Here's What Hotel Housekeepers Wish You Knew (And What They Wish They Could Tell You)

When you stay at a hotel, you're kind of suspending reality a bit. Regardless of the hotel's quality, from budget inns on the interstate to ultra-luxe resorts, you'll still have the privilege of a housekeeping staff and a front desk trained to satisfy the requests of guests. Unfortunately, many hotel guest abuse this privilege. Whether it's trashing a hotel room, being too demanding, or acting generally rude to staff, a hotel's staff puts up with a lot of bad behavior, especially the housekeeping staff.

Whether you'd like to consider it or not, the hotel's housekeepers will get to know you rather intimately during your stay. From the sheer amount of cleaning that housekeepers perform each day to what your luggage says about your traveling style, there are plenty of things that hotel housekeepers wish you knew. If you'd like to be a more considerate hotel guest — while saving yourself a little embarrassment — here are some things to consider before your next hotel stay.

Hotels are kind of strange places. Yes, you're paying to feel like you're at home, but you're not at home. You are instead at a place of business, and the housekeepers work at this business. So, your hotel room is designed to feel like a home away from home, but the housekeeping staff will visit your room each day if you don't place a "Do not disturb" sign on the door.

According to housekeeping staff members, if you want to retain some privacy, then you should be a bit more modest regarding your underwear. For one, housekeepers report that they don't exactly appreciate when guests are too "comfortable" in regards to leaving everything out in the open. After all, the hotel staff is already cleaning up behind you. There's no reason to make it unnecessarily uncomfortable.

While they'd never tell a hotel guest this, the staff typically appreciates some boundaries in their day-to-day work. If you value your privacy and/or want to be considerate of the staff, then you should also consider placing your underwear and other "sensitive items" in your luggage versus strewn everywhere.

We've all probably been guilty of this, but there's no reason to be snarky or rude when the housekeeping staff knocks on our door. If we didn't place our do not disturb sign up, then the housekeeping staff is doing exactly what they're hired to do — get inside our room and clean it. There's absolutely no way for them to know if we want our room cleaned or not. So, if you did forget to place your sign up, simply apologize and place your sign up after speaking with housekeeping.

Also, while there's no reason to be shy about wanting our rooms cleaned, there's typically also no reason to have your room cleaned daily. If you were at home, would you change your sheets every night or use your towels only once? If you were to ask, housekeepers know that the largest water and energy consumption of the hotel is used for washing linens. If you want to be a more sustainable and eco-friendly traveler, skipping a few days of housekeeping can significantly reduce your carbon footprint when traveling (and the workload of an often overworked staff).

It's admirable and good personal policy to leave the smallest carbon footprint possible when traveling. Full stop. However, we should be cognizant of two things when refusing hotel room cleanings. There can be a human toll of eco-friendliness in terms of difficulty cleaning the room later and the potential of shift cuts.

So, for one, cleaning after a week's-stay can be much more difficult than continually keeping the room quasi-clean. Let's say you spill coffee on the floor. That stain must be cleaned, and it's a lot easier to clean a fresh stain than a week-old one. Depending on the hotel and the size of the room, housekeepers may have 30-45 minutes to clean each room. It doesn't matter if the room's a pigsty or immaculate, they can only allot a certain amount of time to each room.

Secondly, if enough people refuse room cleanings, then the cleaning staff may have their shifts cut. In an interview with Woman's Day, Brigida, a Toronto-based housekeeper, explains. "If 100 guests choose not to have their room cleaned at my hotel, then the next day six to eight housekeepers get a call that they don't have to come in to work," says Brigida.

When staying at a hotel, it seems thoughtful to find a balance between considering the human cost and the environmental cost. If nothing else, if you're committed to eco-friendly practices by refusing daily cleanings, which is proper on many levels, perhaps consider supplementing the staff's potential lost income with a decent tip.

We really try to avoid generalizations. In our experience, a four-star resort isn't always immaculate (just sometimes overpriced), while the quirk and charm of a two-star motel may make for a fantastic stay. In the U.S., the hotel industry's star-rating system is self-monitored and managed by the industry itself. In other words, there's no rating association or regulatory body that set star-rating standards. With that said, star ratings can reflect cleanliness standards.

"Where I work now, bedding and pillows are replaced at every check-out," explained a housekeeper working at a five-star hotel in Orlando in an interview with Trivago. "However, before, when I used to work at a budget hotel, we rarely changed them, even when there were sweat stains or marks on the pillow, we would just cover it with a new case — some differences between staying in a budget hotel and a luxury hotel."

Again, we want to avoid generalizations, but a cleanliness standard is a large consideration when it comes to star-rating estimations — just like the hotel's location, amenities, and overall quality of the accommodations. If nothing else, consider the star rating to manage expectations. Your two-star hotel room may be dinner-off-floor clean, but you'll also need to be realistic if traveling on a budget.

One thing that's easy to do, as a considerate hotel guest, is to remove your stuff off your bed. There are a few unspoken (and written) policies that housekeepers adhere to. One of these policies includes trying their best to not touch your belongings. While they'll clean out your trash and perhaps the general trail of vacation life, your belongings are a different story. While it doesn't happen often, if a guest loses something — something valuable — then the amateur detective work performed by a guest may point an uncredible finger at staff. To completely avoid this, housekeeping tries its very best to just not touch your property.

However, it's problematic when your belongings are on your bed. While your bathroom will usually always be sanitized, the room vacuumed, and surfaces wiped, your bed is the crown jewel of room-cleaning proof, so it will always be made. So, when these two policies collide — make the bed and try not to touch the guests' property — leaving your stuff on the bed is tough. We're all guilty of throwing our clothes, luggage, and whatever else on the bed, but if you can remember, just try to help the housekeeping staff by placing your stuff in other places.

A previous hotel guest dying in our now current room is something we'd rather not think about. However, this happens more than we realize, and cleaning crews are largely tasked with handling the clean-up. Obviously, depending on the specific incident, more specialized cleaners may assist, but the hotel's housekeeping staff still performs the bulk of the work.

When a death in a hotel occurs, a normal protocol includes removing any stains and sanitizing the room with industrial-strength cleaners. That's about it. Depending on the city or country and specific circumstances, regulations may require a quarantine period. However, there are plenty of stories concerning hotels trying to avoid quarantine periods to make the room available as soon as possible. Needless to say, housekeepers are strictly forbidden from talking about someone dying in a hotel room. In other words, you'd probably never know if someone permanently checked out before your arrival.