Reflections of a Working Mom

I usually don’t clean the vacation rentals. Granted, most of them are two hours away, so I have a pretty good excuse to leverage those tasks. However, there is one close to my house, and if there is any kind of scheduling conflict, I can and will jump in to clean.

There are two types of vacation rental guests in my opinion: people who are TERRIFIED of the person coming to clean thinking them nasty, and the ones who set out to ensure that they do. LOL. I am almost entirely joking about the second group. Oddly, I think most very messy people are oblivious to it.

After almost six years of managing vacation rentals, I am firmly in the first group. My hotel rooms and vacation rentals are immaculate. I drill it into my children. I was tidy anyway – I’ve never trashed anyone else’s property. But when you’ve seen some of what we have, you can never walk out of a property with the same “Oh they get paid to do that” attitude again. I promise you…they don’t get paid enough.

It was on one such occasion that I walked in to clean. The property was in good shape except they hadn’t emptied any of the trash cans. So my first task was to walk around gathering the trash. In the office, I happened to glance into the trash can and paused. It was mostly empty. A lunchable wrapper and about half a dozen bundles of fake eyelashes were scattered in the bottom.

Lunchables and eyelashes. I laughed. And I marveled that for some people, that sums up a weekend, and wondered what my proverbial trash can holds.

K-cups, for sure. LOL. Beyond that, I have to give it some thought.