What little things annoy you in a holiday home?

[Callistone]

We're in a lovely holiday home at the moment, really nice decor, plenty of crockery and cutlery, a food cupboard of cool bags and beach rugs to help yourself too, definitely one to visit again.

However they have provided three dishwasher tablets and no spare bin bags. Hardly the end of the world but for the price of the rental I always get mildly irritated when they are so stingy with something inexpensive like dishwasher tablets. If it was me I'd just have them in stock like washing up liquid.

Anything irritate you?

The seal of our oven is broken therefore can't cook our food in the oven in a predictable way! It took twice as long to cook our part baked baguettes!

Pretty much everything that people have already mentioned, plus kitchen appliances that are excessively complicated (especially cookers) with no user guides.

We’ve been lucky in the cottages we’ve stayed in - not perfect, but no horrors. There was one in Herefordshire that turned out to be a chalet and was far too near the owners’ house, but it was beautifully clean and they left us alone.

One in Norfolk that was expensive but not actually all that clean, lousy WiFi, heating controlled by the owners next door, vacuum cleaner stank when we used it. But quiet, private, the owners sorted the heating problem quickly, and it had a very comfy sofa. So comfy that I tracked down the make and model when I got home and bought two!

Talking of colanders?!?! My DM is an excellent cook and has never had a colander; she just uses the saucepan lid. I hate helping out in the kitchen at her house as , for me, it is a recipie for scalded hands!

Even if you do a simple lunch, like pate and salad, you still need to wash the lettuce...don’t you? I do.

I always bring my own knives and champagne flutes.

I just stayed in a very stylish flat in North America, it was beautiful and very well equipped but there was nowhere to put anything in the bathroom. Just one small towel hook and no flat surfaces to put toothbrush, soap, make up bags etc. We had to line them up on the floor outside.

I also hate places that don’t throw things other guests have left behind away. So there might be 4 tubs of salt in the cupboard, some ancient jars of dried up herbs and a drawer full of carrier bags. At one very large rental (7 families in one house) in Essex I once threw away 2 bin bags full of half empty pasta bags, mustard jars, ketchup bottles, tins of golden syrup etc etc so as to able to wash down the sticky shelves and store the food we had bought. Some holiday!

You can wash lettuce and dry it in a tea towel.

On the vital topic of drying lettuce - I used a salad spinner for the first time recently. Revelation. I’d always avoided as seemed crazy and bulky and colander followed by tea towel seemed to work.
Well blow me - worked a treat. Complete convert (though strangely haven’t yet bought one)

My mum has a lettuce spinner back in the 80s and they weren't a new invention then I don't think?

Ahem. I have two salad spinners.

Beds with a foot board at the bottom, we are both tall and they make the bed cramped,

My mum used a salad spinner back in the 1970s

People had salad spinners in the 80s because they bought them when 'everyone' was having tupperwear parties.

I'm not sure you can rely on the tea towel on holiday to dry your lettuce given how many people have complained about only being supplied with one for the purposes of washing up. Perhaps tea towels need to be added to the packing list?

Thanks willow I will continue my slatternly ways

"We will be taking photos this year (somewhere different!) and we are expected to leave the property in a state clean enough for the next guests to move straight in."
Are you really expected to clean the loo and change the sheets?

I always take a pile of tea towels on self cayering holidays so that I have planty for salad washing and drying dishes. I use my salad spinner pretty much every day at home.

@StealthPolarBear, sorry I didn’t mean to offend. There is nothing ‘slatternly’ about using a shelf. Shelves tend to be clean. Floors on the other hand, not so sure after a day of seven children in and out all day.

🙂

Not at all, I am not serious :) I'd be a hell of a lot more slatternly if we weren't renting the place out, it's the only time I mop!

Blunt knives
Saggy mattresses/too soft mattresses
Lightweight duvets
Feeble shower