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For the past couple of weeks I’ve been visiting family, considering a potential move, and as a result have stayed in a variety of hotels. While hotels are certainly purporting a deep cleaning ritual, I just don’t trust it. So, leaving to hit the road, we made sure we packed a cleaning kit to ease our minds.
We’ve stayed at a wide range of hotels since we left. A quick round-up: A Ritz, two Grand Hyatts, two Hyatt Houses, a Homewood Suite, and a two Hyatt Places. My fiancee and I have adopted a routine and have become fairly adept at honing it now that we’ve done it quite a few times. Of all the places we’ve stayed, a Hyatt Place in Athens, Georgia impressed me the most. At check-in there were wipes, hand sanitizer, and not only did the manager wear a mask, but was changing into fresh gloves for each guest. Not bad for a place that charged us just $88 for the night.
Below is a quick video that describes the extent to which we’ve been cleaning.
Our Kit includes:
- 3 – 75 wipe – Clorox wipe bottles
- 2 Clorox spray bottles
- 6 rolls of Paper Towels
- 6 rolls of toilet paper
- 2 large Hand sanitizer gel bottles
- 2 large Hand Sanitizer spray bottles
- 2 small gel bottles
- 2 small spray bottles
- 4 packs of sanitizing wipes for food containers
We found the above kit pretty arduous to carry around, and we quickly devised a strategy after our first two nights on the road ( those two nights we carried the entire kit inside ).
We decided to pack a quick clean and overnight bag that included a bottle of clorox wipes, a spray bottle, toilet paper and paper towels + a change of clothes + dopp kit. We’d repack once we arrive at a destination where we’d spend more than a night and unload more of the car.
What we clean:
- First thing we clean is a surface to set all of our cleaning products down on
- Then we proceed to clean every single thing anyone could have touched that we would touch
- The things we first missed
- The headboard of the bed
- Inside of a mini-fridge
- The curtain cords
- The handrail and temperature control inside the shower
- The doorlock
- The things we first missed
I would highly recommend wearing gloves otherwise you’ll get some serious skin irritation.
While this sounds time consuming, we’ve gotten it down to under 10 minutes on a standard room, and a little over on a Hyatt House/Place where a kitchen is included. We even bleach the floor. The only thing we don’t clean are the sheets and couches ( which we now cover with blankets that we wash if we use the couch ). Once everything is cleaned, we go back down to the car, grab anything else we’d need and leave it in the entryway of the room and unpack individual items there.
Part of me thinks what we’re doing is all overkill, but there’s no way I’d sleep well at night if we didn’t clean. We’re also leaving significantly higher housekeeping tips to try and help out. We have consistently heard stories of part time workers, recent re-openings, and the hardships many places have faced.
Recap
I’m certainly not advocating hitting the road and traveling, but we’re doing the best we possibly can given the circumstances, and I’ve been very impressed with the the lower end hotels. Let me know if you’ve traveled recently and what your routine is to sanitize.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.