Working Inside Tight Check-Out to Check-In Windows

Say checkout is at ten in the morning and the next guest arrives at three in the afternoon. That's five hours on paper. In practice the guest might leave late, the laundry might not dry, or the key might not be where it should be. A plan for a tight window leaves room for those things.

Find out how long the job really takes

Everything starts with real timings. The EHL guide on hotel procedures gives "recording how long it takes to complete a housekeeping turnover" as an example of useful tracking¹. Do the same for each property.

Time each part separately: the walk-through, bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, floors, linen and the final check. After a few visits you'll see a range, not a single figure. Plan around the long end of that range.

The EHL guide also suggests running pilots and gathering feedback before settling on a procedure. It says to "Observe how procedures work in practice by running pilots and gathering feedback from staff"¹. For a solo cleaner, the first few visits to a new property are the pilot.

Plan backwards from check-in

Start with the arrival time, not the checkout time.

1. Mark the arrival time of the next guest.
2. Put a buffer before it. This is spare time you don't plan to use.
3. Put the final walk-through and photos just before the buffer.
4. Fit the cleaning work into the space that's left, starting at checkout.
5. If the work won't fit, you need a second cleaner, a shorter scope or an earlier start. Raise it with the host in advance.

The buffer is the part people skip. It's the only thing that absorbs a late checkout or a machine that takes longer than expected.

Prepare before you arrive

Some of the work can happen before the clock starts.

• Carry a full kit so you don't need to go back to the car. Pack cloths, sprays, bags, a vacuum if the property doesn't have one, and the restock items.
• Bring clean linen with you, so beds can be made without waiting for a wash. The linen page covers the choices.
• Check the booking calendar the evening before for changes to times.
• Make sure you know how to get in. The access page goes through keys, lockboxes and smart locks.

Use a fixed order

A fixed order saves the decisions you'd make on the spot. The process page gives one. It follows the Victorian health guidance to "work from clean to dirty" and from high to low², which also saves you from redoing surfaces.

One useful trick is to start the washing machine first. If the property's machine does the linen, load it as soon as you've stripped the beds. A University of Alabama guide says a washer should be "about two-thirds to three-quarters full"³. Fill it to that mark and it runs while you clean.

Opening the windows early also fits, and costs nothing. Victoria's guidance advises more ventilation before cleaning starts².

Two cleaners, or one

A second person may shorten the job at a large property, but not at every one. Two people in one bathroom get in each other's way. One way to split the work is bedrooms and linen for one person, and kitchen, bathrooms and floors for the other. Whether it pays depends on your price and the property, so test it on a few jobs and compare the times.

When checkout runs late

Sooner or later a guest will stay past checkout. Here is a calm way to handle it.

Message the host as soon as you know. Leave any talk with the guest to the host. In New South Wales, Fair Trading says a host or their representative "must be contactable between 8 am to 5 pm every day of the week"⁴. Other states may differ. Your agreement with each host should say who to contact and how.

Then decide what to drop. Beds, bathrooms and the kitchen come first. Extras such as windows or the oven wait for another visit. Photograph anything you didn't finish and tell the host, so that nobody is surprised at check-in. See photo reports for how to do that.

Write the plan down

Keep a one-page plan for each property: the timings you've recorded, the order of rooms, where the linen goes and who to call. A cleaner covering for you can pick it up and run it. It also makes a good basis for the conversation with a host about what fits in the window.