@Lisa367
Hi Lisa, nice to see you back here again! Gee with 130 reviews under your belt and Superhost I thought you would be able to tell the rest of us how to fix these problems :-))
Shared spaces are very hard to control! God, I have enough issues and they in another building in the back yard Lisa, not in my house.
I had one guest who cooked up some sausages to eat while on his travels on our barbeque before he left at 8.30 in the morning. At 10pm that night I just happen to come down the garden past the barbeque and noticed it was still running, chewing through our precious bottle gas......What th!
The rule of thumb is, if a guest can abuse your hospitality they will. They will go out for the day and leave the airconditioning running....they will take those 5 cakes of boxed Dove soap they found in the restock cupboard....they will turn that tea cup around so you won't see the handle they broke off and threw out in the garbage.
Guest figure they are paying you good money, they have an entitlement!
Try to allocate a guest cupboard and tell them the rest of the kitchen cupboards are your personal space....like your undies drawer and not to be rifled threw, out of bounds.
Is the washing machine in a laundry with a lockable door? If not then there is a powerpoint lock available on the market! You simply pull the power cord out of the power point and put a lock on the plug and that then stops them from using your washer. All you need to say is you don't let guests use it because too much damage has resulted in the past...you aren't being nasty, just preventing problems.
Same with your terrace, does that have locked door access?
Try to look on guests as paying clients Lisa, not friends, don't expect that they will treat you and your possessions as a friend........ they won't!
And if you do find the magic formula on how to deal with them.....will you let the rest of us know!!
Cheers.....Rob