When cleaning an Airbnb, it’s important to note that it’s different from cleaning your own home. There is a lot of work involved in cleaning a vacation rental property, especially if you want to ensure that you meet Airbnb’s standards and provide a 5-star guest experience without any dirty spaces or potential pet issues. However, figuring out how to effectively and thoroughly clean your Airbnb can be a challenge, especially if you are new to operating a short-term rental on the platform.
How does Airbnb cleaning work? This comprehensive beginner’s guide will give you all the guidance you need to help you get the equally comprehensive clean you’re looking for on and around your property.
Cleaning Checklist
The initial and crucial step for Airbnb hosts aiming to improve property management and establish a thorough cleaning approach is to create a cleaning checklist. This checklist will facilitate the complete cleaning of every area with ease. An effective cleaning checklist will tackle everything from the inside to the outside, covering the dining room, bedrooms, kitchen, living room, closet spaces laundry areas, and, most importantly, bathrooms.
Of course, your cleaning checklist should go beyond just the interior. The exterior of your home is just as important, and you’ll likely need to clean the siding, gutters, windows, patio appliances, pools and hot tubs, and other spaces that your guests will frequent during their stay.
Once you have a closer look at which areas need to be cleaned, it’s then time to pair those areas with activities that need to be conducted in them from a strong Airbnb cleaning checklist. For example, the living room may need to be vacuumed and dusted often to keep it looking great. Meanwhile, you may need to scrub everything in the bathroom and launder towels and washcloths.
Sit down and make a list, carefully reviewing it to ensure that each room in your property is covered and that you have everything you need to do when you tackle it.
Professional Cleaning Services
Whether you’re an Airbnb host managing a new property or several, you might not have the time or energy to thoroughly clean your property after every guest checks out. The good news? You don’t have to! An Airbnb turnover service can help keep your property clean without you having to handle everything on your own.
An Airbnb turnover service (a cleaning company) specializes in vacation rental cleaning. Essentially, you coordinate with the cleaning team. The cleaners arrive after a guest checks out to conduct a deep clean, ensuring a clean environment for future Airbnb guests.
There are a few considerations that you should have in mind, which include the following.
- Make sure to do your research to find the right cleaning service. Look into their ratings, see what other Airbnb hosts say, and discuss the support you need for your Airbnb vacation rental.
- Allow cleaning teams sufficient time to do their jobs. While you may want your room cleaned quickly to accommodate the next booking, don’t give your cleaners such a limited timeframe that they can only address a few tasks.
- Come up with a system that allows you to seamlessly track your bookings and manage your cleaning appointments. A solid property management software solution can be an immense help moving forward.
DIY Cleaning Tips
If you are dedicated to cleaning your space on your own, you’ll find that there are a ton of DIY cleaning tips that you can use to get a better clean in your home, all without the hassle of having to buy specialized tools. Let’s take a look at a few DIY cleaning hacks that will make it easier to get your Airbnb back in perfect condition no matter the level of mess in it.
- Use Club Soda for Drink Stains: Club soda is excellent for removing red wine and other colored stains from carpet. Simply pour it on the stain, blot with a towel, and repeat until the stain is completely gone!
- Add Lemon Juice to the Microwave: The microwave can easily get dirty, and it’s one of those hidden places you might not think to clean until you notice how bad it’s become. Adding a bowl of lemon juice to the microwave and heating it will generate steam that loosens dirt and grime. Then, you just take a towel and wipe down the inside for a fresher microwave interior.
- Put on Rubber Gloves for Pet Hair: As a pet-friendly Airbnb host, it’s important to be thorough to ensure that guests don’t encounter a lot of pet hair when they stay at your property. There are many hacks you could use, but using rubber gloves can help you gather the hair together, making it easier to pick up or vacuum.
- Slip Ice Into the Garbage Disposal: Garbage disposals can become dirty, and cleaning them is not as straightforward as cleaning other parts of the sink. One way to clean the garbage disposal is by putting ice cubes down to break apart the grime that is stuck around the blades. Subsequently, running water helps to wash the debris away.
- Try an Electric Toothbrush on Grout: Grout can be difficult to clean, and scrubbing isn’t always the most desirable way to go about it. An electric toothbrush provides a more effective clean, reducing the need for extra effort to reach every spot.
These are just a few suggestions. No matter what you’re looking to clean, you’re sure to find some helpful tips online or even on platforms like YouTube. People can get quite creative with how they tackle messes!
Safety and Hygiene Standards
New Airbnb hosts may not have carefully reviewed exactly what’s expected of them. After all, there’s a lot of ground to cover to be a successful host. However, this can quickly become a problem for you if you don’t look at the safety and hygiene standards laid out by the platform. According to Airbnb’s host expectations:
“Unclean stays: A Host’s property must be free of known health hazards (ex: mold, pests, vermin), meet a high standard of cleanliness, and be cleaned between stays.”
You must make sure your vacation rental is spotless and that you’re carefully cleaning it after each guest comes to stay on your property. Beyond cleanliness, there’s also the topic of clutter. Clutter can become a problem because it can lead to accidents on the property, putting your guest’s health and safety at risk (something you could be legally liable for). On this topic, Airbnb states:
“Unsafe stays: Hosts must ensure that stays or Experiences are free of undisclosed safety hazards (ex: blocked fire exits, risks of electric shock, rat poison). Hosts must remedy any safety hazards if they are raised by a guest or Airbnb.”
As long as you’re able to follow these rules, you should have no problem operating on the Airbnb platform.
Cleaning Fees and Policies
Cleaning fees are an important part of operating an Airbnb. Because you’ll be investing money either in the tools and solutions needed to clean it yourself or in services that can help you keep your short-term rental clean, this is naturally going to cost you money alongside all of the other money you’re spending to rent out your home.
Cleaning fees generally come in two forms: Short-term stay cleaning fees and standard cleaning fees. The former only applies to stays that are one or two nights. These fees are generally smaller than the standard fees, and hosts can opt out of them. Standard fees are applied to stays that are longer than two days and are added to the nightly rate displayed in the reservation, which guests will see before they book your property.
It’s vital that you double-check to make sure cleaning fees are sufficient and that you set them up. If you fail to do so, you may have to try to add a cleaning fee to an already-confirmed reservation, which is something that you have to communicate with your guests and hope that they accept the amended reservation request. They have no obligation to do so. You could cancel should a guest reject your request, but this could also lead to consequences for you on the platform.
The lesson? Make sure to add cleaning fees when you create your listing.
Essential Cleaning Supplies
Having the right cleaning tools and solutions available can make all the difference in achieving a thorough cleaning. What are some essential cleaning supplies you need to tackle various messes around your home? Here are a few items that are always great to have on hand:
- Microfiber cloths
- Dusting sheets or dusters with handles
- Mops/brooms
- Vacuum cleaner
- Window cleaner
- Sink cleaner/garbage disposal freshener
- Baking soda
- Laundry detergent/bleach and dryer sheets
- Rubber gloves and other protective equipment
- Bathroom/toilet cleaner
- Specialized cleaner for your floors
- And so on…
The best way to ensure you have the right cleaning items on hand is to check which cleaning activities you need to deal with throughout the property and which tools and cleaning products are needed to make it easy to get those various areas clean.
This is also an excellent opportunity to remind you again that the outside needs to be cleaned. Pool cleaner and chemicals, pressure washers, and ladders to reach gutters are just a few of the cleaning supplies that will help you maintain a clean exterior so that guests will see the curb appeal on your Airbnb listing and be compelled to book your property.
If there are any chores you’re not able to do safely or that you’re unsure of how to do, don’t risk your safety to get your vacation rental clean. Reach out to a professional who can take care of that task for you.
Cleaning Schedule and Frequency
Obsessively cleaning every inch of your home isn’t the best way to clean your Airbnb. Certain chores only need to be done occasionally to keep your home in great shape.
For example, some tasks like mopping, sweeping, vacuuming, dusting, and wiping down all the surfaces throughout the home are tasks that you’ll want to do after every stay. However, you probably won’t need to move furniture around or thoroughly deep-clean every nook and cranny if you have a guest just stay for a few days. Things won’t get dirty as quickly, and striving for spotless perfection will only add to your stress, as most things are probably still in great condition.
Then, there are things that you’re going to do even less frequently. This includes changing the HVAC filter, cleaning out gutters, landscaping, and so on. Establishing a cleaning schedule and determining the frequency of your post-stay chores makes it much easier to get things done in such a way that streamlines the task of keeping your Airbnb consistently clean.
Maintaining a Clean Airbnb Property
So, how does Airbnb cleaning work? It’s all about planning your tasks out to reduce the amount of work and time that you have to put in to get a consistent clean, understanding the needs of your next guests and the requirements of the Airbnb platform, and looking for new ways to streamline and automate your work (calendars, software, cleaners, etc.). If you can master your cleaning, you can make it easier to get more frequent bookings without the stress of wondering whether your guests are going to find a mess when they arrive at your property.
