Well, I was talking with one of my housekeepers the other day, actually the housekeeper that’s worked with us the longest.

She helps manage some of our housekeeping team in multiple cities, and she’s been doing housekeeping herself for years and years, over eight years working with her.

It’s been an amazing relationship.

She’s a huge, huge help.

She’s also a wealth of knowledge when it comes to housekeeping.

So we started talking about damaged linens, all the things that can go wrong, really.

Her eyes sort of glazed over, but she broke it all down for me, and I want to break it all down for you guys this week.

We’re going to talk about linens, how many you need, why and when they might get damaged, and everything in between.

So stay tuned.

Let’s jump right in.

Welcome to Short Term Rental Riches.

We’ll discuss investing in real estate, but with a specific focus on short term rentals.

Quick, actionable items to acquire, manage, and scale your portfolio.

I’m your host, Tim Hubbard.

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Welcome back to the show.

I’m glad you’re here again.

We’re talking about everything linens this week.

So towels, bed linens, how many you need, how they’re going to get damaged, and how many might get damaged.

Let’s just go ahead and jump right into it.

Let’s talk about some of the main reasons that you’re going to be losing linens.

And believe me, you’re going to be losing linens.

They will get stained, they will get damaged, and you will have to replace them.

That is a fact.

So one of the big ones, this one might not be a big surprise to you, but that is makeup.

So eyeliner, all types of makeup, they stain linens.

It doesn’t come out.

I know we’ve tried makeup towels in the past, so they sell the little black makeup towels, and those are great for a little while, but then when you go to wash them, they often lose part of their color, they start to look a little older.

So we stick with white everything, but makeup unfortunately is one of those things that’s going to damage some of your linens.

Now we’re going to talk about whether you should charge linens.

We’re going to talk about everything linens in this episode, so we’ll get to that in just a second.

I want to talk about a few more of the reasons.

Baby formula.

So, that was a new one to me, but apparently baby formula and linens do not go well together.

Pets can obviously cause a lot of damage to your linens.

When people put their luggage on your bed, this can stain your linens.

That’s why we always recommend having luggage racks.

That’s why every hotel you go to, for the most part, is going to have a luggage rack, because what’s the first thing someone does when they show up to your Airbnb?

Ah, they put that suitcase on the bed, they open it up, and the suitcase has been traveling through the airport, and it stains your linens.

Another common one can be when women are going through that special time of the month, and yes, your sheets can get stained with blood.

If you don’t have the ability to wash your linens very quickly, then this can also add to how many linens you’re losing, how many towels you’re losing, right?

The quicker we can wash them, and the better we can wash them.

So how hot is the water we’re using?

What sorts of soaps and chemicals are we using to wash them?

Obviously, industrial cleaning is going to do a better job than a residential machine.

So really, sky is the limit when it comes to the reasons you might be losing linens.

But we’ve got some questions that we can ask ourselves that will really help us narrow this down and get a much better idea of the overall picture.

One of the first things to think about is which types of your linens are you going to lose the most of?

And I would say from our experience, it’s going to be face towels, right?

So a lot of that comes from makeup.

Of course, you can try leaving the little makeup removers in your property.

Those can be helpful.

We do leave those, but they don’t always get used, right?

So you’re probably going to be losing the most face towels.

Up next, you’re probably going to be losing the most fitted sheets.

So that’s the sheet that actually goes around the bed, right?

But the reality is you’re going to lose a little bit of all of it.

Next question to ask yourself is how luxurious is your property?

The nicer property, the more linens and towels and face towels, and everything we want to leave, and also the better quality we want to leave.

One of the upsides to purchasing better quality linens is that they do last longer.

They many times wash better too.

So some of those stains with an inferior fabric might get stained easier than with a better quality.

We actually did a whole episode on what’s the best thread count for your bed sheets.

Really interesting one.

I’ve experimented with a lot of sheets in my day, and I based that episode off a YouTube video from an expert in the industry that makes sheets, and they were debunking the myth that more thread count is better.

So if you missed that episode, go back and check that out.

That was episode 167.

The next question we want to ask ourselves to help us really just wrap our minds around how much linen we can expect to need is what type of guests we have.

So if you have a business type of guest, clientele, guest avatar standing at your property, they’re very often not going to be as rowdy or ruin as many of your linens as maybe a bachelorette party, right?

So anyone out there in Nashville, my heart goes out to you.

I think that is the bachelorette capital of the United States.

And yes, I know people personally with properties there, and they lose a lot of linens.

So we really need to understand who our guests are and or staying at our property.

And this is something that might take us a little bit of time to kind of learn, right?

If we’re just starting a brand new property, yes, absolutely want to know what type of guests are staying our property.

But after we’ve rented that property 10, 15, 20, 40 times, we’re really going to get a good idea of how much loss to expect.

Another question to ask yourself is how long are your guests staying at your property?

So again, this goes back to really understanding who’s staying at our property.

But if the average length of stay is seven days versus 10 days versus 20 days or versus two days, then that’s going to help us to determine how many linens we need to leave in the property.

One thing that my housekeeping manager told me is that the more linens they leave in the property, oftentimes the more get ruined because sometimes the guests that aren’t super careful with the linens, if they have more to use, they use all of them and they can potentially stain all of them.

So again, that really comes down to understanding our guests who stay in our property, how long they’re staying there, how luxurious is our property.

All these things are really going to impact the amount of linens that you actually need and also the amount of linens that are going to get damaged.

One last thing before we get into how many linens you should actually be keeping on hand, keeping there at the property is that the timeliness of when you’re washing the linens, it really does have an impact.

And so if you have a housekeeper or housekeeping company that’s bagging up your linens, maybe they’re doing them off site.

If you have wet linens in there and they’re grouped with other ones, that can definitely impact the other ones and stain the other ones.

So we want to make sure we’re washing the linens as soon as possible.

And so if you have laundry on site and your housekeeping team is able to do that there at the property, that’s going to help you save quite a bit more laundry as well because you’re going to wash it right after it might have a stain.

Okay, so with those questions out of the way, it’s very clear that there’s no one size fits all answer to how many linens we should have in our property.

But I want to go ahead and just give you our guidelines for the majority of the properties in my personal portfolio.

Let’s talk about towels first and then we’ll go ahead and break down bed linens afterwards.

So of course, we’re always leaving at least one set of towels for every guest.

So let’s say we have six people allowed to stay at our property.

We’re going to be leaving at least six.

But if this is a five night stay or more, then we’re going to double that.

So again, this is coming back to the type of guests staying at your property and how long they’re staying there.

So if they’re staying longer than five nights and there’s six people there, then we would add six additional towels.

So they would have 12 in total.

We also have laundry in the properties, right?

So they’re going to be able to wash them on their own if they needed to.

Now, let’s say they’re staying for less than five days.

One of the things my housekeeper mentioned is that people will very often use all the linens.

You leave them.

And so what we do to try to salvage some of that is if it’s less than five days, we are dividing the guest count by two and then adding that amount as an extra.

So in that same example, if we have six guests, we’re going to be leaving three extra towels for a length of stay less than five nights.

So that always ensures that there are some backup.

But I’ve got another tip for you to make sure that we always have enough backup, no matter how many we’re actually leaving for the guests.

I know that sounds a little weird, but I will give that to you here in just one second.

If you are next to a lake or next to the ocean, or you have a pool or jacuzzi or spa at your property, well, then of course, you’re going to want to leave a beach type of towel.

I don’t really think that you need to leave tons of extra beach towels.

Not everyone’s going to be using those.

And we do, again, have laundry in most all of our properties, so someone could wash them if they needed to.

Just as a general rule, the more luxurious your property is, the more linens you need to be adding.

Let’s talk about how many linens you should keep on hand for your beds now.

I would recommend three.

We never want to be caught off guard and show up to a property with a bunch of stained linens and not have anything to replace it and risk having a guest show up and not be ready.

That is the worst case scenarios.

We always want to have more than we need, right?

So I’d recommend three per bed.

You, of course, have one all on the bed when the guest shows up, and then you’re going to have two backups.

Your option, whether or not you want to leave one of those backups out for your guests at the property, or maybe leave them both with your housekeeper, or you have them in a locked storage cabinet.

Having a locked storage cabinet is really your saving grace to always ensure that you have enough linens for your guests, even if they’re not all readily available for the guests.

So if you only want to leave out one extra set of towels or an extra set of bed sheets, but the guest happens to stain multiple or they need more, well, then you can keep more in that locked supply cabinet.

Maybe you have a combination lock on there so you can easily give it to your guests.

And so in the worst case scenario, they have to open another cabinet and they have access to fresh linens and more towels if they ran out.

Now, of course, if your guests are always asking you for more, well, then you probably need to leave more at your property, right?

But we always want to make sure we have enough.

Remember, it comes down to the guest experience.

So you are going to be losing a lot of linens and towels.

That is for sure.

Remember, it depends on all these different things.

The length of stay, whether they’re bringing pets, whether your guest avatar is more of a party type of guest or their business traveler.

All of these things are going to impact the amount of linens.

After 10, 15, 20 reservations, you will have a pretty firm grasp on how many you need to keep.

But remember to keep that backup there.

And that will be your saving grace.

And last quick thing before we jump off is, should you be charging your guests for damaged linens if they damage them?

Quick answer is yes.

You’re running a business, right?

Most guests are going to understand that.

They damage one of your linens.

It’s very clearly damaged, just like a hotel would charge them.

You should be charging them as well.

But I would recommend that you have a minimum charge to where you’re not charging one of your guests $7 for a face towel or some washcloths or something like that.

Ours is based on the average nightly rate for the property.

So if we’re charging $500 a night for a property, we’re not going to sort of nickel and dime someone for 20, 30 bucks.

You know, our minimum might be $50 or 75.

But in most cases, if you have proof of the damaged linen, it’s pretty understandable, and it’s not something that’s going to lead to a bad review or anything like that.

But again, depends on all those factors.

You know, the luxuriousness of your property, type of guest, all those different things.

So I hope that gave you a little bit more insight into how many linens you might need, why they might get damaged, and where and how to keep your backups.

Remember, if you’re not sure what type or quality linens to buy, you can go back and check out episode 167.

We talk about thread count.

And then we also did an episode just on your laundry options and how you can work with your housekeeper, your housekeeping team, or what options they might have.

That’s episode 185.

There’s a lot when it comes to housekeeping, right?

And so we’re going to do a few more episodes on this.

We’re going to talk about where to find your housekeepers and potential issues that can come up, when to know if you might need to hire another housekeeper.

So stay tuned.

We got a lot coming out on that.

Our team, again, has managed tens of thousands of guests in nearly 20 cities now for years and years, including my personal portfolio, which is scattered around the US and outside of the US now.

So we’ve learned a lot.

I hope this information is helpful.

Until next time, I hope you have a fabulous week.

Whether you’re just getting started with short term rentals or you’ve been in the game for a while, one thing remains the same.

Your management can make or break your performance.

Our team has learned a lot managing thousands of guests, and we’ve put together a handbook just for you with our checklist to cover our exact process.

There’s a lot to consider from verifying guests to managing reviews, and you don’t want to miss a step.

You can get your free copy by going to restmethods.com.

There’s no charge.

It’s my gift to you for being one of our loyal subscribers, and I hope it helps you earn higher returns with less headache.