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Yes, me as a host, didn’t have a plunger until a young guest manage to get the toilet clogged, with poo floating on the surface. He asked me for a plunger and I didnt know how to get to the store the get plungers faster. He then unclogged it.
Another time I was travelling with my 6 year old nephew. One evening, like 9 PM he went to the bathroom and did #2 and clogged the toilet. We were travelling with another family and this was an apartment and the only toilet. I spent the whole night, literally, trying to unclog the damn toilet, thinking how embarrassed I would be in the morning when everybody would want to go to the bathroom and just couldn’t. Were we all going to hold it in until we got to the nearest mcdonalds? finally, after many tries, and many hours in which I basically waited for the water level to go slowly down and after almost breaking the toilet brush, which was the only tool I had, the toilet was un-clogged. I also cursed like a sailor.
Please have a heart and get plungers in all your bathrooms!
Part of our prep of this windowful home was my husband spending about 2 hours on each pane cleaning 17 years of gunk out of the rails. They had never been cleaned by the prior owners and it was so gunked up, not one window in the whole house would open.
He spent days on this. I see him twitch and veins bulge a little when we talk about cleaning the windows again and I think I have him convinced to hire a pro. Our cleaner doesn’t do exterior glass. And we don’t blame her lol. I don’t, either.
And after doing that house, I think hubby - who has always done ours - is retired from the glass cleaning business now.
I do the insides myself which is usually after every turnover except one or two nighters. Which sounds like a lot but it’s a small apartment and one of our big selling points is the view.
The outsides are done by a window cleaner (because I’m not going up ladders as I’d be sure to fall off) about every four to eight weeks. The reason it differs is because they need doing more often when there’s construction going on locally (which is often) especially if the wind is blowing in an unfavourable direction. Luckily the window cleaner is flexible with his schedule.
I do the ground floor apartment interiors the same, once or twice a week and because no ladders are needed, I do the exteriors as required. For some reason the exteriors don’t get as dirty as the upper floor apartment.
Thanks for this tip! I’ve never heard/noticed this.
Luckily I can do many things myself, like when I had to replace a pane of glass in an older door, I did it myself. Today I pulled all the old carpet, padding, linoleum tiles and wrong size baseboard out of the airbnb room. All the tile guy will do is come in and lay and grout the tile. Then I’Il come in and put new baseboards, paint, and put the room back together. This is saving me hundreds of dollars.
But even for hosts who are unable to do their own work it’s so helpful to be clued in. I’m often amazed at the very basic things people call a professional to do and because they are clueless they also overpay. Google things or ask here before calling a pro.
I agree. And you can get instructions on how to do so many things at YouTube. Admittedly, there are some useless videos too but once you’ve sorted out the wheat from the chaff the info there is invaluable.
Another trick is to pour hot water from the sink into the toilet to break up a clog (not boiling, it could crack the bowl, then you’ve got a much bigger problem!).
Be VERY careful about bath mats! I put one down that was advertised as non-slip (a pretty expensive one, with suction cups) and heard my son-in-law go KER-THUNK one morning when he was in my rental. He fell and the mat was scrunched to the side! Thankfully he wasn’t hurt (or didn’t want to tell me) and thankfully it wasn’t a paying guest. I then put down the adhesive strips, but had to re-do them twice because I hadn’t cleaned the tub with alcohol and allowed it to dry thoroughly before applying the strips and they gradually came loose. Safety can be scary.
Thanks. They didn’t have a blue one but the same style in red and gray at the local Lowe’s so I got that. I left it in the package so a guest will know exactly what it is and that it’s clean. And I’ll know if it gets used.
@KKC
I got one of the bellows type in FL a couple of yrs ago when i was having occasional issues that a regular black type with ‘funnel’ shape bottom didn’t help with. Turned out to be some roots that had started to clog pipes so after a ‘roto-rooter’ type cleaning, all is fine now.
Usage note on those plastic bellows ones: Don’t just put it in toilet and plunge as the enclosed air may/will tend to blow ‘stuff’ out of bowl but put it in, sloooowly push down so that some water/stuff is sucked up into bellows and then push it quickly down. You might want to try it on a clean bowl to see what can happen.
The guest would probably be using it. I’ve lived here since 1990 and have only needed the plunger once and it didn’t solve my problem. I ended up donning mask and gloves and emptying the bowl manually and dumping the bucket contents into a different toilet. Luckily only one toilet was affected. Then calling a plumber. My toilets have pressurized tanks that swish the stuff down with a bit more pressure than the typical low water flush. However I don’t have that kind of tank in the Airbnb room and have already had plumbers out 2x in 3.5 years.
home was my husband spending about 2 hours on each pane cleaning 17 years of gunk out of the rails. They had never been cleaned by the prior owners and it was so gunked up, not one window in the whole house would open.