Transcription
A hotel housekeeper can transform a disastrous room to spotless in the time it takes most of us to load the dishwasher. So, I thought maybe their method could work at home. Now, I researched the best tricks to see if it can work for you and for me. But, we're going to start with the basics.
Very quickly though, I do need to mention that time is money for hotels and guest satisfaction is or at the very least should be paramount, which is why I thought this might work for you and me. So cleaning efficiently and well is very important because hotels cannot afford to have housekeepers spending one hour per room. They would go bankrupt faster than me on the slot machines. But they also cannot afford complaints about dirty rooms because nothing nothing ruins a vacation faster than finding someone else's hair in your supposedly clean bathroom.
So 15 minutes, that's it. From the moment that a housekeeper walks into a room that looks like it hosted a rock band's afterparty to the moment that they walk out, leaving it pristine enough for the Queen of England to take a nap. God rest her soul. This isn't just some loose guideline either. This is actually a hard international standard. Professional housekeepers keep an average of 14 to 16 rooms in an 8-hour shift. They clean that. And hotels really, really track this stuff. The housekeepers are timed and if they consistently go over, they're retrained or they're replaced. It's like the worst kind of speed dating.
So, what they'll do is they are going to knock. They're going to announce themsel housekeeping. Then they prop the door open wide. If you've ever like walked down a hotel hallway, you will see they've got it propped over open wide. They flip on every light. They yank open the curtains. And full visibility means no surprises hiding in dark corners. They want to see everything. Then comes the lightning round of obvious fixes. So, first they're going to scoop up all of the trash in one sweep. Not piece by piece, but everything in one bag in a single circuit of the room. Then, room service trays, empty bottles, and that mysterious sock under the desk. All gone. I've seen a lot of them like leave it outside of the room. All of the dirty towels get bundled together like they're packing a parachute. And then the whole thing looks like they're scanning for a bomb, but with more confidence and significantly less anxiety because they want to make sure they don't miss anything.
But here's what's really wild. They're actually like in all of this, they're not cutting corners or they're rushing to hit that time. These rooms, they pass white glove inspections. Literally, some hotels actually run white gloves along the surfaces to check for dust. So, don't panic and be like, "Why would I even do this? It sounds super stressful." No, because it is a system, so it's manageable. And what I like about this, because I don't know about you, but I would rather my hotel be clean versus bougie any old day of the year. And about 85% of hotel guests cite the same thing. Cleanliness as a primary factor in their overall experience, too. But the secret again, it's not superhuman speed. It's the system. Every movement is planned. Every step has a purpose. and nothing gets done twice. They have eliminated all the wandering around, all of the backtracking, and the "oh wait, I forgot to" moments that make home cleaning feel like it takes forever, too. Let's get into the professional sequence that makes this magic happen. And maybe you can see how to do this at home as well.
Now, hotel housekeepers follow what is called the never touch twice rule. Every single action moves the room closer to completion and they never have to circle back to redo something that they missed. It's like watching a master chef work. Every motion has intention. Now, step one is that the cart and prep system. So, before they even enter a room, the magic starts with cart organization. Everything is loaded in the exact order that they will need the supplies for that specific day's rooms because obviously like some hotel rooms are different in within the same hotel. So, no digging around for the right cleaner or realizing that they left toilet paper three rooms back. They create what's called room sets, pre-made bundles with fresh linens, amenities, and toiletries for each room type, all bagged and ready to grab.
Now, as a former ER nurse, I have to jump in here because this reminds me so much of our hotel housekeepers. And you know, there's some science behind that. They use this same system because nothing would run in the hospital without them. They are the unsung heroes of keeping everything sterile and functional. And I will die on the hill of how important the housekeepers are. They are just as important as the doctors. I swear. Because without them, things would not run. Plus, hospitals have pioneered many of these efficiency techniques because in health care, time literally saves lives and contamination control is a matter of life and death.
Here is where hospitals and hotels share the same brilliant approach and that is color-coded cleaning supplies. I actually asked the housekeepers once at the hospital about it and they explained it and I thought, "Oh my gosh, this is genius." And this isn't just organizational. It is a scientifically proven to reduce cross-contamination of bacteria, viruses, and allergens between spaces system. So, red cloths for toilets and high-risk areas, yellow for bathroom sinks and mirrors, blue for general surfaces like furniture and glass, and green for kitchens and food prep areas. So obviously you would decide what you were doing in your own house, but each housekeeper carries about 20 to 25 cloths in different colors on their carts and no cross-contamination, no accidentally using a toilet cloth on the mirror. It's like a traffic control system but for germs and I remember seeing bags of like the red cloths and the green cloths and everything sitting on the floor at the hospital because they kept all the dirty stuff on the floor. Very smart.
Also beyond infection control is ergonomics which is like proper form when working and cleaning. So housekeepers actually have huge injury rates of 7.9 out of every hundred workers per year which is highest in hospitality with uh musculoskeletal or as we would call it in healthcare MSK disorders making up about 62% of the injuries. So, this system isn't just about efficiency. It's about sustainability and safety. And I bet because of the cloth system, there's less actual infection, which is good. And the more they do as far as the ergonomics, the more they do an action properly, the more their body learns it and they can do it well without getting injured. And I think that's really cool.
So, step three, the bed transformation. They strip the bed first, but they're not just yanking sheets off randomly. The dirty sheet becomes a collection bag for all the other dirty linens. It's like a magic trick. One minute there's a disaster of tangled sheets and the next minute it's all contained in one neat bundle for the laundry cart. Most hotels, they don't even use fitted sheets for the bottom either. They use flat sheets for everything because fitted sheets are the enemy of speed. Have you ever tried to wrestle a fitted sheet onto a mattress when you're in a hurry? You're like, "Which corner goes where?" and you put it on and then you're like, "This is not the right one. You got to move it." It's like trying to gift wrap a live octopus. Flat sheets just lie there cooperatively like well-behaved children. Well, until you try to sleep on them because I personally don't care for sleeping on flat sheets because they get all loose, but maybe I'm just being a princess there.
The bed making itself is pure choreography, though. They use something called triple sheeting. So, there's the flat sheet, the blanket, and then the top sheet. So instead of fighting with duvet covers because putting a duvet comforter into its cover is very hard. It's like trying to fold a fitted sheet while blindfolded. So the triple sheeting it eliminates the particular form of domestic torture entirely. And I've actually done that as well um when we've had guests and I didn't have enough duvet covers because you know I don't want to have too many. So I would just do the same thing. use that sheet as the cover and those famous hospital corners that happen in exactly three moves per corner. Actually, my mom taught me this when I was so young, but you tuck the sheet in at the foot and then you lift the hanging section to a 40° angle. Then you tuck the other side in and then boom, you have this beautiful corner that you could bounce a quarter off of if you bounce quarters off sideways. And let's move on to the next step cuz I'm being weird.
This is where the real genius shows up. The bathroom. They didn't just clean the bathroom, they orchestrated it. First, they would move in and they would just spray every surface with cleaner and then they would walk away. And while those chemicals are doing their job, they're handling other tests. They're obviously not going to be standing around waiting for products to work. And as a side note, the checkout rooms, so when people are leaving, those rooms take 82% longer to clean than stayover rooms where I assume they're just going in and they're just like making the bed and tidying up. They might do a quick spray if things are dirty and then they will wipe after it soaks for a minute. So every second of efficiency matters. And when they come back after it has soaked, they clean from inside out and top to bottom. Shower and tiles first, then sink, then vanity and toilet last. And that's what we did in nursing. It was always like clean to dirty, right? So, it's like they've mapped out the most efficient route through a very small and very dirty obstacle course. Each surface gets cleaned exactly once in the right order so nothing gets recontaminated.
Step five, the final sprint. High-touch surfaces get hit with disinfectant. So, the door handles, the light switches, the remote control that always feels so icky to touch, and the thermostat. These are the spots that actually matter for guest health. So they get special attention because that's what people are touching. And then comes the dusting, which isn't the leisurely contemplative dusting most of us do. It's like a surgical strike dusting. And they will just move in and they're wiping it all. And floors happen less because they're working from top to bottom, right? And from back of the room to the front. So they're not walking on what they just cleaned. It's like painting yourself out of a corner but in reverse. Vacuum or sweep and then the mop if needed and always moving towards the exit. And then the final inspection happens from the doorway. And for some reason, I picture them standing like Superman or something. But they stand where the guest will first see the room and scan for anything that looks off. And it's the same perspective a guest will have. So if something's wrong, this is where they'll catch it.
So, I decided I was going to test this system in my own home. And I was going to start with my bedroom and my bathroom, which I did not tidy up in the morning because I knew I would be doing this. And I did time myself and I tried to follow the sequence and tried to channel my inner professional housekeeper. So, the first thing I did though was I created my very own version of their cart system and I grabbed a cleaning caddy that I keep in my laundry room and I stocked it with everything that I would need, the different cleaners including window cleaner. And then I decided I was going to try the color-coded cloths as well. So, I had yellow for the toilets, um, white for the cleaner areas, and blue for the mirrors. I also made my own room sets by getting my towels ready to go because it was not time to clean the sheets. I was like, "Okay, I'm not going to do a full change out." But I did end up doing the bed the way they do. So, let me show you. And I did all of that um pretty well. I would say the results were very eye-opening. And not just because the room I was actually shocked at how quickly I cleaned the room. Although spoiler, it did take a little bit longer than 15 minutes, but I realized how much time I normally waste backtracking because I did backtrack just a couple of times, but that's okay. The second-guessing myself was not there. And I was just like, "Okay, I'm doing it exactly as they say." And I had to like be firm with myself. Plus, the pre-spraying alone was a total game changer. Instead of spray and wipe, spray and wipe every surface, I sprayed everything first. I let the chemistry do the heavy lifting while I was tackling the other tasks. And it turns out cleaning products actually work better when you give them a minute to do their job instead of treating them like they're supposed to work instantly um like some kind of cleaning magic. Also, I really like the never touch it twice rule and I think I did a pretty good job with that. It forced me to think ahead just a little bit instead of just reacting to whatever mess caught my eye first. No more cleaning the bathroom counter and then realizing I need to dust the light fixture ahead and getting the counter dirty again. The one thing I did was I got like I have like a couple water glasses in here and I did end up like running them downstairs which was kind of silly but I really like the system and I think with a bit of practice you could get so fast at it.
The beauty of this system is that it scales to any space. So, I did the kitchen and I thought it was really easy. Actually, my time was even faster in the kitchen and I just was like, "Okay, we're doing the garbage first. We're putting away, you know, I the dishes." is I sort of treated them as like the clothes or the sheets of the the kitchen and did the spraying while I was doing other stuff to let things sit um and to work and worked, you know, top to bottom. Did the floors last. And you could do this in the living room. You could have all of your dusting supplies, your vacuum attachments, your surface cleaners, everything in the caddy or whatever. I think it's just a really great way of just thinking like top to bottom, front to back, like work your way out of the room. I think it's so good and using the color-coded cloth system is so handy. You and you decide whatever they are. I think it works out really good just to stop that cross-contamination and to just get things done faster so you're not cleaning forever.
Now, hotel housekeepers, they're not superhuman. They're just working with a system that has been refined over decades to eliminate possible inefficiency. And I mean I I I did not feel rushed when I was doing it, but you are working at a good clip and certainly when I was a nurse and we weren't like dragging our feet because you're working, right? Every hotel chain has spent millions of dollars figuring out the fastest way to clean a room without sacrificing quality and then they train their staff to execute the system perfectly. The magic isn't working harder or faster. It is being smarter every single time. And I love falling back on systems. I find it is so key because when every motion has a purpose and nothing gets done twice, 15 minutes becomes plenty of time usually to transform a space completely.
But here's what really surprised me. The system wasn't just faster, it was less exhausting. I totally felt energized after. When you're not constantly making decisions about where to clean next or where to find supplies, your brain actually relaxes a little bit and the mental load gets lighter. when your process is automatic. But do you know who managed to clean homes cleaner with five basic products than we do with entire cleaning supply closets? Then 1950s housewives who treated their new electric appliances like revolutionary technology because back then an automatic washing machine was basically the iPhone of housework. So you can check that out here. I hope something great happens for you today. Please like, subscribe, give us a hype, stay tidy and mighty. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time. Bye.