Not to clean the holiday cottage?

[softlysoftly]

Due to leave tomorrow and having a disagreement with DM.

I think that you should vac the main living room floor, make sure there aren't any stains on the loos, wipe the kitchen sides down and clear any food.

DM wants to clean totally, I'm talking vac all floors (huge 4 bed 2 reception room barn) polishing tables, gloves on and hands down loo (4 loos), she's been and bought hob cleaner, we've only cooked on it once!


So who's right?

[budgiegirl]

My parents own a holiday apartment in Spain. Guests are expected to leave the place tidy, but not nessesarily clean. So all bins should be emptied, fridge and all food cleared, and all washing up done and put away, even if the breakfast things have to be hand washed rather than using the dishwasher. But there's no point hoovering, the cleaners will do this anyway. Stripping beds is not necessary, but is appreciated!

[ICanSeeTheSun]

I always leave the place pristine, I dislike the thought of people cleaning up after me.

All the cleaner needs to do is make the beds after I leave.

[Alonglongway]

We are just back from a cottage where the instructions were as others have said above - basically tidy, washing up done, leftover food thrown away. That seemed very fair. Planned to strip beds but got a dawn email cancelling our flight so it all got a bit chaotic.

[Thruaglassdarkly]

YANBU - I am about to buy two holiday lets and will factor the cleaning of them both after every client in with the costs. You should NOT clean. End of. That is part of the package in my books. It is my job to sort that, not my guests.

[ColdCottage]

It depends what the contract days.

Some say leave as you find it, in which case your DM is right (though oven cleaner is a little OTT, as is polish). If however your contract includes a cleaner after then you are correct.

[GoblinLittleOwl]

Check what the agreement says. Twice in the past we have had to clean the holiday let from top to bottom (abroad) supervised by the letting agents; I think they were supposed to hire a cleaner but pocketed the money and made the 'guests' do it with threats about how there were blacklists for occupiers who didn't clean to a sufficiently high standard. We didn't use them again.

[whois]

Total waste of time cleaning, the cleaners who come in afterwards have to redo everything anyway to be sure.

[2rebecca]

I leave bathroom/s tidy, clear kitchen including all stuff out of fridge and freezer and clean microwave, vaccuum all floors and wipe any grubby surfaces.
I don't clean bathroom with special creams and clean the toilet and thoroughly clean the fridge.
Holiday cottages employ cleaners and I see those bits as their job, mine is to make it superficially clean and tidy.

[Vycount]

Wow! As I said earlier, I owned a holiday cottage and I wouldn't expect departing guests to do more than leave things tidy. I've stayed in plenty of holiday lets and I've never done more than that. Those of you who do a full clean, you're wasting your time, the cleaner will come in and do it anyway.
I mean, if your business was on the line would you really rely on renters to make sure the property was ready for the next tenants?

[Pico2]

I wonder if the people who clean are the type of people who would never have a cleaner for their own house or would, but would clean before the cleaner came.

[kentishgirl]

Leave it tidy, but I find it really weird to clean it. People who think they are doing the cleaners a favour aren't, the cleaner still cleans it anyway. They have been paid to.

I think it's a hangover from that old poverty mentality 'we may not have food in the cupboard but by god I scrub the doorstep every day so we are respectable' thing. Like something out of a Catherine Cookson novel. I find it bizarre, and down to insecurity/not feeling 'good enough'/Hyacinth Bouquet behaviour.

If you pay for a service, where's the shame in using it? You don't wash up for yourself at a restaurant, clear the table, take the linen off. You don't stay at a hotel then demand a hoover and all the cleaning stuff to clean your room before you leave. You don't hoover the airplane before you disembark. You don't get out of a swimming pool and ask for the tile cleaner stuff.

[WanderingTrolley1]

I always clean, hoover and tidy before departure - regardless of whether it's going to be cleaned again.

[WanderingTrolley1]

DP thinks otherwise.

[Pobblewhohasnotoes]

Why would you clean it when a cleaner is going to come in anyway?

I tidy up, make sure the kitchen is clean, food thrown away and bins empty, towels all together but that's it. I don't see the point of hoovering or cleaning the bathrooms.

[JustAShopGirl]

I'm on holiday to get away from the cleaning.

I just keep it tidy, put out the bins at the end of the let and make sure the dishes are clean or in the dishwasher.

Have never had a complaint (or in the dim and distant past when deposits were taken, had any deposit money kept)

[stoppedlurking56]

Wow, the Brits! Cleaning when you're already paying for it. Bonkers.

[GreenPetal94]

Don't leave mess everywhere or dirty dishes. But cleaning is pointless as the cleaner will just hoover and dust everything over again.

The exception to this is informal lets which are assuming you will clean and state this. Then you should clean it for the next people.

[mrsmaturin]

I've done self catering for years. We always strip the beds, empty bins, do washing up and a quick wipe down of kitchen. I usually run the hoover over too very quickly. That's it.

[pommedeterre]

Yes, don't leave in a state. Leave no dirty dishes etc. Leave everything where it was when you've arrived and strip beds if you have time.

You are paying for a cleaner in your cost!

[tobiasfunke]

This probably is because your DM is older. When I was a child and even 10-15 years ago you had to clean your holiday cottage and they usually didn't have a cleaner in between. Owners would walk you round the last day and check everything was cleaned. It would always state wether cleaning was included or not.
Occasionally there would be an extra charge if you wanted to get the cleaning done. There are still gites in France that charge extra for cleaning.
It's only fairly recently that the cleaning seems to be included as standard.

[tobiasfunke]

And yes you use to spend your last day cleaning the place. Its why we only started doing 2 centre holidays when we go away about 7 years ago because we knew otherwise 2 days would be lost to cleaning and packing up.

[Vycount]

For those who clean the cottage thoroughly, can I ask - why? And having read this thread, will you carry on?

I can understand if there was something in the hire contract, but in many years of renting holiday cottages myself I've never encountered that.

[grandtheftmanual]

This is one of my pet peeves with holiday cottages, especially in France. Surely if you rent out a holiday cottage as a business, part of the job is to clean it thoroughly between guests. I do not want to spend the last morning of a holiday stressing over cleaning and completely undoing the relaxing time we've just spent.

We always wipe/vac and clean bathrooms before we leave, but do not do a deep clean.

We rented a cottage in France a couple of years ago, cleaned as we usually do, and the owner came to check, told me it wasn't cleaned well enough, then followed me around while I brushed long blonde hairs from underneath the bed. Problem is, DH has a greying number 2 cut and I have short dark brown hair......... it really left a sour taste being berated for not cleaning someone else's mess.

[TravellingToad]

I rent out holiday cottages.

If you clean the holiday cottage before you leave you're wasting your time. I wont know that you've cleaned it and so just to be safe I will do it all again. How do I know if the loo is clean (ie bleached) or just skid free? I don't. So i'll do it again.

I appreciate it left tidy. I love the beds stripped. But I will always spray all the surfaces again etc etc as I can't be sure if you've done it.

[gordyslovesheep]

well I have been self catering for 20 plus years and never been anywhere that didn't have a cupboard full of bog rolls! Obviously the recession is biting!