The terrible cook in who stays in your space...

[Laura2592]

We have a full kitchen in our space from which we are offsite. Most guests make use of it-- some want to cook very extensive meals or bake lots of goodies. Mostly this is fine. But now and again we get someone who clearly is not a great cook and does a lot of burning/grease splatter/mess. Someone who uses every single utensil, tool, bowl, pot and pan in two days. Someone who leaves charcoal bits of what used to be food in the oven. 

My husband jokes that we should put up a sign "If you tried out for "Worst Cook in America" or "Nailed it!" please do not use our kitchen. Here are some menus for local take out." How would you broach the topic of appropriate kitchen use and clean up? This is a handful of people but the clean up is enough to send my cleaners running away screaming. In fact, the last was so bad she asked if we could come finish cleaning the oven because she just ran out of time and it still wasn't good enough. 

[Alexandra316]

@Laura2592I use the wording that my kitchen isn't a good place to make a gourmet meal, but it's great for making a snack or reheating some food. Maybe something similar would work? It's a tough one. 

I just added a barbeque and I added a line to my rules that says: "Please keep it simple. Hotdogs and burgers? Great. Dad's famous 8-hour brisket? Maybe save that recipe for home." One of the worst cooking messes I ever had to clean up from a guest was on my barbeque at the cottage. I have no idea what it was that they cooked, but I assume they just threw on an entire bag of sugar. It took two hours to fully clean out. 

It's definitely a difficult one to address. "Your mom doesn't live here!" has definitely lost its shine. 

[Chris232]

@Laura2592  @Alexandra316 

I used to allow the full use of the kitchen until I had a run of wannabe Jamie Olivers.

After scraping the last pancake off the ceiling I had enough. The stress was not worth it.

Now the kitchen is basically off limits, if I get asked then the best I will offer is the Microwave.

Then there are the guests whom come back every month, having built up a trust levels then they have free rein, on the understanding it is a privilge .

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

I would never buy and install the full kitchen in my Airbnb... but we got it when we purchased the apartment. I didn't wait for the first bad cook, I immediately took out the grid from the oven and put a note "Out of order" inside it.  To avoid any misunderstandings I even photoshopped the oven from the kitchen picture 😄  With the same day turnovers, we just don't have enough time to scrub the oven between guests.

A few guests were disappointed but the average stay is just a few days anyway so they all managed to survive without it with a help of numerous restaurants near by 😛

[Laura2592]

@Branka-and-Silvia0my husband says our next Airbnb should consist only of a bed and a shower. No kitchen, no fireplace, no yard, no bathtub, no sofa 🙂

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

yeeey! minimalism 😄

[Anonymous]

@Laura2592 Some great cooks are disastrous cleaners, some tidy kitchen hands can't even boil water, and most people have no idea where they fall on this spectrum from the perspective of others. You can't make a rule that regulates guests' cooking skills.

But what you can do is communicate as plainly as possible what you expect them to do when they've finished preparing their meals. Washing dishes, sanitizing surfaces, using the ventilation, and putting their stuff away - this is a pretty basic checklist that makes life easier for for you and also helps your unskilled cooks understand how to be a responsible kitchen sharer. Just make sure you provide the right materials and set clear boundaries so that your instructions are as easy to follow as possible. If their meal fails, it's OK - you don't have to eat it — but it should still end in a clean and orderly kitchen. 

[Jessica-and-Henry0]

@Laura2592 

I agree with @Anonymous in that it really is up to the guest to decide if they want to cook meals in the kitchen provided for guest use or not cook at all if they don't want to BUT if they do want to cook it should be clear to them they are responsible for cleaning up after themselves. With that said, people have different "standards" of what CLEAN entails, so it would be best to be as specific as possible. 

Clean the oven after use to some people could mean a wipe barely passing over the inside of an oven with splatters and food bits still stuck on surfaces. Henry and I have a shared home private room and we had a few guests who seemed to think 'please clean up crumbs and splatters from the counter-top (after cooking) and table (after eating)' as use their hands to brush off whatever is on the surface to the floor (sigh~). 

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Laura2592 I think @Anonymous has a great point about how difficult it would be to regulate someone's cooking skills if you are allowing access to the kitchen. 

Here are a couple of possible solutions that we have tried that have been successful for us so far. First, when we set up our listing, we decided not to have a cleaning fee, on the recommendation of a trusted fellow host, who said that her experience with cleaning fees was that it was basically a license for people to be slobs. Instead, we went with no cleaning fee, and we now emphasise strongly, in our manual, our house rules (posted in plain sight, with this one listed first) and in all of our correspondence to the guests, that we expect them to clean the place thoroughly before they leave. The day before they check out, we send them a short email--always on the Airbnb site--with checkout instructions and a friendly reminder to leave the place clean. To date, only one guest has left the place messy, but it wasn't the kitchen or barbecue area. Rather, they had infant kids who made a mess everywhere (story for another post), and they didn't bother cleaning up after them. But otherwise, this method has worked out well for us--so far, at least.

You also didn't mention whether or not your property is located near restaurants. If it isn't, then it is natural that guests will often choose to cook there. If it is, however, then what you can do is what we've done, which is to provide a list of the nearest restaurants, cafes and pubs in our house manual, as well as places that prepare great takeaway--and we offer an extended list of restaurants in the wider area, at check-in, to anyone who requests it in advance. (We always ask them first if there's anything they would like to know about, such as restaurants and tourist sites.) Not only do they always seem to appreciate the effort we've made here, but their decision to eat out frequently and/or to buy food from restaurants or shops and bring it home with them ultimately means they end up spending less time cooking--and that makes things easier for clean-up.

Anyway, these are some ways we've used to both assure our place is left clean and to minimise the desire for guests to use the kitchen and barbecue area. It can also help you come across as helpful and supportive rather than critical and judgmental (which is always a fine line you walk when you start telling people how they are supposed to cook).

We hope that you find some of these suggestions useful. Good luck!

[Sarah977]

I was once cleaning the next door cabin (not mine, my neighbor's-I look after it for her) after a long-term renter moved out. She left it pretty grubby, so I was doing a major clean. I opened the oven, screamed (even though I was all alone) and literally jumped back about 6 ft. It looked like there was a big dead rat in there. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a baked sweet potato she had forgotten about. It was grey and fuzzy and it had a long root end on it that looked just like a rat tail.

How about "If you're not willing to clean it, don't use it".