Here is my Mum's advice on cleaning hotel rooms, though you are better off asking her friend Sally as she was a lot better at it than she was, and some of the ideas here are hers.
1. Faced with a corridor of rooms go down them opening all the doors and windows, get a bit of oxygen to the brain. A feeling of space and light is also helpful.
2. Turn on the TVs in the rooms to the radio channel and listen to loud (preferably dance)music. Radio Four doesn't quite cut it. Remember to keep turning off the TVs as you go along because five TVs blaring is a bit loud and you will get into trouble.
3. Go down all the rooms and chuck out all the rubbish. Take off all the sheets. Empty the rooms and start again. The rooms all look a lot better. It's a psychological thing. Remember to scavenge any useful items, but nothing like razors even if the packet looks unopened. It's a bit dodgy. If it is a Sunday you might find some Sunday papers to take home and read later.
4. Different ways of doing it. It depends on how you feel on the day. The best way of doing it is going down the rooms doing lots of the the same thing e.g. do all the beds, or all the bathrooms. Then you don't have to think about it and can go into a rather pleasurable trance. My Mum finds it rather therapeutic doing physical work you don't have to think about. Gets all the endorphins racing. Don't do it one room at a time, it gets too complicated and you have to walk about and think too much. Also using the first method, you can get further up the floor in the same time and again it's a psychological thing.
5. Don't complain it is too much like hard work ,along with the students, especially not in Monica's (the polish girl) hearing. Remember she has worked a lot harder than you have ever have to.
6. Take short cuts. You've only got five hours. Dispense with the mop. Get a used (hand) towel and work it round the bathroom floor using your feet. Use dry towels to polish the furniture. You don't want to use polish, anyway. It's not environmentally friendly.
7. Always rinse out the tea cups in hotels with boiling water if you stay in a hotel. You don't know how they've been cleaned. Not that my Mum was guilty of anything like this, she just knows what sometimes happens.
8. Air freshener. A tricky one. To use or not to use? Some of the smells are quite nice and my Mum particularly liked 'Marine'. Don't use too much or a guest might come back to their room too early and find it difficult to breathe.
9. Eat the hotel biscuits to keep your strength up. Is this stealing? Remember that everyone else does it and how much money the hotel is making out of you by exploiting you with this slave labour.
10. Beware of any facetious comments from your fellow employees. For instance, you might be walking along carrying a pillow and duvet and somebody might say 'Now is not the time to sleep.' Try to think of a witty reply.
11. At the end triumphantly finish off all the rooms by going into each and everyone with the vacuum cleaner. It's nice looking at sixteen clean hotel rooms. It feels like all is right with the world.
Actually my Mum quite liked doing this job.
4 comments:
Pity I can't use that for my house - unfortunately each room is different and distracting.
Has your Mum any advice for house cleaning?
I was told all about cleaning caravans at one of the local holiday camps - sounded quite easy and I thought maybe I should live in a caravan.....
No I don't clean my house much because you don't get paid for it
I do knock the light shade in the hall on occasions when coming down the stairs to knock the dust off it
that's a good idea - unless you happen to be going out and don't want cobwebby hair and dust on your coat.
I got halfway to a 'do' and found that - plus of course a thick coating of dog hair that had accumulated on the side of my best black coat (only coat really) as the dog had brushed past it day after day - even I had to go home and change in the circs.
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