How we clean a room

What a turnaround actually is

1. Windows open, whatever the weather, for at least ten minutes
2. Bed stripped between guests; during a stay, made and straightened, changed if you ask
3. Towels replaced when they are left in the bath, kept when they are on the rail
4. Bathroom cleaned daily, and the shower and floor dried down rather than left to dry
5. Every hard surface a hand touches wiped: handles, latches, switches, taps, the kettle on the landing
6. Floor vacuumed daily and washed between guests
7. Bin emptied, carafe refilled, and the room left with the window shut and the lamp on if you are due back after dark

That takes between thirty-five and fifty minutes depending on the room, and two people do fifteen of them on a day when the house turns over. It is written down here because "we clean to the highest standards" is a sentence that means nothing and a list is a thing you can hold us to.

The linen question, answered honestly

Changing sheets every day for a guest who is staying four nights uses water and shortens the life of the linen without making the bed cleaner. That is the actual reason, and it is also cheaper for us, which is worth saying rather than dressing the decision up as somebody else's environmental policy. Ask and they are changed the same day, with no discussion and no card to leave on the pillow.

There is no card on the pillow about the planet. The reason the sheets are not changed daily is partly environmental and partly that it is cheaper for us, and a small property that presents the second as entirely the first is doing the thing this whole website is arguing against. Ask and they are changed the same day.

Do you have to be out of the room?

No. Tell us at breakfast when you would like the room done and it will be done then, or hang the tag and it will be left entirely alone. Nobody enters a room with the tag on the handle except in an emergency, and an emergency here means water or smoke, not a delivery.

What we would like from you

Almost nothing. Towels on the rail if you will use them again, in the bath if you would like them changed. That is the whole of it — there is no card asking you to reuse anything, and the bin does not need sorting.