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How I’m cleaning hotel rooms while on the road

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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

I would highly recommend wearing gloves otherwise you’ll get some serious skin irritation.

a remote control in a plastic bag

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.

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7 Comments

  • David Marquette July 21, 2020

    Sounds familiar, we’ve done the same. First, we’re not flying yet; did a one-way car rental Midwest to Calif, stayed 2 nights on the road. Planning reserve drive in September. made hotel reservations, a few hotels are closed, requested ground floor room (no elevator riding), prefer rooms w/ full size fridge (as we are carrying a cooler with meals we might buy at night at a grocery store, we eat in the room, or outdoors at a rural rest area). Yes, like you, first go in with just cleaning kit. Remember to clean too twice! light switches, as you said, the outside of the door, where you swipe the entry card, the door jam, knob, handles. We took our own bedding. we strip the bed down to the mattress, put on our sheets, blankets, pillows, then take that with us on the road! request no housekeeping if staying more than one night.

  • Christian July 21, 2020

    Where’d you get the Clorox wipes? I’ve been hunting for them at every store I enter, although admittedly I’m not entering a whole bunch of stores. Also, I’m not sure I should ask but why bring your own toilet paper?

    • Miles July 21, 2020

      Check places like OfficeMax/Depot/Staples – every once and a while they get stock. And I guess being extra careful/neurotic – if it’s a wrapped roll then good to go, but a used roll in a room makes me wonder if anything has aerosoled, etc

  • FF78 July 21, 2020

    Averaged 100 nights/year before Covid…..averaging 0 nights/year until there’s a vaccine. Why screw around with a roller bag full of chlorine when you can just rock the hazmat suit?

    • Miles July 21, 2020

      Wow 100 to 0, you restless being at home or enjoying it? And i totally I get it, just wonder how long it’ll be before vaccine and how many strains it’ll end up covering?

      • FF78 July 21, 2020

        Hi Miles. Really enjoying the break, and so does our dog. :-). I don’t miss the business travel and I don’t see myself ever going back to the frequency that I travelled prior to Covid. I used to enjoy the benefits of the loyalty programs but the benefits are worth so little to me now, that there’s no personal incentive to take the business trip, especially when there’s zoom. Business travel has become such a PITA in the last few years that I really don’t miss it. I’ve all but abandoned the major loyalty programs for SWA, Airbnb, and 3rd party booking sites.
        If you asked me this question 10 years ago, before all of the devaluations, my answer would have been very different. Be well.

  • JamesP July 21, 2020

    I haven’t stayed in hotels since COVID started, but I would do the exact same ritual as you guys when I do.
    I kind of do it when I get to work. I wipe every single thing in my cubicle prior to start working. I even spray all sides of my chair and the underside of my desk. I also bring lunch with me in a cooler with ice and eat at my desk.
    Side note: most sanitizers require a certain amount of time to kill viruses (usually 30 sec to 5 min).

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