Motel Etiquette

Our daughter works at a motel around the corner from us, cleaning for a few hours a day, two to four days a week. One evening this week, she commented that one room, occupied by one man, was a lot messier than another room, which had been occupied by a couple and their 10-month-old baby. That prompted a question from me as to how you should leave a motel room in order to make it easiest for the cleaners. I’ve stayed so few times in a motel in my life that I really have no clue! She had several tips, and I found the conversation so interesting I decided to write them down.

One pretty obvious thing you should do is to strip the beds of all bedding you’ve used. If you make the bed, it is hard for them to know what has been used and what hasn’t; if you take off the sheets and pillowcases you used, they know exactly what needs to be washed and it saves a lot of time.

If you stay in a room with a kitchen, which all motel rooms in New Zealand seem to have, wash the dishes you used—but leave them on the counter. Otherwise, the cleaner has to sort through the cupboard and determine what needs washed and what is all right. If you leave them on the counter, it’s obvious.

Of course, put your trash in the trash can—and it helps the cleaner if you knot the bag so all they have to do is pull it out. Check through the room for any personal belongings you might be missing, and don’t forget the fridge! One day recently, they found a refrigerator full of food that someone forgot to take along.

And one final tip—make a pile of all the towels and washcloths you used. If there are some you didn’t use, put them in a neat pile on the bed you didn’t use, or somewhere else clean—not on the floor! I don’t know about other motels, but of the three in Cheviot, the other two allow only 30 minutes to completely clean a room. Anything that you can do to help the cleaners is good! I guess this would fall under the category of “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”