I am a very clean person. I have loved the AirBnbs I have stayed at. I understand if someone is messy and ruins your home that has to be awful. When I stay I am very clean. I always wipe the counter tops of, clean the tub, and sweep the floor. I bring my own towels and plates/cooking utensils. I wish there was a variable cleaning fee that maybe I could get some of my money back if I don’t leave the place trashed.
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Sorry, still has to be cleaned so that I know it’s clean before the next check in.
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@emilysuefos Even if you are a clean freak and leave the apartment immaculately clean, as a host I would still have to vacuum all floors, and mop all floors, sanitize the bathrooms, etc because I can’t rely on a guest to be in charge of all of the work that needs to be done before the new guests arrive,
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hello @emilysuefos
Why have you joined a forum for hosts? Do you host as well as being a guest @emilysuefos
In answer to your question - the cleaning fee covers much more than cleaning. You don’t provide linens, or wash them, you don’t clean the oven, hoover, pay for the basics for the kitchen, any food or toiletries provided. You don’t pay for rubbish disposal. You don’t deep clean the house, provide batteries for controls, pay for firewood, or BBQ materials, cut the grass or maintain outdoor spaces.
It is good to hear you clean up after yourself. But this doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t want to clean the place thoroughly ourselves or have many other costs associated with preparing the listing for your stay.
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The cleaning fee is for stripping the beds, washing everything; matress and pillow protectors, bed skirt, sheets, pillow cases, quilt, and comforter. Then scrubbing and sanitazing bathrooms and kitchen, vacumming and moping (we even use our magnifying glasses to make sure we didn’t miss a stray hair or dust participle somewhere : ) It’s a deep cleaning of the space.
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@emilysuefos – You can say you’re a very clean person. That’s all well and good. But we cannot trust that your definition of clean is the same as ours.
We still have to change the linens and towels, replace toilet paper, check and replace used kitchen items and more. Most times that “cleaning Fee” doesn’t come close to actually covering our time spent in turning the space around from your visit so the next guest gets the same fresh experience you had when you walked in.
If you stayed at a Marriott or Crown Royal hotel you would not dare challenge their decision to charge you for the housekeeping person to clean a room after you stayed (and they most certainly do). Why are you coming here and doing that???
At least on Airbnb we tell you what you’re being charged for.
If you don’t want to pay cleaning fees stay at listings which don’t charge them, or charge minimally.
I personally will never stay in an Air listing where the cleaning fee is more than 50% of a single night stay – a $100 cleaning fee for a $50 one night stay is ridiculous. BTW fellow hosts – that’s a good way to offer, but cut down on the number of one or two night stays – charge a large cleaning fee…
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My listings areas follows so I guess you would not stay at any of them based on the percentages? With my low
Base rates would you prefer I add that cleaning fee to the base rate and charge no cleaning fee, thus making no change to your one night stay but nearly doubling your cost for many nights (or even a month, as I sometimes have)?
$60 base, $50 cleaning
$45 base, $40 cleaning
$40 base, $40 cleaning
$36 base, $20 cleaning
This question is just as much for the OP @emilysuefos as Ken.
I just removed my cleaning fees this week and put in the house rules to leave the place as clean as you found it. I know they will not so I put this in the welcome book and I am going to see how it goes:
When Leaving
In order for us to continue to offer the cabin without a cleaning fee we ask that you please leave the place as clean as you found it. Please wash the dishes and remove all trash and put in the cans out back.
Please clean the BBQ if you use it.
Please wipe down the chrome in the showers and throw out the used soaps. We will give the bathroom a good scrubbing between guests of course:)
No need to strip the beds, if you could put the towels in the wash machine we will add detergent and start the load when we come to clean.
We appreciate that you are on vacation, and that you may not have read the rules when booking it happens. If you cannot leave the cabin reasonably clean please do the right thing and leave some cash to offset the extra work.
Thank you so much.
Like I said, this is an experiment and if most of the guests do a reasonable job AND I get more bookings I will consider it a success. I like one nighters they tend not to cook.
RR
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I always washing up after myself and leave the towels/linen provided where directed, as well as put all rubbish in bins and clean down work surfaces in the kitchen.
Personally I would prefer you just charged me a cleaning fee 
@RiverRock
I get that for sure, so just leave some cash:)
I am trying to find a balance, hotels do not charge separate cleaning fees. I had been doing fine with my high rates and cleaning fees, until the bookings dropped off a cliff lately. 2 of the 4 roads coming up the mountain were washed out in February and business has dropped for everyone. I even lowered my rates, which I have never done before and have had some bookings since. I am not desperate but I do not like long stretches of no bookings, last week I had a booking and had to re clean because it had been almost 3 weeks since the last booking and the place was dusty.
RR
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Oh, I’m very happy to waive the cleaning fee for a clean person. All I need them to do is get the place ready for the next guests, that’s all.
Of course, all guests (okay, 99% of guests) leave the place in fabulous condition. But if they want to waive the cleaning fee all they have to do in addition to what they already do is the laundry (bedding and towels and pay for it of course and there’s no washing machine or dryer in either apartment), clean all the interior windows and arrange and pay for the window cleaner to do the exterior (yes, the interior windows are done at every turnover), sanitise and scrub the bathroom including the toilet, launder the shower curtain and liner, launder all cushion covers (and iron and replace), sweep, wash and polish all the floors (including under all the furniture), pay for and replenish the local and national magazines, replenish the takeout and local restaurant menus and the tourist info brochures and cards, check all lightbulbs and all electrical appliance and replace/repair as needed, clean the leather sofas and chairs, thoroughly polish all the glass-topped tables, remove every single hair from the entire place, clean the oven and fridge thoroughly, clean all the exterior areas including weeding and pressure washing of paths ans steps as required, wash all exterior furniture, sweep iguana poop from the deck… oh I’m getting tired of all this…
And of course, the guest who has the waived cleaning fee also needs to buy and arrange fresh flowers, buy arrival snacks and wine for the incoming guests, buy bottled water and the first morning breakfast foods for the guests, buy and supply good quality toiletries, buy all the cleaning materials and goods such as loo paper, coffee, tea, sugar, pantry staples…
And finally…
That sounds terribly like blackmail to me. ‘Waive the cleaning fee or I’l trash the place’? Thank goodness that 99.9% of Airbnb guests are decent and sensible human beings who invariably leave the apartments in great shape and wouldn’t dream of nickel-and-diming a host for the services they receive - or trashing of a place.
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I bet you have FABULOUS cleanliness ratings as a guest! Are you sure you don’t want to host? 
Many hosts here are reading you the riot act. It’s true - no matter how nicely a guest leaves the place, we have to go over everything again.
I have no idea if the sink looks so clean because you sanitized it, or used a snot-filled tissue to wipe it down. I can’t chance the quality of the next guests’ stay - I still have to go over all 60-something items in our cleaning checklist. EVERY. TIME.
Also, some hosts use the cleaning fee as a way to make 1-night stays worthwhile. For example, it costs us $125 in labor to flip between guests.
If we charge $150/night it’s worthwhile to clean for a 2 night stay ($300-125=$175 revenue). Would we do all that work for a one night stay? Absolutely not! ($150-125=$25. Not worth it!).
With a cleaning fee we’d charge less per night. It makes 1-night stays expensive, but worth our time to clean. It also makes longer stays less expensive because the cleaning fee isn’t rolled into the nightly cost.
1-night: $90+125cleaning=$205 <—wouldn’t offer without cleaning fee
2-night: $90x2+125=$305 <—would’ve cost $300 without cleaning fee
3-night: $90x3 +125=$395 <—would’ve cost $450 without cleaning fee
4-night: $90x4 + 125=$485 <—would’ve cost $600 without cleaning fee. LOOK HOW MUCH YOU SAVE! 
Whether a host has a cleaning fee or not, you’re still paying for cleaning. Go ahead and leave your towels at home and let us do the work so you can enjoy your vacation!
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Just one other point:
The cleaning fee is really to get the place prepped for YOU.
Some hosts will respond sure! You can clean the place yourself! Agree you give me a 5* cleanliness rating because you’re taking that work on yourself.
You’ll walk into the dirty listing, as it was left by the last guests. You never know what you’re going to get! Toddler peed the bed? Bachelorette barfed on an entire set of bedding?
You can spend the start of vacation taking their dirty sheets off the beds (ew. sex stains?), pulling stranger’s pubes out of the shower drain, corralling their empties from the living room, cleaning excrement splatter from the toilet bowl (and all the poorly aimed pee off the wall)…
You get the picture. 
Just pay the cleaning fee. We want you to walk into a clean place and enjoy your vacation.
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I would categorize cleanliness as part of the effortlessness of the perfect guest. But there is the sense of pride that it gives you, and the kind of effort that a host undertakes. This can include, but is not limited to, deep cleaning, sanitizing, and preventing exposure to bugs, vermin, and stray hairs. Not every host does this of course, but conscientiousness, and a closet full of industrial cleaners, compels us.
What’s in it for you? A welcom back every time
If the cleaning fee bothers you, just book a place that doesn’t have one. There are plenty of listings that do not charge separately for cleaning.
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Good point.
And as @KenH said, wherever you stay you’re paying for cleaning whether you know it or not. When you stay at a hotel you’re paying for the cleaning as part of your nightly rate and yet if those horrible YouTube videos are anything to go by, some of the cheaper hotels (and maybe even decent quality ones too) are awful at cleanliness.
At a hotel you pay for all the amenities, even if you don’t use them as I’m sure most sensible people realise - do some guests really believe that the fact that they don’t use the spa, or the pool or the business centre means that they’re not paying for it? Do these people think that the hotel is supplying these amenities as some sort of charitable gesture?
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No matter how clean you are, the host/cleaning lady will still clean after you. So the cleaning fee takes into consideration the cleaning lady’s pay - she doesnt work for nothing - washing the bedding, the cost of detergent, supplies.
I doubt you would want to go and stay in an airbnb if you knew the previous guest cleaned. Right?
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I’m curious, how is this working for you?
It is working fine, most of the guests do clean up, we still clean after every guest of course. I think guests appreciate not being charged a cleaning fee. Hotels do not charge it.
Welcome to the forum!
RR
They most certainly do, it’s just built into the price. Which is one reason that hotels are generally more expensive than Airbnbs.
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