Need to do a mini-rant

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

Well......Henry just called me........FUMING........to let me know when he stepped out of his study around 11:30pm to go to the kitchen for some food, he was almost blinded by EVERY SINGLE LIGHT BLAZING in the kitchen + living room with our current guest sprawled on the sofa watching a movie on his laptop. Dishes from the dinner he cooked and ate (several hrs ago) were still piled up in the sink and because he didn't wash the coffee cup properly before setting it on the dish drying rack there was a ginormus coffee stain on the drip dry rack where we place CLEAN dishes. 

Henry isn't really a talker or a people person (I usually handle this part of the hosting responsibilities) and he told me he didn't trust himself to be "nice" so he just took a "lead by example" approach by turning all the lights in the kitchen off, turned off half of the lights in the living room, placed the dirty coffee cup back in the sink with the guest's other dirty dishes, cleaned the stain on the dish rack....... then got a bag of chips and a beer which he took back to the study........ and then he ranted while I listened. (I've been totally swamped at work and wasn't able to go home this weekend..... boohoo~) 

Henry's last words today......... I'd rather we have an empty room for 4 months than host another european male in his 20s ever again~!!!!!!! 

I can't say I blame him. Sigh~~~~~~~~

Mini-rant over. 

[Laurel47]

Leaving lights a blazing doesn’t seem to be unique to millennials. I have found the majority of my guests think nothing of leaving most lights on regardless if they are home or not. Even the bathroom light with a switch right next to the door. I’ve had guests who I’m fairly certain never turned the living room lights off their entire stay. I have a night light in the kitchen, hall and bathroom.   My electric has gone up significantly since going from long term tenants to short term. I honestly don’t get it. 

[Marion263]

Hi

Could someone inform us. About power use. We have heating on for our guests, hot water etc.

Our guest from Japan was lovely but never used the big towels laid out for her. Also said our house was warm. Are people quite frugel about fuel. If you stay with us we want you to be cozy.

Cheers Marion and James

[Sandra126]

@Marion263, some hosts are running a cool house, others not. But complaints will have to be fielded if guests are freezing. Good on you for having it toasty inside, I do the same. Fire blazing for every arrival.

Some guests don't like big towels maybe? Some bring their own too.

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Marion263 

Related to towels, I mentioned this in a different post before...... in Asia (Korea and Japan) large bath towels are not commonly used. They generate larger loads of laundry and take forever to dry and take up a lot of space for storage. Myself included, many Asians will prefer to use several hand towels instead of one large bath towel. It's just a matter of preference and habit 🙂 

Hope this helps~

[Sarah977]

@Marion263  Well, that's nice to hear. There have been several threads on heating on this forum over time and it always seemed that all the British hosts were super stingey with heat, wanting to turn it completely off at night, and have it turned down low during the day, expecting their guests to be wearing bulky sweaters in the house and piled with blankets at night, and wake up to a freezing cold room. I figured I'd never go to that part of the world outside of the warmest of summer months or I'd be miserable everywhere.

I understand that heating is quite expensive over there, and I try to conserve resources as much as posible myself, i.e. not be wasteful, but I wouldn't enjoy a holiday if I was always cold.

[Marit-Anne0]

@Marion0

Japanese consider it unhealthy to be too hot.  Cannot say what is considered too hot as it were over 30 degress and very humid at the time when I visited.  However, it was the time to complain about the heat, run the aircondition and order noodles on ice 🙂  My relatives did not run the aircon, but the church hall below had to have aircon running or the Japanese would not come. 

I brought some old and flimsy towels from home intended for a stay at a mountain cottage, towels that I had planned to bin at the end of my stay.  They never ended in the bin because they were thin and would dry quickly.  

[Lawrene0]

It was driving me crazy here that guests were leaving the battery-powered lights in the treehouse on all night. They would forget to turn them off once dawn arrived, so I would find everything blazing when I went in to clean after noon checkout. I come from the countryside and had no idea there were people who are that afraid of the dark. And who are that willing to attract moths and midges all night... 

This was not a problem in our early years, but it hit its peak last summer. We were going through batteries like mad.

So we put in a solar light. 

That's not the answer for everyone, but if you have a similar setup, I cannot recommend this solution highly enough. I'm wonderfully calm now. 🙂

[Paulette23]

I straddle two different geographic and cultural enviromenments (Canadian and Greek) in managing/renting my properties and generally find Canadians far more progressive in recycling activities and environmental awareness than Greeks.

However, one has to be mindful of water consumption on the little Greek island where my house is located: water is delivered twice weekly into my cistern and rather expensive. On a couple of occasions, during peak August tourist season, I've had to scramble to find and pay for emergency supplies on the "black market." This despite warning tourists they can't take half-hour showers. Even some Athenian guests don't get it, taking ages to rinse saltwater out of their lustrous locks 🙂

So that's made me much more conscious of how wasteful we can be with water in Canada. 

I have both a son and daughter, both in their 20s, and I'm impressed with their level of knowledge and commitment to recycling, minimizing plastic use etc. My daughter, whom I've dubbed the "eco-Nazi," harangues (aka educates) me whenever she sees me do mindless things like use individual plastic bags for produce at the grocery store! I appreciate learning from this aware generation!

As for lights, again I don't believe generalizations serve us well. I just had a female guest leave her bedroom lamps on all weekend, even though she was barely here, not even sleeping here (at the boyfriend's, I'm guessing). Another female guest left to run errands a couple of hours ago and left her lights on, even though it's broad daylight. Meanwhile, I recently hosted my first gay (male) couple and they were the only guests to ever turn off all the  lights when they came home (without my asking them to).

I might resort to the suggestion to substitute LED bulbs, talk to them or leave a polite note somewhere prominent.