When we purchased our first Airbnb/Vrbo property, it had already been operating as an short-term vacation rental. Though advertised as a “turn-key” rental, it was anything but that. It was dusty. It was not well-maintained. And very noticeably, it was cluttered. This was a common comment in the previous host’s listing.
When we took over the property, we cleaned for days. We fixed or disposed of lots of little broken things. And we worked to reduce a lot of the clutter that was visible without opening any drawers, doors, or cupboards. This included a hodgepodge of figurines, a collection of mismatched plates, dishes and glasses, and lamps, books and other things just squeezed onto shelves and tables where room was still left to put something.
But there was still clutter lurking behind closed doors, and it wasn’t long until our guests discovered and commented on it, luckily for us, mostly in private comments. So thinking about every Airbnb and Vrbo kitchen, here are three recommendations of “to-dos” today:
- Get rid of multiple sets or extra mismatched plates, dishes, and glasses. In addition to giving a cluttered look to your rental, odds are if you have double the amount of dishes than guests allowed in your rental, they will rarely use many of them. And if you have a busy rental, odds are that you won’t be able to wash every plate, dish, and glass every time. That means, the glasses in the back row for instance, may start accumulating dust, opening you up for comments about clutter and potentially cleanliness. In addition, if you have a lot of plates, glasses, and dishes filling your cupboards, that usually means your guests have less space to store their groceries or other items they’ve brought. Make room for clear spaces and future positive comments about how clean the kitchen felt.
- Clear the catch-all drawer. Every Airbnb or Vrbo rental has one. A kitchen drawer that holds gadgets and tools such as wine openers, bottle openers, salad tongs, candle or campfire lighters, paring knives – the list goes on. Many times guests bring their own and so you as a host end up with three or four corkscrews for example and two or three of every other gizmo. That’s not a good thing. That’s clutter. Don’t make guests shuffle through a lot of cheap or rusty kitchen items. Clear your catch-all drawer today.
- Clean up under the kitchen sink. Similar to accumulating a family of wine openers, if left unchecked, you’ll find your rental kitchen overrun with leftover things, many of which are placed or disposed of under the kitchen sink including plastic bags from the grocery store, used dishwashing scrubbing pads, duplicate cleaning supplies and more. Most hosts request that guests at least wipe down countertops before they leave. So make sure that underneath the sink, where most guests expect to discover cleaning supplies, is clean and cleared of clutter.
What kitchen recommendations do you have as Airbnb or Vrbo hosts? We’d love to hear from you in the comments below.
