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?

Not such a little thing, but no means (apart from a washing line) of drying laundry and esp. beach towels! - in a far from cheap, very obviously seaside property obviously targeted at families with children. In the U.K., where nobody can ever rely on washing-line weather..

I can perhaps understand no tumble dryer, since I gather people wreck them by putting sandy towels in, but you'd think they could run to a heated airer like e.g. Lakeland's.

Oh, and just once, no loo paper - at all! in a property with 2 loos, when we'd just arrived and I was bursting. Luckily there was a shop nearby for dh's emergency mission of mercy.

I usually find that kitchen surfaces are far too cluttered with "stuff", and end up putting everything in cupboards. One place we went to had the fridge turned off. We were instructed to turn it off when we left. Why?

No tea towels, voiles instead of curtains, crap mattresses (once had to sleep on the floor on a cot mattress as the bed in our very expensive cottage was rock hard and agonising to sleep on) and “dog friendly” but dog has to stay on a lead in the garden, coz that’s really relaxing!

We don't have lots of the above in our own home!
My absolute number one requirement is cleanliness including the fridge!
When looking at details I always check that there is an open fire or wood burner as I have been cold too often on holiday with inadequate or too complex heating systems.
I am too old now to choose a holiday home to which I have to bring bed linen or arrange to pick some up at the bakery down the road or similar.
After many , many holidays of this type I bring with us; a few dishwasher tablets and a couple of J cloths, pepper and salt, paper filters for coffee maker ( or rigging one up) , a loo roll , a sharp knife and a corkscrew. Most places have their idiosyncrasies but these items are small and often required. NB I agree with the 4 cups/ 4 cereal bowls/ 4 plates being a pain.

No hooks. There are never any hooks on the back of doors or in the bathroom for towels.

No flat surface in the bathroom to put wash bag on.

No blackout curtains. Grrrrrr.

Not enough plates, mugs etc.

Too many ornaments.

I don't think I'm adding anything new, but:

-kitchen cupboards all full so nowhere to put actual food
-crap plastic kettles which obviously cost about 10p
-glasses the size of thimbles
-not providing bath mats or hand towels, despite saying towels provided. I had to go and buy a bath mat as I didn't want to slip on the tiled floor after my shower
-crappy ornaments littering every surface. I have a toddler so had to go around moving everything up high
-rubbish thin curtains
-duvets and pillows that look and feel lumpy and old
-YY to glass chopping board - I don't own one. Plastic ones cost a few quid from IKEA!
-last place we stayed provided one tea towel for a week and there was no dishwasher. Luckily I'd brought my own too

Underpowered showers which take a month of Sundays to wash shampoo out
Tiny cups which only provide a mouthful of tea.

We stayed in a lovely, comfortable, perfectly located and well equipped cottage a few weeks ago. It had every kitchen utensil you could think of - except a vegetable peeler.

Lack of hooks to hang anything up also irritates me.

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These are great, I always take one with me. They take up very little space. Flip the top bar and a suction cup holds it down.

Places that expect you to clean before you leave. No thanks. I employ a cleaner so that I don’t have to do it at home; I don’t want to have to start vacuuming and scrubbing toilets when I’m on holiday and I’ve paid good money to stay somewhere.

ARGHH the tiny cups! I’m not a character from Brambly Hedge, I need more than a thimbleful of tea.
I took a KNIFE SHARPENER on holiday with us at easter this year. Sharpened all the knives in the cottage. A game changer!!
(Paying it forward for the next guests too!)

We stayed in a yurt about two years ago (does that count). Anyway, it had a log burner and they had left a seriously tiny amount of logs. Probably no more than about 6 small ones. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice until we had gone to bed so DH was up several times in the night collecting wood (it was February and freezing) We had
Paid quite a lot for the yurt and I doubt that 2 big bags of logs would have set them bag much and given that they didn’t they got a pretty crap review from us.

Sheets and blankets instead of duvets. Who the fuck uses those any more?

Thick bedding in warm countries or in hotel rooms where you can't control the heating.

Any 'bed decoration' crap like pillows and that strip of decorative material. I'm no clean freak, but I know that it's not been washed and it's been touched by Other People.

YY to tiny cups. We take proper mugs or buy them in the supermarket/cheap shop so we can have a decent amount of tea or coffee.

No shelves in the shower for toiletries. I've stayed in some places with amazing showers and cubicles spoilt by having to keep toiletries on the floor.

Small balconies. We mainly rent an apartment in the Med/Canaries and literally live on the balcony all the time we are in the accomodation, so it needs to be reasonably spacious.

We take teabags, dishwasher tablets or washing up liquid (in a small bottle in with the toiletries) with us, so aren't bothered if these aren't provided.

One thing I liked the most was the apartment that came with a shopping trolley so we could walk to the supermarket about 10 mins away and bring the booze back with ease. Genius.

^I’m in a lodge/caravan type thing at the moment.

It has a George Forman grill and a blender (?!)

Friend works in an estate agent in southern Spain that does holiday rentals as well as sales and she says that one of the most commonly received complaints from Spanish families is the lack of a blender in the accommodation.

Because they expect to be able to make gazpacho on holiday.

Lack of sockets annoys me particularly beside the bed and beside a mirror.

Also terrible lighting, lights are almost always badly placed and have the dimmest bulbs so you can't see to do your makeup.

Where are all these places with small cups? It doesn't happen to us. That said I don't like drinking large buckets of tea/coffee. I struggle to finish even a small (medium) coffee from Starbucks/Costa.

Properties with multiple bedrooms but only one double / king size bed.

Feather duvets and pillows

Air fresheners to cover up the smell of damp

This has been really interesting reading as we have 3 holiday lets. As far as I'm aware we don't miss out any of the things mentioned but I am going to check how sharp the knives are when we're up that way next!

I once stayed in one where there were cupboards and cupboards of baking equipment and super complex cooking stuff like a blowtorch and one of those water bath things, but no toaster and no chopping board.

Weirdly I've never had the dishwasher tablet/ washing powder pod theft issue in our rental. We just leave a box and replace when they're gone. If anything, the wash pods work the other way round. When I stay there in the summer I have to consolidate them. Tupperware and coat hangers are a different matter. Someone also once stole my really nice garden lamp. We do an inventory at the end of the summer and we do lose stuff throughout the year, but mainly things that were probably broken (crockery, glasses etc).

As someone said upthread, voile curtains. I spent a few days on my own in a barn conversion in an isolated area. I really didn’t like the fact that after dark, I was illuminated and on show to any random passer by.

Rubbish knives/no cooking oil/limescale kettles/tiny wine glasses

The oil and condiment thing is hard. Some people want it. Others say they don’t like/would never use partially used bottles etc.

Just back from a week in a very nice holiday cottage. Took a knife sharpener with me as I’ve had the “blunt knives” experience before. But, we had only one loo roll, only one tea towel (no dishwasher) and very slow WiFi. I also took a decent non stick milk pan (DH loves a latte), my Remoska cooker (my new favourite toy), and supplies of foil/cling film/black bags.

Still love a cottage holiday though.

I'm not bothered about most things tbh. I'm used to France and needing to provide bedding and towels etc so it sends me into a mild panic when we don't have to.
I never go self catering without a box containing our sharp knives, basic supply of herbs, salt, pepper, olive oil, tea towels, dish cloths, bin bags, washing up liquid, soap, dishwasher powder, laundry detergent and loo roll plus another with board games, paper and crayons and stuff.

Places that sleep lots but only have small pans and dishes are annoying though. Especially when in places like the lake district where it is not unreasonable to think your guests may need to cook a metric fucktonne of pasta and a huge apple crumble after climbing hills all day. And I really don't have the car space to take my own. Though I have been known to take things like whisks and cake tins.

We stayed in a maisonette above a shop once. There was a street light outside the bedroom window and the curtains were so thin that during the night you could have read a book without the light on.

The kitchen cupboards looked like someone had been round the bric a brac stall when all the good stuff had gone. Went straight out and bought some mugs.