I also have no problem taking out the trash and putting it at the curb on pickup day. If the trash isn’t picked up it will sit for a week and if other guests come in after us there may not be room for more trash if pickup is missed. I also have no problem loading/starting the dishwasher, but I haven’t been asked to wash linens. That seems a bit much. We’ve had mostly good luck with rentals. Only One was a problem (internet needed repairs and DH was trying to work, construction going on downstairs in the condo building and very very noisy jackhammers etc were ongoing). That place got slammed by a renter after us and the unit got taken off rental status.
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Have you been to one that required all those things you listed??
I don’t mind at all taking out the trash - sometimes at the end of a vacation after cleaning out the refrig there is a good amount of trash. We are talking 5 minutes or less to take out a couple trash bags and if needed bins to curb. It’s a home not a hotel, so it’s part of “living” there.
The only time we had to start laundry was summer of 2020 - height of COVID our rental asked us to put all laundry in one pile and throw the sheets in the washer. Not dry them or anything just get sheets started.
We tend to still “clean” to a certain degree when we leave. Are we scrubbing toilets? No. Do I sweep the kitchen floor and wipe down the counters? Yes.
An AIRBNB is not a hotel and a hotel is not an AIRBNB. Both have rules and limitations. Take your pick.
Knock on wood, but we really have had great AIRBNB experiences. But we are quite choosy.
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This is why I would not want to stay at a place that asks its guests to do the laundry. Are they using enough unscented detergent and a hot water cycle (which takes longer) to do the wash? Are the sheets and towels properly dried - without the dreaded scented dryer sheet?
I have no issues with taking out trash or starting dishwasher. Any laundry requests, and it is a no go.
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But for that matter, you don’t know if the owners/cleaning crew use as far as detergent/water temp/dryer add-ons or not at ANY rental (unless stated in their rental description). You hope for it, but we don’t actually know…
Under the circumstances of that time (prime Covid 2020) we were happy to play along.
And that’s exactly why I prefer places that use commercial laundry services. 
We’ve never had to do laundry or extensive cleaning at an AirBnB or VRBO. I guess we’re just lucky, but I don’t recall ever seeing any such thing in descriptions either.
We do take out trash if we can. I don’t want it in the place TBH. To us, that’s not a chore.
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I’ve looked up AirBNB/VRBO’s to possibly rent and pretty much all of the ones I’ve seen require all of that.
Given all of the rules & requirements and housekeeping on my part, I’d rather just stay in a hotel and NOT have to do all that…and hotels have much more forgiving/flexible cancellation policies.
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We’ve done by-week house rentals in Cape Cod that require putting out the trash (and recycle) - no problem, except the small stress to remember it. I like it if linen cleaning is part of the cleaning service. Otherwise it can be over $100 for linen service fee, and in one place we had to make our own beds from the delivered tub of sheets.
Years ago one of a bunch our relatives splurged $4000 for a week in an old home, but with ideal waterside setting. It required sheets from all beds be washed and put back on the beds. Not even sure if there were extra sheet sets. It was a real pain on the last day, especially since some of them had an early flight back. They were not pleased.
Same experience/feelings here -
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I could be completely wrong with this thought.
I do wonder if part of the tug one way or another AIRBNB vs HOTEL might have to do with the size of your group. While I have stayed in AIRBNB rentals with just two of us we most often do AIRBNB for family trips. The experience that a rental provides us as a group of 7 in terms of what WE are looking for (a kitchen we can cook in, a table that accommodates 8 people, more than one living area, outside space/and amenities makes the “inconvenience” of taking out the trash bins a few feet to the road so very minor. The many, many conveniences outweigh the very short list of “chores”.
We all have our “draw the line” points. I surely don’t want to be responsible for doing all the laundry. And wouldn’t book those terms.
Not sure what is the case in your families but my 3 kids (ages 34,30,25) most often choose AIRBNB for their vacations. One will use a hotel for a one-night stay. So in my research group of 3, they prefer AIRBNB rentals for vacationing.
- Electricity
- Heat/AC
- Plenty of hot water (I love long showers – whether I’m singing or spacing out/daydreaming)
- Non-feather pillows (feather allergy…)
- Adequate bedding/linens/towels
- A TV that gets some stations – at least the ESPNs
- Decent WiFi
- Not terribly stinky
- Reasonably clean (I’m not perfect, so I don’t expect someone else to be…)
- Functioning range and frig
Basics…
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I would quite literally worry about if the people left the old/unwashed sheets on and said they changed them in that situation.
I want laundry done by a cleaning service or sent out. I don’t mind doing some minor stuff like trash/recycling on the appropriate day.
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If I’m paying a “service fee” and a “cleaning fee”, then I don’t want to have to do laundry/haul trash. The place I rented for a girls’ weekend in October, tricked me with the garbage and had us having to haul all the bags to a trash “center” for the neighborhood, which was annoying. Nothing was said about it until after I had paid in full and received the final instructions the week before our trip, and it was a “we’re so sorry to make you have to do this…”. The last thing I want to do on my $1,000/night vacation is to haul bags of garbage in my car. We had to haul it and then come back for our bags because there wasn’t room in any of the cars for both and the garbage center was predictably gross with overflowing dumpsters. Not cool.
Our girls’ trip last year was at a beach house where we had to do the laundry - I wasn’t in charge of booking it, but I wouldn’t have agreed to that. If you want to renegotiate all the misc. “fees”, then we can talk.
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To think about it… If this is a house in a neighborhood like ours where curbside trash pick up happens once a week, let’s say, on Mondays (gotta run to fetch those bins!), someone renting the house for a weekend could be stuck taking the trash and recycling bins with the previous weekday renters’ trash/recycling to the curb on Sunday. If the house is being professionally cleaned in between renters, that should be a part of the cleaning fee, period. If I’m renting for more than a week, that is a different story. I will gladly put the bins curbside on the designated day and roll them back into the yard.
(I’m not a pansy when it comes to cleaning, I clean my own place just fine, but cleaning is not a vacation activity for me )
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For us hotel vs VRBO/other rental is about number of people AND length of stay. When we go to Hawaii (from the east coast), we typically stay 2 weeks. Other vacations tend to be a week. We want places bigger than hotel rooms, with kitchens, etc.
IF we are going to a wedding or other event and just staying a couple of days, hotel is fine, unless we are part of a bigger group that wants to be together.
I have found the added fees to generally be too high to warrant doing a VRBO for just a day or two.
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This has definitely been eye-opening for me. Granted, I haven’t spent as many nights at aibnbs as others, but I’ve never rented one, or heard of one, that required laundry tasks before reading this thread. If I knew about it beforehand, it would probably be a no-go for me. I don’t mind trash duties. I tend to look at airbnbs to being similiar to the beach condos we would rent long before airbnb. You had to take out the trash and run the dishwasher, but not empty it. I know we would vacuum at least some, but I don’t think that was required. We brought our own linens/towels for those, but you could rent.
We try to be neat renters, leaving everything as tidy as possible. I don’t want to make any more work for the cleaning crew than necessary.
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Exactly!
I rented quite a bit pre-Covid and probably 5-6 times post-Covid and have found a big change in the amount of things they are asking renters to do before leaving, post-Covid. I get it, during the height of Covid when finding help was scarce, but if they have a cleaning service coming in anyway (that I’m paying for), I shouldn’t be hauling garbage also. There were 12 of us cooking and drinking beer/wine/seltzer, etc. We had a lot of garbage bags! Also a requirement, was having to put the regular garbage bags into these heavy-duty vinyl bags before hauling them out and having to haul them up a steep incline.
I sound crazy and high maintenance, I know 
I promise I’m not! 
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The difference between hotel and AirBnB for us is whether we want to cook in the place. Few hotels have decent cooking options. When we stay somewhere for a couple of weeks or months, there’s no way I want to eat out all the time.
We tend to think of Airbnb/VRBO for larger groups (to avoid 2 or more hotel rooms, awkward and expensive meal arrangements) and/or longer stays (the cleaning charge and booking fee can be super high, their way to encourage only longer stays / less owner logistics).
For the times we’ve had to do own sheets and laundry, it’s in Cape Cod where most weekends are Sat-to-Sat. Not much time for the cleaning crew, who do many homes. Garbage day in neighborhoods happens during the week.
Some of us will have to agree to disagree (a phrase I hate!).
The laundry thing is (I believe) the exception to the rule. We have rented many between members of our immediate family and only on the one occasion were we asked to put laundry in one spot in the home and start the sheets (the turnaround time on cleaning for the person coming in in the afternoon is often 4 hours - that can be a quick amount of time to turn over all linens - or maybe some of them do send them out for cleaning - don’t know for sure but if it’s important to you, you can ask!)
If I made a list of the pros and cons of AIRBNB’s the pro list would be MUCH, much longer. And much longer list of pros over a hotel on many occasions.
What happens behind ANY rental - hotel or otherwise- closed cleaning doors, we don’t really know!
Another phrase I hate: YOU DO YOU.
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