I have to be away a week for work, and my husband has agreed to do the one turnover I will miss. His resume for this job is dismal. He has no cleaning or bed-making experience. (He is highly competent at other things at which I am terrible.)
We did a training session on the weekend.
It was okay, but in my opinion he didn’t care enough about important things like obsessively smoothing the pillowcases and checking for minute specks, so he is getting sacked as cleaner when I get back. He will be delighted.
Last night I wrote with final instructions to the guest for whom he will be cleaning – just the door code, map, that sort of thing – and she wrote back to say that was great and could there please be no sheets, blankets or pillows on the bed? She added, when I asked whether the floor mat would be okay, that this was not a COVID-related request, that she and her husband always take their bedding with them on holiday because they prefer it. She hopes I don’t mind.
I kind of don’t mind, except that how does my husband go through life like this? Has never made a bed, agrees to make a bed, then doesn’t have to because the first guest in eight years is bringing her own bedding?
Honestly! 
Hahah - this is epic. This belongs in reddit.
I would say that his private thought is, WOW dodged a bullet there!!!
I don’t do beds either. Never.
JF
Wow, your hubby lucked out! Don’t let him of the hook, give him some other tasks to do like dusting on top of the fridge, moving the fridge and dusting behind it, etc. Otherwise he will think that a turnover is easy work. LOL
We let them do so, but to try differently is soul destroying. I blame their mothers! My experience is that they are so loathe to lose their sons to another woman, that they bring them up to be utterly, loathsomely dependent on the next woman in their lives, that they leave in serial fashion.
My older sister was the same as my MiL with her son, although my sister damaged him so much, he took to drink.
And this is their fall back position. It’s tacitly unspoken that “I fix your laptop, sort out the wifi etc” and basically forget about anything else that keeps the house, and our lives on the road.
Since I retired, but ran the B&B, it has become my default job to clean, do the laundry, make beds, garden, ironing, load the dishwasher, unload the dishwasher, clean the kitchen to within an inch of its life after he’s cooked, pick up dirty clothes from the floor to the bin, collect shoes left lying around the house, etc etc, rant rant rant.
Yes, I’m angry. It’s got worse since the lock down.
" I’m working. I don’t have the time". Actually, he’s on twitter much of the day.
I do let fly sometimes, but to no avail; soon forgotten, or I am presented with a glass of wine in recompense. Like now.
When I was working years ago, and away Mon-Fri, I had a cleaner who ironed his bloody socks and underpants. That’s what she did for her son, so she was going to do the same. God help us, and if you have sons, do them a favour and make them realise that they need a different set of values.
I thought that marrying a much younger man would be different, but I was so wrong.
Then bring your own sheets when you stay with us!
Mine would do so with half a mind on the job, and I would simply need to do it again.
Sorry, I’ve had a really bad day!
So true. Every time my husband helps me make the beds at our rental he mutters something about me being “ridiculous”. But he loves to vacuum and mop, a plus for me!
You are so, so lucky. The stuff that dreams are made of 
++++++++++++++++
Perhaps @Mountainhost does what Colleen in my village claimed to do, @Joan . Every time Ronald picked up a broom (even if just moving it out of the way), she sighed and told him how dead sexy he looked with it.
Tell your husband to go a lottery ticket, like NOW. With that kind of luck let’s hope it strikes twice.
Every time my ex MiL picked up a broom, I used to ask her if she’d filed a flight plan…
OK, I’ll get me coat.
JF
That used to be true of my husband. He’s absolutely excellent at both bed making and cleaning (to my high standards) after him first basically interning (just watching) and then being trained extensively by me. It only took a year and a half filled with cursing, crying and stomping away. I DO NOT recommend it. And would not do it again. 
Yes, yes, yes. I only had daughters, 3 of them. But I’d see how my friends who had both sons and daughters treated their sons-like some kind of royalty. And most of these women were quite hip, and certainly believed in the equality of the sexes. I’d ask them if they realized that they expected far different behavior from their sons than they did from their daughters, totally doted on them, and to hear them talk about their sons, you’d think the sun rose and set out their son’s butt holes.
They’d be shocked, they were so unaware of it, and ask me to give them examples, of which I could come up with countless ones. I used to tell them they weren’t doing their sons, or the women they’d eventually be with, any favors.
Now I live in Mexico, where a man could axe murder an entire village full of women and children and his mom would get up on the stand in court talking about what a good boy he is, and how he just fell in with the wrong crowd. I’ve ever lived in a country so full of mama’s boys.
We have still not completed the full year of training, so I still do some stomping! He does most of the cleaning in our own home but I set no standards there. Just a big “Thank you, Honey!”The part time cleaning lady I trained gives us both a break, including my feet.
Dangerous words, JohnF, but very funny
Did she say ‘yes, right between your eyes, John’? No?
@muddy, I think all is well with the next generation. My son and sons-in-law cheerfully cook and clean. No amount of seeing it happen rubs off on my husband, but we’re moving forward.
I must say, though, that I am inclined to praise/reward them for these things, and my daughters tell me not to. My daughters are right. People should clean up after themselves, or help with communal cleaning, as a matter of course. It does not qualify them for another slice of pie.
No, I’d usually just get the “death stare”.
We didn’t get on, for a variety of reasons 
JF
The same one I was very familiar with in our early days together, from both parents-in-law.
MiL told a cousin that I was the Wicked Witch who stole her son.
At our wedding, which we hoped they’d not come to, she looked me up and down with a sneer, saying “well, you won’t be wearing that again”. Like, I wasn’t exactly dressed in a frou-frou bridezilla meringue.
We, or at least I, haven’t seen them since. A few years later, just as I was getting off the train from work, Mr J called and whispered to me that they had just arrived on the doorstep from the airport, and not the one local to themselves either. They clearly expected to stay the night.
I parked myself with the neighbours next door, where we could hear them talking at Steve in the garden. He was unwell at the time, not his usual robust self and they went to town on him for his poor decision making, i.e. marrying me.
Then Mum wanted to use the loo. We had no ceilings at the time and access was via a steep step ladder. They left at speed, leaving us all howling with laughter.
The really horrible point came when Mr J’s aunt contacted me a couple of years ago, with the news that his father had died. To this day we have no idea of a date or circumstances, yet his brother and wife continue to send Christmas cards with their pompous round robin newsletter.
How can people be so disgusting?
That’s my hubby’s job. He vacuums and mops (Swiffer) but he’s awful at everything else. LOL
I’ve never understood men not knowing one end of a vacuum from another. I’ve been doing housework, all of it, washing, ironing, scrubbing floors, etc. since I was eight-years-old. Some men seem as proud of this as women who claim they’re high maintenance. I don’t get either.
I hear you. I do all the cleaning, remaking beds, fluffing, smoothing, vacuuming. I’m lucky if hubby will run a load of wash or dump the trash. It’s really just easier to book ourselves out if I’m going to be gone. Otherwise I’m stressing out about it. Never heard of someone bringing their own linen!