When you get into the swing of hosting, your preparation time will speed up immensely. Despite your best effort, it’s important to check these things before guests arrive at your Airbnb.
These small issues can have an impact on your cleanliness rating. They take just moments to fix but can make a huge difference on the impression to your guests.
Check bed for stray hairs.
Linens and towels will pick up and collect stray head or body hair from your guests as they sleep in the bed or use the towels. This is inevitable. In fact the human body can shed anywhere around 50-100 hairs per day.
Running these linens through the wash will get rid of any dander and hair as they spin and drain during the normal wash cycle. However occasionally some can get trapped in or on the fabric and may not rinse out during the laundering process.
Even though the linens themselves will be clean after washing, it’s not pleasant to find a hair in a supposedly clean bed you’re about to get into. Especially when it’s not yours.
Likewise, a guest grabbing a towel to dry themselves after a shower, isn’t going to want to pull an unusually long hair off of their body which has stuck to their skin.
Also, despite checking during ironing, Your own hair can shed and fall out as you make the bed. Because of this it’s worth just using your eyes to skim over the bed linen as you put it on the bed. That way you can check for any dander or human hair traces.
Most guests will be able to tell if a bed or towel is clean. But finding an unusual hair is still pretty gross. It can encourage a guest to question whether or not a bed or towel has been cleaned properly if at all.
Questions about cleanliness are the kind of thoughts you don’t want your guests to have or be having.
Make sure kettle is empty
I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find something uncomfortably gross about staying in a hotel and finding the kettle has water left in it. Who knows how long that water has sat there and how many times it’s been boiled?
Emptying and wiping the kettle so it has no water marks is the best way to present it for a guest to use.
The same goes for a water tank on an instant coffee machine or similar. I have a coffee pod machine which has a water tank and I keep that empty and dry before guests use it too.
Make sure guests have toilet roll
This is the last thing I do when I clean the bathroom. I check to make sure a roll of toilet paper is on the holder and folded into a triangle point!
Make sure glasses and cutlery are polished
There’s no need to manically polish the silverware every time you have a guest over. But a quick wipe over clean cutlery guests will use will bring them up sparkling.
Both dishwashers and hand washing glassware can cause reside to dry or leave water marks and finger prints over glasses.
This can make clean glasses look grubby. A grubby glass is not nice to drink from. It also gives an impression of poor cleanliness. A quick wipe over with a clean cloth or kitchen tissue will make them sparkle.
Even though the glass may be clean, a guest won’t want to wash up anything for their own peace of mind before using it.
Often times you won’t notice the difference it makes until you do it the first time. From then on, you’ll ensure they’re gleaming every time.
The shine and sparkle on clean glasses every time you open the cupboard makes a world of difference. Try it, it gives a great impression! It also shows you something that you didn’t realise was missing until you shined them up.
Check the bathroom after it’s been cleaned
Just like checking the bed for any dropped hair while preparing it, you should come back and check on the bathroom once it’s been cleaned.
Once the movement and air flow in the bathroom calms down after the upheaval of cleaning, floating hair, clothing fibres and dander can settle. This shows up quite starkly on a white bathroom suite for example.
It also gives you a chance to check for any streak marks in the light on shower doors, glass or mirrors.
Make sure oven mitts & tea towels are clean.
It’s easy to overlook washing these after every booking. It’s also easy to forget to check if the guest has them. A guest that wants to cook will need access to both so make sure they are clean and free of staining.
Guests can also throw these away if they become particularly soiled. Make sure you check to ensure you have them readily available.
Tea towels are serious harbours for bacteria. They pick up a lot of food residue and water and move them about. Keeping these dry and cleaned regularly is super important.
Oven mitts will stain and blacken overtime. You can stop this from happening by washing regularly to remove cooking grease and fat from handling oven trays. Pre-soaking them in hot water and detergent before throwing them into your normal wash will aid cleaning.
You may not get this out after one wash, but regular washing will gradually get it looking cleaner. If the mitt is particularly bad, it might be worth starting with a new one and keeping up with cleaning it.
I’d recommend throwing these as well as the tea towels into your laundry when you collect the linens. You can replace them with a fresh pair for each new reservation. Alternating different pairs will reduce the amount of wear and tear each pair undergoes.
Check all drawers or stowage areas.
Make sure any drawers or storage compartments in reach of guests are empty. You don’t want a guest finding any leftover food wrappers for example left behind by another guest.
The same goes for under the bed. Check nothing left over by one of your other bookings has been dropped or left behind.
This can be easy to overlook when cleaning the visible surface of a room. Remember, guests will innocently snoop so don’t give them anything you don’t want them to find.
Summary
Most of these will be incorporated in many hosts cleaning schedules anyway. However I find these are the most easy things to overlook during prep time.
This list can take less than 5 minutes to do. But it makes a substantial difference to the finished quality of a property. Plus it will ensure a 5 star cleanliness rating.
The last thing you want is a guest questioning any aspect of your properties cleanliness during their stay.