What are your cleaning tips?

Lizzie
Former Community Manager
Former Community Manager
London, United Kingdom

What are your cleaning tips?

Cleanliness Tips

 

Hello Everyone,

 

I hope you are all good. 🙂

 

The cleaning process is something that all hosts go through, either by looking after it yourself or managing a person/company to take care of it. 

 

A few months ago, @Sandra126 created a great thread on ways to clean grouting, which led to a more general topic on how to remove stains, where many of you shared fantastic tips. With this in mind, I thought it would be useful to start a new discussion where we can share tips with each other on how you prepare your listing ready to receive your guests. 

 

How do you prepare your bathroom, shower, floors/carpets and towels/linens ready to receive your guests? Do you do it yourself or you use a cleaning service? Are there any special details you always make sure are ready? Do you normally have quite a tight turnaround to get your listing ready for your next guest?

 

Please share your tips below and I looking forward to hearing your responses. 🙂

 

Thanks,

 

Lizzie


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78 Replies 78
Kelly149
Level 10
Austin, TX

My best "tip" is a robot vacuum. As I'm going about the barn stripping beds & washing surfaces, my roomba is dutifully picking up crumbs & dust bunnies. I check at the end to see if I approve of the job done by the robot and do occasionally need to sweep or hand vacuum something it missed but for the most part it does a complete job while I'm completing other tasks. And it's probably cleaner under my beds & couches than it is in a space hand vacuumed

@Kelly149

Vacuum robot....great idea!! I have been thinking aboout it but the upfront costs are very high. I have been using professional cleaners and they charge me a ton. So I ordered a vaccum robot today. Will let us know as soon as I use it for the first cleaning. You seem to have had a good experience using vacuum robots.

@Dev4 Yes, it is not an inexpensive piece of equipment & it is just a machine so must be supervised to confirm that it is thorough and not stuck somewhere. But, such a time saver, hope you find it helpful. Btw, here Costco is almost always best purchase price for these

J-Renato0
Level 10
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them. - Benjamin Disraeli #quotes #quotations

@J-Renato0

 

And surprisingly, I don’t know of any vocational training school for training cleaners, having run a food manufacturing business for 12 years, I found the most difficult staff to replace with the prerequisite skills where the cleaning staff.

 

Regards

Cormac

J-Renato0
Level 10
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

@Cormac0

Good point. I think that, in fact a business owner has to train and instruct its staff in terms of cleaneness.

As a starting point, I think a good idea is to have always a check list with everything that is important in terms of cleaneness.

If it is the host who does the cleaning, the checklist is good as well. The host will not forget anything that is necessary to do.

Cheers, Jose Renato

@J-Renato0

A check-list is as good as it is followed. I work with a professional cleaning company. After couple of bad reviews on cleanliness, we decided to implement check-lists and get the cleaner to sign it before leaving. Interestingly, cleaners that were not thorough continued to miss items in the check-list. Learnt an important lesson - "workers will not follow guidance just because it is on a piece of paper."

Spots checks, inspections and asking cleaners to send photos has helped us iron out a few issues. Ultimately, it comes down to the personality of the person; either they are thorough and care about what they are doing or not. 

Branka-and-Silvia0
Level 10
Zagreb, Croatia

I don't know why some hosts thinks that cleaning fee is a hidden cost and that guest will not see the exact price in search results? And what with additional guests price? Is it a hidden cost too???

 

That is not true. CLEANING FEE IS NOT A HIDDEN FEE !

 

If the guest is searching WITHOUT dates and number of guests selected then he will see NIGHTLY BASE PRICE without cleaning fee and additional price for more guests

But if he is searching WITH  dates and number of guests selected he will see THE AVERAGE NIGHTLY PRICE for that period, for exact no. of guests and with cleaning fee

 

For example if :

base price is 40€,

nightly price in April is 50€,

additional price for extra guests after 2 is 10€ 

cleaning fee is 20€,

then....

without dates and no. of guests selected , the nightly price shown in search will be 40€/night 

but....

with selected  1 night / 5 people in April  the price shown in search will be (80x1 + 20 ) : 1 = 100€ per night 

with selected  10 nights / 5 people in April the price shown in search will be (80x10 + 20 ) : 10 = 82€ per night 

 

So, there are no surprises

Jane255
Level 3
Saint Simons Island, GA

I like to use disinfecting wipes...and I pay particular attention to all doorknobs (I was a high school biology teacher and we cultured more bacteria off doorknobs than toilet seats!)

 

What do you guys use to keep white sheets bright white?

Thank you Jane!

 

I urge all hosts to make antibacterial/antiviral wipes and cleaners part of your regular routines. Worth the price and potential smell. I use them for all surfaces I imagine that a guest might have touched. I want no guest becoming ill as a result of staying in my place.

 

 I went through taking care of my son, his wife, and 8 month old baby while they all had noro-virus. I eventually came down with it as well. I want no one to ever experience what we went through. The memory is enough to make me clean and disinfect like crazy.

 

Lemon juice, white vinegar, and last resort, diluted bleach on the stain alone. Drying in sunlight goes a long way towards brightening. It also does a better job of smoothing sheets and they are softer than when dried in a dryer. Do not use softener sheets! There are carcinogens in them. Not only that...towels dried with sofening sheets are not absorbent. I learned this from a caterer who needed tea towels to be absorbent. 

Sandy71
Level 2
Easton, MD

I do have someone come in and clean once a month but in between I do it myself. Linens and towels washed in hot water of course. One of my little things I like to do is to spray the bedroom and bath with lavender water. I try to stay away from chemicals and this is a germ killing boost as well as a relaxing fresh scent.

 

I have hotel soap and shampoo as well as pump dispencers in the bathroom.

 

I ask guests to let me know if they need anything. I find tht they will go out and purchase what they want but I want them to know that I want their stay to be relaxing and comfortable.

 

Sandy

Very nice touches.

Except some people (like me) hate lavender scent. It makes me think I'm at my grandma's house - not especially relaxing - or a pretentious spa. I prefer citrus, herb (lemongrass, sage) or "ocean" type scents, but what have other people experienced?

Janet79
Level 4
United Kingdom

Hi All, I'm loving the cleaning tips, a great insight into fellow host's cleaning regimes.  Here are some of my tips.  Bad smells and hairs are my bete noires. 

 

I always vaccuum the bathroom with the brush attachment EVERYWHERE before I clean it to de-hair as much as possible.  I also take out and clean the shower trap/plug and scrub this out with a toothbrush.  I put a capful of bleach down the shower waste before putting them back.

 

I use the brush attachment on my vaccuum cleaner to hoover inside the bedroom drawers (I always seem to find pesky hairs in drawers) then wipe out with a damp e-cloth.  Same goes for the floor of the wardrobe.  I then leave the wardrobe doors open while preparing the rest of the room to air it out.

 

I find hairs on clean linen sometimes while making the bed; use a sticky clothes roller to pick them up.

 

To clean a smelly microwave oven:

Place half a lemon in a bowl of cold water.  Cook it in microwave on highest setting for 10 minutes.  While the oven is still hot, wipe out with a damp E-cloth.  Leave the oven door open to further air it out.

 

Getting rid of bad odours in a kitchen:

To a saucepan of cold water add a couple of tablespoons of white vinegar and a chopped up lemon.  Bring to the boil then turn heat down and simmer for as long as possible (don't let pan dry out).

 

To clean your washing machine.

Every couple of months run the machine on a 90 degree wash without detergent.  When the cycle has finished wipe out the inside, door and rubber seal.  Remove and clean the draw where the detergent goes.  Wipe the top and exterior. Leave the door open to air out the machine.

 

If anyone has any good de-hairing tips; please share.

 

 

Lana7
Level 4
London, United Kingdom

Hair is my nemisis !  but I think I've faught it to a draw finally!

 

 Before I launder linnen, I shake it out my window to get rid of the stray hair that will just stay on my clean sheets.

 

  I vacuum the room with the brush attachment, but as I have a short pile carpet, this doesn't usually get all the hair.  So after hoovering, I then get the squeegee from the shower, and get on my hands and knees and squeegee the carpet - I ALWAYS get a lot of hair  - no matter how much i'm vacuumed!  The squeegee works a wonder - it's amazing how much you can get after just a 2 night stay.

 

Instead of using a mop in my bathroom,  I use an old towel (or microfiber cloth) with a bucket of water and eco-friendly cleaner, and do it on my hands and knees - I have a very small bathroom, so this is a very quick process and where a mop might just move hair back and forth, the old towel seems to get the lot.

 

and on that note,  I think it's time for me to clean my bathroom 🙂

 

- L.

 

The hair is our nemisis! Especially long black hair, because everything in our unit is light colored (flooring, white bedding, white towels, etc). So we have to really keep an eye out for stray hairs and I am continually finding them as I clean the unit, so I came up with something to help me save some time...Rather than everytime I find a hair, picking it up and walking it to the garbage can, I keep a roll of packing tape in our cleaning supplies, I roll some of the tape and stick it to my shirt, then while cleaning the unit, everytime I find a stray hair, I pick it up and stick it to the tape on my shirt, and keep cleaning. At the end, I throw away the tape (along with all of the hair.) Just a simple thing that probably saves me 5 mintues. 🙂