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In 2011, when my husband told me he was going to sleep on a stranger’s couch on a work trip to London, and pay for it, I thought he was nuts.
“The husband is an artist, and the wife plays the drums in a famous band,” he told me. “It could be very interesting.”
Or deadly! It sounded like the opening to a murder mystery, in which he was the unsuspecting victim. I could not wrap my mind around this new concept of homestays. But Seth has always been an early adopter, and Airbnb was in its infancy.
Now, of course, Airbnb is a household name. We’ve stayed in dozens of Airbnbs, from Oslo to Oahu, and I find myself on the other side, an Airbnb host of our tiny backyard cottage.
I had all sorts of trepidation when I began hosting. There was the ick factor: changing my own bedsheets is one thing. Changing the sheets of strangers, quite another.
And then, because I have a vivid imagination, I conjured up all kinds of worst-case scenarios in my mind: guests painting the walls, throwing parties, climbing on the roof, eating cans of tuna in bed, or knocking on our door at midnight to tell us the water heater had exploded.
I’ve hosted for three years now, and the experience has been, for the most part, a positive one.
Let’s get the ick factor out of the way first. Changing sheets, not so bad. Same with cleaning bathrooms. I worked part-time as a janitor in college, wiping chalkboards and scrubbing toilets at 4 a.m. in the chemistry building. Plus, I’ve raised four children and survived their messes, so, let’s just say I’ve seen worse.
The hardest part is, surprisingly, hair. Gross, I know, but it’s true. When I see a guest arrive, their long, curly tresses swishing in the wind, I know that I will have to budget an extra 15 minutes of cleaning time, and do it with an eagle eye. I say that as a person with long, curly hair who is perpetually unclogging her own sink.
Beyond cleaning, there have been a handful of quirky experiences, like the guest who asked, at 10 p.m., to borrow melatonin, because he simply couldn’t sleep without it, and another guest who asked for a stack of extra blankets … and then another stack, as if we were a hotel with a bottomless linen closet.
There were guests who lit all the decorative candles, despite the instructions for no open flame, and a guest who filled the cottage with marijuana smoke. There are guests who have clearly eaten chips in bed (though thankfully, no tuna fish) and those who rearrange all the furniture.
But there have also been beautiful moments, like the guest who left me a canister of local tea and a thank you card, and another who offered his leftover beef and green beans (I declined, but only because I am squeamish about other people’s food. I come away hungry from most potlucks).
I’ve only had one truly terrible experience, and it had nothing to do with a guest, at least not directly. Somehow, despite not owning pets or really believing in pets (read: hair!), our cottage became infested with fleas. It became infested, and then those fleas hop-hop-hopped their way into our main house.
If you’ve never had fleas, you’ve never lived. And by living, I mean spending every waking minute feverishly vacuuming and re-vacuuming the rugs, double washing the linens on the hottest cycle, sliding around in white socks so you can catch the jumpers and drown them in a bowl of dish soap, and fumigating each room with flea bombs, finishing and airing everything out, slapping the sheets back on just minutes before the next guests are set to arrive.
And then, despite throwing out the rugs and powder-sugaring the yard with diatomaceous earth, still crossing your fingers that the guests will not message to say they have strange bites all over their ankles.
The fleas nearly killed me. I had to take a long pause from Airbnb just to catch my breath and piece my broken soul back together, after which I was ready to come back, but always warily, always with one eye on the carpet, another on the neighbor’s cat (is that where they came from? We’ll never know).
My biggest Airbnb takeaway is that most people are lovely. They are kind, they are generous and they respond thoughtfully. They come into town to visit a daughter at college, work on a research project or audition for the symphony.
They run the marathon, or cheer on a son who is pole vaulting at the state track meet. They get a slice of passion-fruit cheesecake from Sweet Life Patisserie and a hot pizza from Hey, Neighbor! Pizza House. They stay, they eat, they sleep. They tell me that the cottage is impeccably clean (Thank you, eagle eye!), peaceful and quiet.
People are lovely because I like to think that most of humanity strives to be lovely, but also because the genius part of Airbnb is the reciprocal reviewing. If we’re going to get ranked, by golly, we’re going to wash our dishes and put the couch back in its place. Reciprocity puts people on their best behavior.
Which makes me think we need to have a similar reciprocal ranking system for other areas of our lives, like online comment sections and sports arenas.
Oh wait, I guess that’s just called the Golden Rule. It’s a good one, a keeper.
Speaking of keeper, if you’re ever looking for a nice place just steps from the University of Oregon, I’ve got you. Just leave the fleas at home.
