Welcome to another Ask Me Anything (Ask Us Anything?) episode! Each week we’ll answer your questions on STR, real estate, OTAs, and everything in between.

Chris asks:

What are best practices for washing bed linens? With a duvet cover, do you still wash the main bedspread after each guest?

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Thanks for Visiting is produced by Crate Media.

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[00:00:05] You're listening to the Thanks for Visiting Podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette's background in business operation--

[00:00:14] And Sarah's extensive hospitality management and interior design experience, we have welcomed thousands of guests from over 30 countries, earning us over $1,000,000 and garnering us thousands of five-star reviews.

[00:00:28] We love sharing creative ways for your listing to stand out, serve your guests and be profitable. Each episode, we will have knowledgeable guests who bring value to the short-term rental industry--

[00:00:39] Or we will share our stories of our own experiences so you can implement actual improvements to your rentals. Whether you're experienced, new or nervous to start your own short-term rental, we promise you'll feel right at home.

[00:01:03] Hello. Welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:01:06] I am Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:01:08] Thanks for Visiting.

[00:01:09] And this is an AMA episode, Ask Me Anything. If you head to thanksforvisiting.me, in the upper right-hand corner is a red button that says Ask TFV. You can ask us any question as it relates to short-term rentals, real estate business. We got your mindset. If we don't have the answer, we've been known to bring our friends on who do record their voice and answer the question. So we'll make sure you get really good feedback. And this week we're going to talk about bedspreads.

[00:01:37] Hi. My name is Chris and I am about to start my first Airbnb in a house that's actually right next door to me in the Dallas area. And I have a quick question about bedspreads. I decided that I was going to use light quilts that are washable. I got them on Amazon. Not too expensive, but I'm not sure if it's common. Do most people wash their bedspreads between every single guest that comes or is it something that you just do every week or every couple of weeks or what? I basically chose this type of bedspread because I was thinking that I needed to be able to wash the bedspreads between each guest. But I've listened to y'all's podcast and I've listened to some others and I've heard different things, so I'm just wondering what your recommendation is. And I haven't started my process on the Airbnb website yet, but I'm going to start that soon. I've listened to your class on that, so I may ask another question again soon. Thanks.

[00:02:37] Such a good question. Like Annette said before we started recording, your conversations, once you open your short-term rental are like accounting, real estate--

[00:02:46] Laundry.

[00:02:46] Laundry.

[00:02:47] Laundry, there will always be more laundry.

[00:02:50] And whether you're doing it or not, it matters because of operations, because of pricing, because a lot of things. But she asked for our recommendation, Annette. So I think we should give her our recommendation.

[00:03:00] Okay. I do want to let all of our listeners know that Sarah and I do travel often. We travel together. We normally stay together and you better believe we are constantly talking about the sheets, the towels, the duvets, the triple sheeting pretty much.

[00:03:18] There have been some heated debates.

[00:03:19] There have been some heated debates. But let's talk about this bedspread situation and the washing.

[00:03:25] Let's tackle her specific question and then we can go down the rabbit hole. Also, I feel like I know exactly what bed sheets or what bedspread she's talking about. What do I do? I wash it every single time. After every guest our team-- now we use duvet covers, but it's the same thing I would say. We take the duvet cover off, we wash it. If it's a light blanket on the bed, we take it off and we wash it.

[00:03:50] Because let's just face it, people, let's talk about it. People are probably touching the bedspreads with their parts.

[00:04:01] I'm very excited to hear how you're going to say this, Annette.

[00:04:05] I'm just saying a lot of times people are--

[00:04:08] People might sleep naked.

[00:04:09] People aren't fully clothed all the time. And this is what Sarah and I talk about just like someone just because it's triple sheeting, she's like, well, someone's naked body just touched that ahead of time. So really just we know this is heavily debated. Some people do it weekly, some people do it biweekly. It's pretty much the number one thing that grosses people out. Let's just wash it. If you make it part of the process, you wouldn't not wash the sheets every time, which I'm not going to lie. We just heard about a host not washing the sheet. We were dumbfounded, disgusted, basically could not even believe this. And hopefully, we know it's been remedied. But I'm just going to be honest. We actually did hear of that just recently and that's why we have our show to put the message out there.

[00:04:58] And we'll get a little more detail there. So the cleaner was being dishonest with the operator that it was getting cleaned and it wasn't. So the operator got hit this after a while. I don't even remember. She had some operational thing that she was doing so she could tell. I think she put a sticker on it or something. And so the sticker was a--

[00:05:14] Washable marker like, yeah, something.

[00:05:17] Anyway, but I do want to say this. Let's argue the other side where people could sit naked on a chair, on the sofa.

[00:05:25] They have, they will.

[00:05:26] Yeah, they have and they will. So sure you can win that argument. But what we definitely know is people are going to sleep in that bed. They do things in that bed. And so we can help curb bacteria and all those things by washing it. And I do like that she's already discussed it's easy to wash. Hopefully, it's a fabric that's easy to wash and launder and it's going to become wrinkly. So we're thinking about those things that don't take forever to dry. If you're going to do our recommendation of washing after every guest, keep that in mind.

[00:05:55] Because the duvet covers do get very laborious and I mean, I've gotten in a fight with a lot of them. I still fight with them because they're not fun. So we know a lot of hosts that have switched over to pretty much exactly what the listener was just describing, the washable bedspreads because they're quick to dry. They can wash them every time and swap them out. Again that's where you do want to have extras too because look into a laundry service too, if that sounds like a lot. A lot of people are looking into a laundry service. You want to make sure you know where the laundry is being done.

[00:06:24] Yeah, and there's also people bring-- if you're pet friendly, the pets might be in the bed. And if you ask what do hotels do, to be fair to us hosts and how you've gotten different responses from different hosts, I know that hotels do it differently. Hotels triple sheet. What does that mean? They have a duvet like a comforter type, a duvet insert, and they put a sheet on top and a sheet below. And so that way they don't have to step it in and zip it up and button. It's quote-unquote "saves" time. It grosses me out because obviously, the sheets come off of the perfect stack that they put them in and now--

[00:06:59] The duvet is free to roam.

[00:07:01] The duvet is free to roam on me, and that's gross to me. So anyway, I take my type-A personality, I put it into my brand. But what you can do, and here's how I use-- so obviously it's a sponsor of our podcast, but I do live by Breezeway is we do put notifications in our Breezeway to launder the throw blankets every so often. You can spray and treat the sofa cushions so often, the pillows, whether you swap them out, you have an A set or B set or just spray them or take them off and get them cleaned so that you keep up with this maintenance of the other fabrics in the home. All right. I think we beat this topic to death.

[00:07:37] Yeah. All right, but let us know. Good luck. We're excited for you.

[00:07:42] And anyone listening out there, if you want to debate this, you want to give us another opinion, you want to tell us that you wash yours every time too, please join the conversation. You can DM us on Instagram, send us an email hi@thanksforvisiting.me. And if you enjoy these AMA's, let us know by leaving us a review. But until next time, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:08:00] I'm Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:08:02] Thanks for Visiting.