Head-scratchers

[Pat271]

Something that has surprised and baffled me since I started hosting is how many times I’ve scratched my head over certain conditions, configurations, object placements, etc. that I have found after guest departure. In my wildest imagination, I can’t envision the reasoning or scenarios for some of the things I’ve  found. Off the top of my head, I’ve found:

1) Dining room table scratched *under* the glass

2) Bleached, half-moon shapes discoloring the fabric of a dining room chair

3) Various Mystery Substances on sheets, towels, counters and the floor

4) A slightly bent ceiling fan. (What were they doing, swinging on it? Drying their clothes on the blades?)

5) Furniture moved to completely nonsensical locations

6) Knife scratchings in the wax of our flameless candles

…and my personal favorite

7) Footprints on the walls near the ceiling. Yes, you read that right. The ceiling!

Given enough time to go through my notes, I can probably find 20 more “head-scratchers”.

How about you? What have you found at your place after check-out that wasn’t necessarily or specifically evil or negligent, but that you couldn’t for the life of you figure out the guests’ thought processes, no matter how hard you tried?

[Emiel1]

@Pat271 

All i can think about is:

nr 1 - Glass has been turned upside down

nr 2 -Somebody sitting on the chair peed in pants

nr 7 - Guest have a "shoe-fight" or tried to eliminate a bug by throwing a shoe !

[Pat271]

@Emiel1 

Interesting guesses. For number 7, though, these were actual FOOTprints, not shoe prints!

[Inna22]

I think most of it people doing something stupid  and then doing something even more stupid to cover it up.

This a really bad example but somehow the first one that came to mind. My daughter stuck a bottle of cleaning bleach spray in her mouth when she was maybe 2 years old . I needed to know ASAP if the spray was in on position and in my panic turned it towards the wall and sprayed it on the wall leaving a giant bleach stain. 

[Pat271]

@Inna22 

That’s a good example, actually. It would definitely have been a head-scratcher if it were my place and I had walked in and found bleach sprayed on a wall! 

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Pat271 

7) acrobatic rock'n'roll? dirty dancing...? Spiderman? 🙂

[Colleen253]

@Pat271 Are you secretly hosting aliens? 

[Pat271]

@Colleen253  That’s probably the most logical explanation! 😂

[Sarah977]

@Pat271 My guests haven't done anything weird, but I don't host an entire house. One guest did drip something across the floor from the bed to the bathroom sink that ate through the tile sealer, but I remembered that I had cut off an aloe leaf for her to use on her sunburn, so I think that's what it was.

As for your list:

1. Maybe they were afraid of breaking the glass and removed it during the stay?

3. Who knows what of hundreds of products guests might use, whether it's some face cream, hair dye, fake tan, sex lube, etc.?

4. I bent one of my ceiling fan blades by carrying something tall across the room that knocked into it while it was spinning. Guests might have been trying to remove a spider or something on the ceiling with the broom?

7. They snuck in their pet chimpanzee.

[Pat271]

@Sarah977 

Haha - good guesses!

Maybe one of these days I’ll just ask my guests, although for table scratches and bent fans, I fully expect I’ll get “I don’t know anything about that”.🤷🏻‍♀️

[Lawrene0]

@Pat271 : Would the footprints have been from doing a handstand against the wall? A yoga enthusiast?

My most recent strange find was this: we have around the firepit two chainsaw-carved seats, two stumps and a bench (just so guests can move seats as the smoke follows them, or use the stumps as side tables, etc.). They are heavy. I found them all messily piled around six feet away from the firepit in a patch of stinging nettles. So bare space around the firepit, and a mound of seating well away and painful for me to fetch. Must have been painful for them as well, unless they threw them?

I have no clue at all what was up with that. 

[Sarah977]

@Lawrene0  Macho log-throwing contest? Scared a spark from the firepit might catch them on fire? Find rustic furniture an eyesore?

Honestly, if I had guests who did things like this, I'd be so curious I'd just message them and ask. The reasons would probably be as hard to fathom as the result, but it would make for good forum stories.

[Pat271]

@Lawrene0 

Calisthenics of some sort did cross my mind.  However, the ceilings are up 8 feet, so maybe someone was perched on the back of the sofa, doing a handstand? Or doing a handstand on someone else’s shoulders? I sure wish I had been a fly on the wall to see what produced those footprints. Or maybe I shouldn’t wish that.  Ignorance can be bliss.

[Sarah977]

@Pat271  Sometimes I think guests do things like this just to screw with hosts' heads. "This'll probably keep em up at night wondering, haha."

Like maybe those logs in the nettles. "Hahaha, she'll really have to suit up good to wade through those nettles."

[Laura2592]

Hmmm.  Let me think....

Scissors behind the toilet.  

All the cleaning supplies under one bed. Took a minute to locate them.

A paring knife in the shower. I don't really want to think about the re-enactment of Psycho, so I'm hoping someone just wanted to peel a potato while they washed up.

All of the table lamps in a row on a table in the laundry room. All. Of. Them.