5 Tips for Managing Preparation Days

Preparation days, also known as cleaning or housekeeping days, are the days, or time, you allow for your cleaning person to prepare your property for the next incoming guest. As a rental host, you’ll need to provide your cleaning staff ample time to clean properly, including washing linens, cleaning the kitchen and bathroom, dusting and whatever else may be required.

Preparation days have now become of the utmost importance in the era of Covid-19 and beyond. Let’s take a look at some best practices for managing your rental preparation days so that you get the maximum cleaning in the smallest amount of time.

24 Hour Turnaround

In most cases you want to allow for 24 hours between guests. Doing so will give your cleaning person plenty of time to clean the short term rental, as well as provide you an update of overall general status of the property. For example, if something is broken or missing, you may have time to correct the issue prior to your next guest arriving.

In addition, try to avoid same day cleaning, meaning a guest checks out at 11am, with another guest arriving at 4pm. While your cleaning crew might be able to turn things around that quickly, it creates a large amount of undue stress. Also, in the post Covid-19 era, it’s a best practice to leave 24 hours between guests.

2. Get Status Updates

One simple tactic that can reduce anxiety is to get an initial status update from your cleaning folks when they first enter your property. For example, did the guest leave the home in good condition and generally clean? Are there any broken or missing items? Did guests leave anything behind? Knowing early on can be very helpful, particularly when it comes to leaving guest reviews.

3. Factor In Preparation Days Into Your Vacancy

One thing that caught us off guard early on was that cleaning days mean vacancy days. With 24 hours between guests, in a given month, that could be 4-5 days on average that is just cleaning. So when you are doing your math on income and ROI, remember that prep days add to your overall vacancy.

4. Keep an Extra Set of Everything on Hand

A real time saver for your cleaning personnel is to have complete extra sets of sheets, towels and linens on hand. This way they can be making up fresh beds and bath towels, etc while washing the dirty linens. So basically a good cleaning staff will rotate your linens with each guest, thus extending the life of all your linens.

5. Pay Your Cleaners Electronically

You want to keep your cleaning person happy! A great way to do this is to pay them electronically once each cleaning is completed. Use Venmo or Zelle and you can pay them in just seconds. Doing so ensures you don’t forget to pay them, plus, it just makes life easier and better for your cleaning person.