Guest threw out contents of fridge

[Alex-and-Alex0]

So, I had some guest check in today for a total of 3 days (entire house rental). I received a message as I was leaving work of "...We found a bunch of groceries in the fridge though from previous guest that we are discarding." I was kinda thrown off because I did a sweep of my fridge and took everything out of there besides condiments and milk, which were all located in the door of the fridge leaving them more than enough space.  When I stopped in and met them they were nice and I apologized about the confusion. I'm just wondering if this is normal behavior or if this has happened to anyone before. I just cant wrap my head around going into someone's home and throwing out full bottles of condiments and half a gallon of milk... 

[Sarah977]

@Alex-and-Alex0   While it is of course quite wasteful, if you are renting out an entire space, the fridge should be empty of everything except some full ice cube trays in the freezer and whatever you provide fresh for each guest. While many young men, in my experience,  would probably be thrilled to find and eat whatever leftovers they found, most guests would just think that food was left by the previous guests and not want to use it. Who knows if someone else licked the mayonaisse knife and then stuck it back in the jar? Same with milk- guests have no idea how long it's been in there, aren't about to check it out, and it's off-putting. 

If you normally live in the place when you don't have guests and that was your food, you would need to leave a note on the fridge informing guests of that and asking them to please not toss it. If you leave them some snacks of fresh milk or cream for coffee, you should write that on the note as well- that those things were put there fresh by you for their use.

[Tim-and-Holly0]

@Alex-and-Alex0:

We leave our fridges stocked with condiments. We've had guests compliment us in that respect as they do not want to purchase a bottle of ketchup or mayo for a couple of nights stay. We've actually only had one complaint about it, but then those guests complained about everything about the home. We intend to continue the condiment practice.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Alex-and-Alex0 

For entire home listings, unless the host mentioned otherwise I would expect the fridge to be empty except for any complimentary items (which are unopened) the host left for us. It's not about how much space there is in the fridge but rather managing expectations. I would probably toss anything that "I" thought did not belong in the fridge that is supposed to be for my personal use for the next couple days, unless someone told me specifically to "do not remove".

Our listing is a private room listing, so we are clear to guests that we give them 1 shelf in our fridge and they are welcome to use whatever condiments we have on the condiment shelf. The other areas are for host private items and off limits. We've labled the shelves so there is no confusion.

[Paul1255]

@Alex-and-Alex0  I hope you are well!

It is tricky, as different guests have different expectations, and different hosts do different things!

For my listings that are never owner-occupied, I leave the fridges totally empty, the freezer with fresh ice as @Sarah977 says.

If guests leave behind sealed items that would be useful to the next guests I will leave these in place after checking seals and dates, and talk to the guest about them in the home tour. If they don't wish to have them I take them home for myself- I hate food wastage.

For listings that I support where the owners are in residence when guests aren't staying, the owners items that won't perish during the guests stay, stay on a specific shelf in the fridge and I point this out to guests so that it's clear whose it is and what it's for- I would never expect a host to throw away their own, perfectly good food items so a guest could have a empty fridge for their stay.

Paul.