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We have just stayed in a rental for three days. Something that has always surprised me about our own rental is that lovely guests make the bed. Why??? They know (hopefully!) that we are going to change the entire bedding between guests so why make the bed? It makes no sense.
But this morning, our last day in the rental, I made the bed. Why? Because we are early risers (about 6am) and checkout was noon. There’s NO way I could have looked at an unmade bed for six hours!
Do your guests make the bed? Does it irritate you? (It did me - a bit - until today).
Given no instructions in the house manual, what would you do with used towels? I just piled them in the bathroom. Would you find that acceptable?
I was careful to take the trash out. Do you ask guests to do this?
Now that I have seen rentals from the guest perspective, it’s made a lot of difference to me own hosting viewpoint. Have you found the same?
Too funny!!! We are more hotel people, but I will give you my two units of currency.
I can not stand an unmade bed! After I get my coffee, bed gets made, regardless of where we are, hotel, friends house, our house.
We ask guests to pile towels into the bathtub/shower stall, bc if they are wet (which they usually are) I don’t want them on a bed/floor for a long enough period to make those areas damp
We do not ask for trash to be taken out. I do say if you did throw away something particularly stinky please place the bag outside the back door, so the entire house does not smell.
I don’t get the guests who strip the bed, why would they do this? Would you ever do that in a hotel?
I think this is so funny, also. I would not bother to make my bed while on vacation. It is really funny to me when I walk into the bedroom and it looks just as neat as when they checked in!
I don’t specify anything about towels, but leave a laundry basket close to the bathroom. Sometimes they use it, sometimes not. When staying in a hotel I put all the towels into the sink so the maid has once less time they have to bend over.
I was just tweaking my rules regarding this as everyone seems to strip the beds, some even start the washing (go for it I say!)
And please DO take the rubbish out-but we have recycling so get the coloured bins right!.
This is how my rules read now regarding those areas:
“Please dispose of rubbish using the 3 bin council recycling system. Red bin General waste, Yellow bin for Recycling and green bin for Garden waste.”
"Leave beds either unmade or stripped and used towels on the bathroom or laundry floor. "
We have 3 bins as well, and find it that the guests never sort the rubbish correctly, and it inevitably ends up in the wrong bins. So, I have them leave it and the house keeper deals with it. The issue we have is possible fines if the items in the bins are wrong.
Do your guests make the bed? Does it irritate you? (It did me - a bit - until today).
What a nice remark: I didn’t get annoyed if the guests made the bed for the same reason: where ever I stay I want to make the beds. Usually we have rented small places for the vacations, and I think it looks nicer when the beds are made… I’ve supposed that our guests have felt the same in our small guest room…
Out of 32 stays, 30 guests made the beds. My understanding is that they want to show that they care and want to be good guests.
Re. stripping the beds before your checkout, at least here in France it the use to do so in vacation rentals. The leading vacation rental operator around here (50,000 rentals) has it in its house rules.
When I am a guest I strip the bed and fold the linens. In a hotel, I do like @dcmooney and put all the towels into the sink.
I always make the bed also, even in a hotel, and at an ABB, the only reason I would not make the bed is if it was specified to remove the bedding prior to checking out.
Only about 30%of my recent guests have made any attempt at making the bed. I’ve had a couple of occasions where I’ve gone up there after they check out, make the bed up even though I’m going to completely strip it the next day, if I’m too busy with work (or fun!) to launder/change the bedding that day. I like to clean the room as a whole so removing the linens is something I just can’t do unless I’m going to do the entire cleaning.
I guess it makes sense if they get up early and are a bit anally retentive about looking at a messy bed. I can understand throwing the blanket or comforter up over the messy bed. But to make it up perfect is just crazy.
What I really don’t understand is when they place the used/dirty sheets back in the extra clean linen bin. Drives me insane! This sometimes leaves be guessing whether they were used or not. Whenever in doubt I do swap them out just to be safe.
On more than one occasion it really seemed like 4 people slept together in the queen size bed as the extra linens looked untouched in the clean bin.
How about those people that leave all linens, blankets & towels in a big waded up ball on the bed. I mean seriously? How am I suppose to reuse a blanket or comforter when they do that?
This is a conundrum. Most our guests remake the bed, accent pillows and all.
When we visit friends or another Airbnb I strip the bed and put all the linens in one pillow case for cleaning. I don’t remember when I started this, only that I read somewhere years ago this was a ‘good thing’ (thank you Martha) to do to be a gracious guest.
More than half the time our gusts make the bed, out of habit I suspect, even AFTER we remind them not to bother, when I serve breakfast on checkout day.
Do we make the bed in rentals? No. But we do at least pull the sheets/blanks up off the floor.
@jaquo, @KenH, @MizMavis
When guests make the bed I get confused because I don’t know if they did the laundry and made the bed with clean sheets or if they made the bed with dirty linens, so I wash everything no matter how impeccable everything looks. Here are the things that guests do that puzzles me:
-guests who cook and leave food under the burners, with messy hidden puddles – just yesterday I was cleaning the stove and found lots of liquid puddles under the burners.
-guests who don’t eat snacks left for them: I leave really delicious packaged snacks (bagel chips, chocolate chip organic cookies, and other high end snacks)
-guests who don’t use any of the toiletries I leave, including mini Crest toothpaste, soap, etc.
-guests who will use the white towels but leave the coordinating colorful print towels
-hair, lots of hair everywhere, impossible to clean
@chicagohost
Hi H, yes, intellectually/logically, I understand the reasoning. However, I have worked with people around the world, and I consider myself pretty good in understanding human nature. Also, I’ve lived in hotels for extended periods, and I doubt I would, for instance, ignore the appeal of a free bag of snacks or a miniature toothpaste during a 10-day period.
Ugh, I’m exactly the same. I shed handfuls of long hair and I can roll it up into yarn ball bundles. I think my husband is still horrified by the amount of hair on the floor that will collect in one day. At rentals, I do try to sweep it up so as not to gross out the cleaners.
Miss Miami – at a hotel I would totally take the toothpaste to use in the future but at someone’s rental unit, I feel that’s using up a host’s limited resources. If there was a little sign that said, please take for future use, however, I would definitely take a host up on that! Sounds like you have very conscientious guests – you’re lucky!
