Is your STR cleaning closet giving you headaches? Maybe you’re doing it wrong.
I had a meeting with a potential new client the other day. It was a very eye-opening conversation.
He was an experienced host himself, having managed his own home for years; but a change in life circumstances had made him unable to continue managing the space, and he’d decided to look for a manager.
We were sitting there at the cleaning closet, discussing restocking needs and such, when he made a comment that took me by surprise.
“The closet needs to be locked,” he said, “so you’ll have to come by for every turnover to let the cleaner in.”
What??
No wonder he had started to get fed up with hosting.
Right now I’ve got a dozen listings, some of them over an hour from my home. There’s no way in hell I’d even consider going to every property after a guest checks out just to let the cleaner into the cleaning closet.
I just don’t understand why some hosts do that to themselves.
If you’re going to hire someone to clean your property, you need to have enough faith in them to trust that they’ll do right by you. And I understand that this is going to rule some potential cleaners out; but that’s ok.
Do the work on the front end to vett your cleaners so that you can relax and trust them to do their job after you’ve hired them.
And you should never ever have the only key to a cleaning closet. I just don’t understand why anyone would ever think that is a good idea.
Put a lockbox with a key in it on the property and give your cleaner the code. If you’re worried about her losing the key, get a hasp lock with a combination padlock. If you don’t want guests to see it, hide it somewhere they wouldn’t look.
Remember, if you’re trusting your cleaner enough to be alone in your home, you should trust them enough to have access to the keys.
There certainly are tedious parts to this business. But coming over in between every cleaning shouldn’t be one of them. Do yourself a favor and make your STR cleaning closet a simple solution.