How to preserve furniture/house items

[Jessica1378]

I’m about a year and a half into hosting. I was initially extremely worried (but still excited) about hosting since I wasn’t 100% sure I could trust others to behave in my home. I quickly learned to change my settings to have to approve bookings and haven’t had much trouble.

However, I’m noticing that people aren’t taking the best care of my furniture (sofa, rugs, end tables) or bath towels and was wondering if anyone had an tricks, tips or advice or how to make things last longer?

I’ve found stains on the sofa and rugs, dried up food on the rugs, some sheets have what looks like grease stains, towels have bleach marks... things like that.

Any tips would be appreciated! Thanks!

[Ann72]

@Jessica1378  Your place is lovely!  The only thing I can suggest is to raise your price.  If you charge more, you'll have enough income to cover "cost-of-doing-business" losses or cleaning, and you might find you attract people who are more accustomed to quality and treat things better.    You can have really nice guests at your price point but some might be quite young and inexperienced with home ownership and maintaining things in good condition.

And there are times when you might have to be very direct.  I have a velvet sofa in my cabin and I put this sentence in the house manual:  "If you sleep or have sex on the sofa, put a sheet on it first."  I mean...

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Jessica1378 

Agree with @Ann72 that you need to be direct and specific about certain dos and don'ts. Of course..... it won't guarantee the guests will respect those rules but at least it is grounds for requesting damage pay to the guests if it comes to that. And you should always assume extreme wear-and-tear. After becoming a host I realized there is a reason why hotels use commercial grade products 😆 

I have a really nice (expensive) fabric sofa that my mom bought me as a house-warming gift when I bought my first home.... and I chose it when I wasn't considering hosting. So while setting up the guest room, one of the first things I did was get slip covers as a 1st layer of protection. I have a small sign on the side table - No food on the sofa please 😊  - and make all this clear in the house rules that in case of spills guests will be charged for professional cleaning. I specifically state ONLY dry snacks such as trail mix or crackers along with water or coffee/tea is allowed to be consumed on or near the sofa. Anything that can leave food stains on the sofa must be eaten while seated at the kitchen table. (I almost had a heart attack when I caught one of my guests taking a bowl of ramyeon noodles to the sofa. Thank goodness I was there to stop her and very firmly remind her about no eating on the sofa and TOLD her to eat at the kitchen table.) Also, most of the rugs or floor mats I have are machine-washable and I don't allow guests to do laundry of our guest sheets/bedding/towels to ensure it's always done to our standards but more because a lot of people do not know to do laundry properly and could just end up damaging items or permanently setting the stains.  

[Sarah977]

Guests won't generally look after things the way you would. So try to come up with ways to mitigate damage. Jessica's given you some good tips. Washable slipcovers for upholstered furniture, you can get glass or plexiglass tops for end tables so guests can't damage the wood, and study up on laundry hacks for pre-treating and removing various types of stains from linens and towels (of course you can't do much about bleach marks except don't leave any bleach around for guests to have access to). Small area rugs, with no-skid underlay which are machine washable are preferable to large area rugs. And if possible, have spares that can be switched out between bookings so you aren't pressured to try to get things clean in a short time frame.

It's also not a bad idea to leave some clean but not good towels (stained or threadbare) somewhere and let the guests know to use those for mopping up spills or anything else rather than using your good bath or kitchen towels for such things.

@Jessica1378