We are home! We were a little jet-lagged, but happy to be back in our familiar surroundings and sleeping in our own bed again! Speaking of bed, we had some extra work to do before we got to sleep!
We had a wonderful trip visiting my husband’s family and friends for the Easter holidays. We also got to see some amazing sights and even had few days on our own. It was part family visit, part vacation, and a lot of fun! But since we hosted guests in our home while we were away, there was some work involved before we could settle ourselves in for a post-vacation rest. If you also list your house as an Airbnb, use these tips to reset your home after hosting guests.
Reset your home after Airbnb hosting:
Cleaning:
Since guests cover the cleaning fees, we made sure to schedule our wonderful and thorough cleaning crew to clean before we arrived home. Even if you aren’t using your home as an Airbnb, it is so nice to come home to a clean and tidy space after being away!
Bedding and linens:
In between hostings, our awesome cleaning crew washed all the towels and bedding for the next guests. Our home has four bedrooms and five beds, so that is a lot of bedding! For our return home, we only needed to have three beds ready for our first night home. The primary bedroom, and the two twin size beds in the children’s room had to be stripped of the guest bedding, and our personal bedding brought from the attic storage for our first night home. (lesson learned: keep personal bedding accessible to the cleaning crew so they can replace the bedding before our arrival! Ours was in a locked storage area)
Bedding from the two empty bedrooms (belonging to two of our daughters who are away at college) will be washed and packed away after we do the vacation laundry. See my previous blog post to see how we packed up their bedrooms, and the rest of our home, before we left!
Towels from the guests were in a large hamper. I was able to wash them and store them within a day of returning home. Our personal towels had been stored in our attic, and extras were in the hall linen closet.
Clothing:
I admit, even though we have a lot less clothing than the average family, we are not minimal with clothing. Yes, we wear most of it. And living in the Northeast region of the country means we need seasonal wardrobes. Even so, we still have plenty of clothes we don’t wear often. This is why I have still been able to declutter even more clothing since we returned. That will make it even easier to pack away and unpack next time we travel!
First, I unpacked the hanging wardrobe boxes we had in the attic storage. This was a quick way to give us access to some our clothing. We could then fold up the wardrobe boxes for future use. Since it is springtime, I have decided that going forward we will keep our heaviest winter outerwear in a wardrobe box in our attic. Our coat closet is only 2 feet wide, so this will help keep that closet from getting cluttered. It also saves us from having to pack away those items again next time we travel.
These are the wardrobe boxes we used:
Next I unpacked the blue vinyl storage bags of clothing from the dressers. These are frequently used items and needed to be unpacked quickly. I also wanted to use the bags to pack away the Airbnb towels and bedding.
These are the bags we used:
Bathroom:
We unpacked the bathroom boxes from storage on our second day home. We still had some toiletries available in our suitcases, but there were items we wanted access to in the bathroom now that we were back. Since most of our bathroom supplies live in these drawer dividers and containers, unpacking was a matter of simply returning them to their spot.
Mail:
We had a trusted neighbor who was able to pick up our mail this trip. If we are gone for longer in the future, we will likely have our mail held at the post office. When she handed us a giant pile of mail, I used my favorite OHIO process for dealing with paper mail: Only Handle It Once!
- recycle or trash junk mail immediately
- keep a shredder easily accessible for disposing of sensitive information
- file items into your filing system that need to be kept
- add papers that need action to your “To Do” file or inbox
Suitcases:
Normally I would unpack as soon as we got home, and dirty laundry would go straight into the washing machine. After this trip, we are on our second full day home and laundry is washed and in the process of bing put away. We slowly unpacked the luggage, and I hope to have all four suitcases unpacked and stored away by the 4th day home. As I unpack, I will decide if any items are still needed this season, and either return to closets, donate, or move to storage.
Bottom line of resetting your home after hosting Airbnb guests:
My number one technique for getting the house back to normal quickly has been “NO Empty Hands”. Any room I went into or out of, I made sure to have a box, bin, or basket to go to another space. If we needed something from the attic or basement, we made sure to bring up as much as we could carry. This has helped with both unpacking, and with storing away things used for the Airbnb guests.
Coming home after a vacation and having most of your personal belongings packed away, you look at your things with a different perspective. What things did you really miss, and bring you joy to unpack and put away? Are there things do you unpack and feel a little annoyed to have to find a home for? Which items are worth carrying from storage and putting away, and what items make you wonder why you have them?