Linen service and laundry hacks everyone needs to know if you run an Airbnb. Learn how to get your whites white, and how purple bag service works. Want to laundry like a boss? These hacks & organization routines are game-changers.

Listen: Linen Service and Laundry Hacks for Your AirBNB

Watch: Linen Service and Laundry Hacks for Your AirBNB

Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Linen Service and Laundry Hacks for Your Airbnb

Linen service and laundry hacks for your Airbnb. A house cleaner  asked this question. “Okay, so my wife and I own a small cleaning company, two of us, and we’ve been doing this for five years. We have one Airbnb client, but the rest of our jobs are house cleaning.

Anyway, we’ve been fumbling on the laundry by staying longer than five hours because we’re waiting on the laundry. We need your help and tips on getting it done soon.”

You’re Not the Only One With Laundry Problems

So the first thing that I want to say is congratulations on your Airbnb account. The next thing I want to recommend is that there are lots of Airbnb accounts in every city. So if you’re having a problem with the laundry, chances are you’re not the only one.

So, there are a couple of different options of how you can maneuver this. The first thing I’d do is recommend that you go to the host and ask for three sets of linens per bed.

Ask Hosts to Have Three Sets of Linens Per Bed

So if you have five beds that you’re turning, you have three sets of linens per bed. That means that there’s going to be spare linens inside the closet in case a guest spills coffee or wine or something on the beds, they can strip the linens themselves.

This way they have a clean one, and they’re not scrambling with no bedding while you come in and wash a load of laundry. We don’t ever want anyone to find themselves in that situation.

Two Sets of Towels are Also Recommended

We also recommend that there are two sets of hand towels and washcloths for every guest. The rest of the linens should be in a locked linen closet on-site. So when you get to the house the next morning and you’re flipping the property. instead of staying there for five hours, it takes you two and a half hours to flip the property. That’s two and a half extra hours that you’re waiting on the laundry that you could be off reselling to another job or another Airbnb.

At $35 per hour per house cleaner. That’s about $70 in lost revenues if you stay at the property waiting on the laundry. So I recommend that you don’t do that, but you create a new alliance with the host where you take the laundry off-site.

What we call it is our purple bag service. The purple bag service, it’s a great big purple bag and it has a tag on it that is specific to that Airbnb. So the linens, the bedsheets, the cloths, the washcloths, they all go inside that bin.

Oxiclean is Great for Stains

Now there are a couple of tips on-site and you have these supplies on-site. This is cleaning vinegar and then we also have Oxiclean, and then we have Oxiclean MaxForce. This is great for getting out stains, makeup stains, blood stains, things like that.

So what we do is we take our clothes, we spray them and then we put them inside a mesh bag. This mesh bag goes inside our bigger purple bag that then goes to processing.

When we get back to our offices and I say, our offices, wherever you do your inventory for the night. If you’re a cleaning service, you have mesh bags already that you use for your microfiber cloths.

When you go to soak those at the end of the day, you can get a great big five-gallon bucket. You can fill it with hot water, the hot water activates the Oxiclean. You can soak your soil towels inside the container until you’re ready to wash those. Then when you go back to Airbnb the following day, you have a clean, fresh set of linens, towels, bedding, all that stuff that you’re ready to do.

You Can Also Drop Your Purple Bag Off to Be Washed

All right, so the next option would be you do all of that except this. You put everything inside your purple bag and you drop it off at a mom and pop wash and fold. They will charge you about a dollar per pound for your linens. Then the next day when you make the rounds, you’ve pulled the linens off tomorrow’s bed, and you pick up the clean linens that you dropped off today. You pick those up tomorrow and you drop off tomorrow’s linens at that place.

So every day you’re rotating one day’s worth of linens, picking up a clean set, and dropping off the old set. And that way they do the linens for you and they wash them and they make sure that there are no stains and all that stuff. I will warn you that sometimes they don’t give as much care as we love to give ourselves.

And that’s why I recommend that we spray them in advance so that it does lift the stains and they’re easier to wash, and it makes it easier on everyone.

You Can Also Hire a Service to Drop Off Linens

The third option for this, is we hire a purple service tech that picks the linens up and drops the linens off to us.

And I will give you a secret, the best person for this we found are realtors. Because realtors are out and about all day, every day. And they are used to having keys for lockboxes and going in and out of homes.

They can go right into your Airbnb into the storage closet, and they can restock the linens for you between that turn time while the house cleaner is there cleaning. That way it’s not taking up the house cleaners time to do the laundry.

As the Business Owner, You Can Outsource Laundry

Now, the realtor, because they do all their MLS listings they can take these to a laundromat. They can actually stuff all the washing machines with all the different Airbnbs. And this is where a business owner can outsource this service.

So you can go to all the Airbnbs in town, put a note on Facebook, put a note on Nextdoor, or whatever it is. “Hey, we’re picking up linens. If you too have an issue like this where you’re wasting time waiting on the linens, we have somebody that’s going to swing by. That’s a credentialed person. They go in and out of homes all day, every day that is going to pick up the linens for you. They’re going to wash them. They’re going to bring them back at the same time the following day.”

For this, you pay by the hour and they do their MLS listings while they’re waiting for all the laundry at the laundromat.

You Can Also Have an Older Kid Drop By and Pick up Laundry

There’s another option still and this is an option where you have like a college kid or even an adult high school kid that is able to drive themselves. They can swing by the property, they can pick it up, they can take this, they can rotate your linens and your wash at the laundromat.

They can do their homework while they’re waiting for the linens to clean. Then when they come back, all they do and this is a little bit different service than just restocking. But they come back and they actually make the beds and they iron the linens so that everything is nice and tidy.

You do everything else. You do the restocking, the cleaning. Everything except for the beds and the person that brings the linens back, they do the beds, they iron the sheets, and then you’re good to go.

The Fourth Option is to Hire a Professional Linen Service

So that’s another option. The fourth option altogether is that you’ll hire an outside linen service. And this is a professional linen service. It’s not a mom-and-pop wash and folds, it’s not a high school kid. It’s not a realtor that’s going to swing by and restock those linens.

This is a person that’s going to come by, they’ll pick up your purple bag, they’ll bring it back to you. They do the entire process. What’s different about the linen service is oftentimes you’re renting the linens.

So if you have a washcloth that is soiled and it’s ruined, they will take it and replace it for you at no extra charge. Or there may be a surcharge that’s built into your regular fee. And so they will always bring you spectacular-looking linens and they specialize in the hotel industry. So they do this for hotels, for restaurants. They’re very familiar with the process.

There are Cheaper Options Than What You’re Doing

It is a little bit more money, but you rent the linens for the beds, for the pillows, the sheets, the duvet covers, the washcloths, the towels, the beach towels, all that stuff.

And so that you rent, they bring you clean ones every single day. So there are options that are going to be far cheaper than the $70 an hour that you’re wasting by hanging out waiting for the laundry to turn.

So my recommendation is that you think outside the box on the processes of how you’re doing your laundry right now. Because there are other options, right?

Resources

OxiClean Max Force Laundry Stain Remover – https://amzn.to/2R4ZiG8

OxiClean Versatile Stain Remover –  https://amzn.to/3xr8GEI

Multi-Purpose Cleaning Vinegar – https://amzn.to/3gCCA2J

Mesh Laundry Bags for soiled cloths – https://amzn.to/2RV8tcn

Purple Heavy Duty Laundry Bags for Pickup – https://amzn.to/3er1PlG

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