Have you ever pulled back the tightly fitted sheets on your hotel bed and wondered whether the linen isn’t quite as clean as their white starched appearance would have you believe? You’re not the only one and with good reason.
While major hotel chains come up with ever more inventive ways to skip daily housekeeping, you would at least expect the room to be fully serviced in between guests… including, of course, swapping out the sheets for ones that no one has been laying in (or doing anything else on for that matter).
Unfortunately, that might not always be the case, and it’s becoming so much of a problem that flight attendants are starting to leave notes hidden in the bedsheets of the room they’ve just occupied to alert the next guest that their crisp white sheets aren’t clean.
Aircrew probably spend more time away from home and staying in various hotels than the average person, and flight attendants are pretty good at adapting to varying hotel standards… that being said, no one wants to ‘hotbed’ in dirty bed linen.
That’s why flight attendants will regularly pull back the bed sheets as soon as they get into their room to look for telltale signs that the bed sheets haven’t been changed, or perhaps even worse, evidence of a bedbug infestation.
That has now led to some crew members tucking messages into the sheets to help alert their fellow flight attendants or other guests that the linen they’re about to climb into hasn’t been changed.
Normally written on the hotel’s own stationary, the notes typically read something like this: “If you find this note, then this bed still has its old sheets on.”
At this point, what should you do? You’ve got one of two options. Either immediately request a change of room but run the risk that the next bed also has old linen on it or request housekeeping to your room to change the sheets.
To get this done, flight attendants sometimes even create a stain on the sheets to ensure housekeeping doesn’t dismiss their request on arrival.
Some flight attendants just aren’t willing to take the risk at all, however, and even pack their own sleeping sheets and pillow covers to avoid touching the hotel linen at all. It might seem extreme, but the idea is becoming more popular as winter viruses spread.
Generally speaking, the comforter will only be washed every few months at the most, so make sure clean sheets are covering this, while decorative pillows are never washed… these should be immediately discarded to a nearby seat or sofa.
As for fabric runners at the end of the bed, be very careful with these. Although they also serve a decorative purpose, they are commonplace because hotels know that many guests initially place their suitcases at the end of the bed they get inside their room.
The runner protects the bed and linen from getting dirty, but it also means that it’s a breeding ground for any germs that have been rolled around on the wheels of someone’s case that they flung on the runner.
Let’s be honest: despite the assurances that hotels made during the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s very little chance that your room will have the same cleanliness levels as a hospital operating room.
That, unfortunately, is just part and parcel of travel and staying in hotels. Try not to get too caught up in what shortcuts housekeeping may have taken when servicing your room. But a word from the wise… never use glass tumblers in your room.
