How to Clean Your Airbnb Twice as Fast!

Given how important cleanliness is, it’s essential for hosts to know how to make their rentals shine––in the most efficient manner possible. Here are some tips to speed things up!

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Four Hours of Cleaning in ONLY Two Hours:

When it comes to a guest’s rating on Airbnb or other home-sharing services, cleanliness is often the deciding factor between a good review and a bad review. In fact, Airbnb surveys conducted on guest’s experiences have reported that a vacation home’s poor cleanliness is the number one reason they might leave a bad review.

Of course, cleaning a rental isn’t like cleaning your home––you may not notice a couple of dust bunnies floating around, but a guest will. On top of that, a rental’s cleaning window is often very slim, and a host can easily find themselves cleaning their Airbnb right up to the minute before their next guests arrive.

Given how important cleanliness is, it’s essential for hosts to know how to make their rentals shine in the most efficient manner possible.

In this article, our goal is to walk you through how to take a 4-hour cleaning block and turn it into only 2-hours of cleaning. Ready to clean your Airbnb twice as fast?

Clean Your Airbnb Twice as Fast:

Thankfully, hosts can set their own timeframe for cleaning their homes in between guests. Most people allow themselves around 4 hours, which is a perfect amount of time to thoroughly clean the entire unit with special attention to guest “pain spots.” These are the highly frequented areas guests are most likely to notice spots or dirt, such as the linens, towels, floors, and bathroom.

It’s best for a host to begin their cleaning with a load of laundry––ideally, with the linens and towels washed separately. We recommend starting with laundry because the cycles can run in the background while you start other areas of the house. If you wait to start laundry until the end of the cleaning, you and your staff will be sitting around waiting for laundry cycles to finish. This alone will save you one hour––with 30 minutes of the wash cycle and 30 minutes of the dry cycle happening while you are cleaning other parts of the house.

Other tips for speeding up include:

Using a lint roller to collect hair (pets and otherwise): No one likes to see someone else’s hair in their space. Using a lint roller is the easiest way to collect strands from sheets and cracks in the floor. Save time by using a quickly lint roller instead of a full clean.
Don’t be a knick-knack collector: While adding small sentimental touches to your home can make a guest feel more at ease, if your house is filled to the brim with tiny souvenirs and the like, dust can easily collect on these objects. By keeping things clean and orderly, your home will appear cleaner and more modern. Save time cleaning by simply not storing all of ‘the extras’ on your rental shelves.
Don’t be afraid to hire a laundry service: If you know you won’t be able to clean or finish the laundry in a concise amount of time, don’t be afraid to hire a third-party laundry service to take care of the laundry for you. You can always add a cleaning fee to your guest’s charges to offset the expenditure. And, a close relationship with a commercial laundry service provider will help to manage inventory and to prevent damage.
Make sure your house smells nice: A guest will always notice how your home smells when they first enter. Don’t use chemical products for fake freshness. Instead, use essential oils in a diffuser, or, if you don’t have a diffuser, place two or three drops of your preferred oil onto a tissue and tuck it into your window’s blinds. This will keep the tissue out of sight and diffuse the scent throughout the room.

A Two-Hour Cleaning Checklist:

Finally, the best way to tackle efficient cleaning is to have a concise method. The best way that we’ve found to clean a home FAST is by following this order of chores. If you’re reserving a four-hour time slot to clean, your goal should be to limit cleaning to two hours, giving yourself a safety net if something needs more time.

Gather dirty linens and towels and load them into the washer––separately. Once they’re in the dryer, it’s best to check on them after every chore to see if they’re done. This will ensure more thorough drying and prevent damage from frequent washes.
Clean any dirty dishes––start a dishwasher load if necessary.
Clean the bathrooms starting with the sink tops, shower/tub, toilets, mirror, faucet, and finally, door handles.
Clean the kitchen. Be sure to check the fridge and cabinets, clean the microwave, oven, and any other appliances.
Vacuum and sweep floors.
Wipe down tables, ledges, windowsills, and other dusty places.
Mop the hard floors.
Straighten outdoor furniture and sweep the patio, stoop, or porches.

For a full equipment list and step-by-step guide, learn from the Airbnb cleaning professionals at Merit Maids. For a full Airbnb maintenance checklist, you can consult this Xenia Airbnb checklist.

Hire a Commercial Laundry Service to Help Speed Things Up

Keeping a clean rental home is essential for making guests happy and learning how to do so quickly is a must. If you have any doubts about whether you can successfully clean your property in a short amount of time, don’t make the mistake of passing on a cleaning or laundering service.

Find out more about The Folde’s business laundry services for Airbnb rental properties.

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