitchen or living area, so people naturally eat in their own rooms, sparing me even knowing about their dishes. I think if I ever had a kitchen table I would have taken it out by now, just to avoid guests leaving it messy. Of course it’s just me here, if I had a family we’d want a table.
I did have one guest, who grew up in a household with servants, who wanted to add his dishes to mine and wash them ‘later’. I can barely stand to wash my own dishes, let alone others’ so I just told him no, that’s for my dishes, so they are out of your way so you can wash yours.