And the winning answer, chosen with 54% of the vote is: HOUSEKEEPING!
Last night I finished reading the Jan/Feb 2012 issue of AAA’s VIA Magazine and smiled to myself when I read this tidbit.
At first I thought that’s not much of a convenience. Unfortunately for me, most hotel rooms don’t meet my “clean” standards due to my years of housekeeping experience. When I turn my housekeeping eyes on, I see everything wrong: the prior occupant’s sliver of toenail on the floor, the dried skin flakes by the bed frame wheels, the lone hair in the bathroom.
Those housekeeping eyes sure take a lot of fun out of holiday getaways….
Aside from my first thoughts on this survey, I wanted to think deeper about what it means for housekeeping to be the hotel convenience most survey respondent’s look forward to.
I think the survey results can be interpreted to mean:
- People enjoy seeing a bed made when they enter the room. Does a neatly made bed improve a person’s mood? I think so.
- There’s no clutter in a hotel room. There’s no pile of bills to be paid or books you have to read (but you haven’t read so that actually means you really don’t want to read them), there’s no pile of anything. A hotel room consists of a bed, often dressed up in solid, light colored linens, two matching lamps, empty night stands, a small table and two chairs for reading or eating a small meal.
- In a hotel bathroom, there’s no clutter either. Little tiny bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion – no mega jugs in the shower. Also, the tiny hotel-provided bottles don’t offer variety, there’s not 21 bottles each with 1 tablespoon of product in the bottom. Finally, in a hotel bathroom all the towels are one color (often white). All the towels can be washed together, bleach can be used if something nasty gets on the towels, and to wash the towels it doesn’t involve much thinking.
So you want to bring this convenience to your home, where do you start?
- Make your bed. Don’t like your linen set? What if you try something simple like one color scheme, no prints?
- Remove the clutter from your bedside table. I have a lamp, a photo in a frame, an alarm clock, a pad, a pen, and the book I’m currently reading.
- Buy the same bath towels – all the same color makes for easy laundering.
- Keep the paperwork out of the bedroom! The bedroom shouldn’t be the storage room for the odds and ends from throughout the home.
I promise – The less clutter residing on the surfaces and the floor of your bedroom, the easier and faster you’ll be able to clean your bedroom. Think about it – hotel housekeeping is about quickly cleaning many rooms. There’s no room for clutter in that world.
Cheers! Jeanne
