Having hosted an Airbnb for a couple of years now, I have had the pleasure of meeting wonderful and rather immaculate guests from all across the world. I really love providing a clean and restful beautiful space for people to have a quiet getaway or a writer’s retreat, a family gathering or a romantic outing. Our two bedroom suite is newly renovated with white carpets and wood floors, high count cotton sheets, fluffy towels, a garden BBQ area, an ocean view, a tub big enough for two and a dry sauna for those cold wintery nights. Sometimes I walk down to the suite and sit on the white sofa wth the fluffy grey pillows and soak in the serene order of it when my own place upstairs is a disaster.
The Airbnb etiquette is basically this: treat this place as though you were staying at a friend’s house. I have come to realize that some guests have no idea how to treat a friend. Therefore, based on all actual experiences in the past year, I wish to write a few helpful hints that are far more specific:
- Consider doing an afternoon nude photoshoot somewhere other than my backyard on the flowering plum tire swing, especially knowing full well that my husband and teenaged son are home.
- When using the washroom please do not steal all the toilet paper, soap and toiletries in the medicine cabinet. It is for your in-house comfort, it is not bomboniere. Though I do anticipate the infirm and the young to occasionally “miss”, I really must draw a line at urinating in the sink. (yes, I can tell) Please also note that viscous bodily fluids do not magically wash themselves down the shower drain. Finally, I celebrate your fecundity, but please do not leave your used feminine products out on the toilet console like a thick crust pizza for my viewing pleasure.
- It is customary for Airbnb guests to do their own dishes, it keeps the costs down for hosts who do it all by hand, unlike a hotel. That said, before you put the dishes back in the cupboard they must be washed. That’s what I mean by “do”. As for cooking, perhaps fermented fish would be best served in your own abode? Finally, if you do not recycle articles in the clearly marked receptacles I provide and throw everything into the garbage pail, know that I will be rooting up to my armpits through your trash to fish out the glass and the plastic for the sake of the planet.
- Please do not raid my vegetable garden and chicken coop without asking me first. If you do pull out half of my beets and carrots and cook them, at least eat them, don’t leave them spoiled on the stove for me to cry over.
- Before sitting on the white sofa, please attend to the open wound on your leg.
- Before sleeping between the beautiful cotton sheets and goose down duvet, please attend to the open wound on your face.
- Please do not pour your perfumed oil on my sauna’s rocks. The smell still hasn’t left.
- if your child is eating bright orange cheese product, please wipe their hands before they crawl all over the linen duvet cover, the chairs, the sofa, the mirrors, the windows, the doors and the white walls.
- If you pull out every single extra sheet, towel, blanket and duvet cover and throw them inexplicably on the floor, I have to assume you have used them and I am stuck with six hours of laundry.
- Though I am known to be a whimsical gardener, mixing gladiolas in with my garlic and gardenia in with my basil, cigarette butts and beer cans do not compliment the peonies.
- Pride in one’s sexual prowess can be healthy. Inviting me to enter the suite with breakfast, “now is fine”, while you are naked and mid copulation is sick.
- if you are cold, please turn up the heat and then turn it down when you leave. But please remember cranking every single heat register to forty degrees celsius does not heat the house up faster, and leaving it on full blast while also opening the doors and windows and running the fan is a complete asshole thing to do.
- If you cannot afford my prices, please ask me for a discount. Trying to sneak three extra people in doesn’t work. I live here, remember? I see you.
- If you refuse to take your boots and shoes off indoors, please stay somewhere that has sawdust and peanut shells on the floor. Do not stay in my silly inhospitable suite with the white carpets.
- Please just send me a text if you need to borrow anything upstairs, like a rice cooker. It works much better than yelling out the patio, “Stupid white people!”
- If you are staying at a discounted rate off season, ask for early arrival and late departure for free, also ask for chicken eggs for free and an extra guest at no charge, perhaps reconsider giving me a 3 out of 5 for value on your review.
- Finally, if my dog is in the backyard, please feel free to pet him. Please do not invite him inside to sleep on the sofa all night while I wonder if the old guy has been hit by a car or gone off to die in some dark corner of the woods.
Despite these frustrating now amusing events, the great guests, ninety-nine percent of them, make it all worth it. All the adorable kids that gasp over the blue eggs and want to hold the bunnies. The exhausted couples who come back to life after a few days of quiet and rest. The sons who take their Mum for a getaway. The lesbian couples who – I can tell – are so grateful to be warmly welcomed. The intergenerational family gatherings, especially people from different countries and cultures, so cool. I have a particular soft spot for my guests from India and not just because they offer me what they’re cooking sometimes! I love it. And I love having my own friends and family over too. It’s a gift to be able to love people in such a simple way.
Thank-you for listening – and here’s to another year of hospitality!
Love, The Joytide hosts, Lucia and Scott 
