Let it Go: Towels

This is a series designed to reduce stress in the lives of our vacation rental owner readers.

One of the first things we learned as vacation rental owners is that if we let the myriad of potential stressors get to us, we would soon be crying in a corner every time a renter wanted to bring their children. The age old wisdom of picking your battles holds true for vacation rental owners as well and we wanted to share some of the philosophies and techniques that have allowed us to let the (truly) unimportant things go.

White towels are the only way to go in vacation rentals. I know, I know. I too was super into the colored towels for all my bathrooms that matched my color scheme and oh those darling ones with the fun braids and sweet lace details looked so good! For about 1 rental. This is something I let go of very quickly as the ones I liked had to be replaced almost immediately due to makeup, tanning lotion, red wine and my guests washing the yellow ones with the blue ones (blotchy green was not in my color palette). So I became a believer in white, bleach-able linens. *Sigh.*

If you are running a vacation rental on earth (and we assume you are if you’re perusing this site), you rent to human beings, who are messy, clumsy, and oftentimes completely unconcerned about your property. They are on vacation, and want to relax, not clean and certainly not worry about whether they can eat on the couch or in the bed (and they will). This means that there will always be “that renter” who leaves destruction and nasty messes behind. After we had about 200 guests, we looked back at the times we had to do extra cleaning and replacements and saw a pattern emerge. Our unscientific analysis showed that about 1 in 10 guests are going to cost you more in cleaning and about 2 in 15 are going to break and/or damage a few things.

Unwilling to compromise further than the color, I did some testing of various towels that were soft and absorbent, yet held up to bleaching and lots of washes and these towels are the ones I like best. I replace a washcloth or 2 about every 3rd or 4th rental and a bath and/or hand towel about every 5 to 6 rentals. My cost is about $4.82 to replace a towel (I am averaging the cost per towel from the set linked above) and I have 4 “replacement” sets on hand at all times to pull from when needed. This is in addition to the 1 back up set per unit. We added $5 into our cleaning fee for all rentals so we are completely covered with room to spare.

Since we allow pets, we also have an additional pet fee that covers the inevitable additional mess that comes with the fur. Since I am expecting these costs and have charged accordingly I can let my guests enjoy their vacations and I can cheerfully let go of a damaged towel or two (or even three, seriously, it is a towel!) All my stained sheets and towels go to a local animal shelter – a great way to help out and re-purpose the discards.

Look out for further articles on how to be a less stressed rental owner.