I may be thinking of this situation differently but I know how a lake home can get out of hand. Suddenly everyone is your best friend or closest relative and wants to use your lake home. I'm guessing some of this is happening when the home owner is not there on the property.

So, yes, in that type situation I can understand the home owner's cleaning/bedding instructions. The spreadsheet seems a bit much.

I see your side also but I've seen vacation home owners taken advantage of so often. It gets to the point where they are "hosting" everyone and not getting "vacation" time themselves. Of course there is always a happy medium! Everyone pitch in. Just as you enjoy hosting, I would not dream of offering to wash bedding, clean up after ourselves and help with meals.

An example is a vacation cottage we recently rented. Everything was provided. And everything was first class (bedding, towels, cleanliness, even kitchen items there for our use). All we were asked to do was to strip beds and leave the dirty linens on the beds, leave wet/dirty towels in the shower or tub and empty the trash! And we paid for that. For someone inviting me or allowing me to use their vacation home, I would want to go the extra mile.

tina

The meal instructions go a bit far in my mind, but I can understand the need for used sheets and towels be laundered and replaced for the next guest's use and for the trash to be removed, especially in a vacation home where the owner may not be on-site.

Gibby,
So these people require this of guests that stay in their house while they are there?

I can't imagine.

I have a friend who has a giant house in NH and often hosts large gatherings. (7 bedrooms and sometimes she uses her mom's house next door for more people). What she has found to make things easier is if people ask what food they can bring, she'll say "breakfast items". Or maybe "salad to go with the lasagna for Friday". Mostly because what happens is that people want to bring food and if you don't give guidelines, you have a ton of one thing, and not enough of something else.

The other thing is she asks everyone to bring the leftovers or extra food home with them. It's helped a lot with having her freezer crammed with stuff she won't ever eat.

Everyone also strips their bed and gets their towels together. She usually does that later or has someone come help with the cleaning/laundry. (which we always chipped in on even though she didn't ask)

Beth

My sister has a great beach house that she keeps rented (weekly in the summer, seasonal during the 'winter season') through VRBO.

She generously offers family to pick weeks to use her house before she books renters. Her only request is that whoever uses it pay for the housekeeper who cleans it on a weekly basis. The housekeeper does the laundry/bed making.

when the whole family (numerous families) gathers there for holidays and reunions she does ask us to pick meals to be responsible for. It works well.

ML

I think that must be my SIL's list. One Christmas she invited 21 family members to stay at their brand-new mountain lodge. My daughter had been seriously ill and hospitalized for a month; the trip there was harrowing. When we arrived around 6PM, I asked if I could help make dinner. She told me she had no intention of doing any food planning or preparation. Because my daughter had anorexia, it was urgent that she get proper meals. So I created menus for a week for 3 meals a day for 21 people, drove down the mountain, and purchased all the food. I spent the week doing all the food prep.

At the conclusion of the visit, exhausted, I told my husband I would never accept another invitation to be a guest in any of their three homes, and I never have. My MIL informs me that the last time she was there, my SIL asked her to wash windows. Phooey.

My SIL loans her beach house a lot, and the rules are pretty simple. If the deck is covered in conifer needles or sand, you sweep.

There is a woman who lives nearby who does some cleaning - any beds that have been used are to be left unmade as a signal the sheets need to be done.

Any leftovers in the refrigerator must be dated or removed and the garbage taken out.

No clean wet clothes/towels left in the washer. If you aren't staying long enough to dry, don't wash.

That's it, other than enjoy yourself. Liquor, coffee, bedding, sheets, beach gear, wide screen TVs, internet and phones, toiletries and towels there as needed. Same with food. If you are hungry and it's there, help yourself.

Put the key back where the next guest can find it.

And very few I know of treat it that way, but leave it as they found it with bathrooms clean, kitchen sparkling, linens fresh :)

This person has guests do this stuff while she is there with the guests.

That list sounds like a product of being sick and tired of inconsiderate guests.

Maybe I'm just fortunate that my friends don't invite themselves to my place nor are they inconsiderate when they are invited for a visit. I'm sure I would handle things differently if I chose to be frequently inundated by lots of guests. I love visitors but I like time without them as well. In the 14 years we've had our weekend lake place we seem to have found a good balance.