I break the cleaning and prep into 3 short sessions so it is not arduous. As soon as guests leave I put all the linen and towels in the wash. Session 2 is make beds (I iron just the linen that’s visible after making) and do bathroom. On the day guests are arriving I mop, dust and replenish bread and milk.
We don’t set a minimum stay length but do charge a relatively high cleaning fee ($55) and we block the day before and after every stay so I’m not in a rush.
I sorted my cleaning gear so it’s grab and go. I swear by the super light $25 long handled plug in dustbuster/vac from Kmart and the mop with the built-in spray bottle and trigger in the handle.
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My professional cleaner cleans so much better than I could and is much faster.
When running a business it’s good to know what you are good at and when it’s worth getting help.
It’s not a good use of my time to clean when I earn so much more by doing other things .
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I clean my own but I built the fee into the nightly rate and made my rental a 2-night minimum to ensure I didn’t get burned out on cleaning. I did find that I resented doing a full clean and sheet change for only one night. By building it into the fee, the more nights that get booked, the more of a cleaning fee I got. The guests also don’t have one more line item to become frustrated by.
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My husband and I are in our 70s and do all our own cleaning with no separate cleaning fee. Having two complete sets of linens for each room allows for back to back bookings. I also made up a little cleaning cart for each floor with cleaning supplies and few replacement items like individual soaps. It required a little investment and organization, but it helps a lot.
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My wife and I are more mature 
We just completed another back to back where one guest checked out at 10am (2 bedroom 1.5 bathroom apartment) and in one hour we managed to make up three beds, put all the linen through the washing machine to be dried at a commercial drier, vacuum, dust and bathroom clean in about an hour. We then allowed the second guest to check in at 2pm, an hour earlier since we were done by 12:30 (I don’t like to offer too much for free). My wife drives in while I walk from my day job and do the work in my lunch hour.
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We use a cleaning company, but in general it takes about an hour to do the walk through after the cleaning. We come in and find the house is clean, but they don’t have the right number of towels out (and never in the way we like them displayed, despite pictures…). We refill the bathroom baskets with soaps and shampoos etc. Put out more toilet paper. Refill the coffee and other kitchen supplies. Put the outside furniture back, check the grill, clean the golf cart, ensure it is filled with gas or plugged in.
And usually we finish the laundry. It takes 40 minutes to wash and an hour to dry, and a king bed worth of linens is one load. For two beds and 4 sets of towels we need three loads. That is really the delimiter of how long it takes us to turnover a house. Sure we could do laundry offsite, but then there is the picking up, storing clean items, and then bringing them back in between guests. We aren’t set up to do that, but if there are more than three loads worth of laundry we will do some offsite.
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I still love loud music – and now I have a set of Powerbeat ear buds… the bass is incredible. Last time I had my hearing checked doctor said it was all 100% except for one spot where it plummeted to nothing. His words “probably from listening to loud music”. What can I say… my brother was a sound man (now known as a sound engineer). There is a song that goes “But music is the only addiction that feeds us. Bassline’s intravenous.”
I’m “only” 67. Not “old” but past the point of saying “age is only a number.”
The other day a gal in the Aldi parking lot asked me, gently “would you like me to put that up for you?” (meaning my cart). I must have looked at her oddly because she said (even more gently) “I’ll bring your quarter back to you.” (for anyone who hasn’t shopped at Aldi, you put in a quarter to get your cart and get it back when you return it). That made me feel OLDER than my age!
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I work four days a week as an IT consultant so if I have to turn around the apartment during the week then that’s my lunchtime gone. If my colleagues could see me wielding a vaccum cleaner or cleaning bathrooms that would create some amusement
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