I’m a hotel housekeeper — you should never touch this gross stuff in your room
A former housekeeper who reportedly worked in a four-star hotel has shared some dos and don’ts when staying in a hotel room.
TikTok user @_sourqueen detailed the gross cleaning processes, revealing what really lies beneath your apparently “clean” hotel room and the things she “wouldn’t use or touch” when staying at a hotel.
“Seriously, I’ve seen some things,” she recalled. “I have some horror stories.”
The first thing the TikToker said she would never, ever use in a hotel room is the coffee pot or any of the glassware.
“Usually the housekeeper just rinses these things out in the bathroom sink and dries them off with the same rag that they used to clean the rest of the room with,” she explained in the video, which has been viewed more than 534,000 times.
The next thing the former hotel cleaner wouldn’t do is touch the ice bucket, saying a lot of the time people use them as “water dishes for their pets and whatnot” — but, she added, there are times people do “much worse things” to these buckets.
“I don’t even want to talk about that,” she said.
![The things you shouldn't use may surprise you.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/house-keeper-49.jpg?w=560)
![The bedspread was one of the worst offenders.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/house-54.jpg?w=1024)
The next thing she would “never, ever, ever” touch seems extra contentious: the bedspread.
“Take that s- -t off of that bed the minute you walk in there and do not put it back on the bed. They are so filthy,” she declared. “They only get washed once a year, if that, unless there is a visible stain on them.
“So unless someone has bled, puked, pissed, s- -t on them, they do not get washed for an entire year.”
In a follow-up video, she said that some hotels only clean their heavy linens — bedspread, blankets and comforters — once a year, usually during a slow time, and that’s when we would strip all of these things out of the rooms.
“That is when those things would get removed from the room and taken down to laundry and washed,” she explained. “Other than that, if they made it through the year without heavy staining or damage, they would just put right back on the bed.”
Although she acknowledged not every hotel would have operated the same as the one she worked at did, she said a lot of people messaged her saying they had found the same level of cleanliness at hotels they’ve worked at.
“Hate to break it to you — things aren’t as clean as you think that they are,” she continued. “Not all hotels are disgusting — it’s usually not the maids going out of their way to make the hotels disgusting. We’re just doing as we were trained to do and told to do.”
![“Usually the housekeeper just rinses these things out in the bathroom sink and dries them off with the same rag that they used to clean the rest of the room with,” she said of coffee pots and glassware.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/housekeeper-coffee-55.jpg?w=1024)
![The ice bucket is something else the housekeeper wouldn't recommend using.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/08/house-53.jpg?w=1024)
The TikToker said part of the problem is housekeepers get in trouble if they take too long cleaning a room or for sending too much laundry to be cleaned.
“Things just aren’t always as they seem,” she reminded people. “And I’m always cautious when I’m checking into a hotel room.”
However, she did admit her inner knowledge can be annoying sometimes.
“My husband and I are booking our honeymoon right now, and he thinks I’m insane because I keep talking about all of these things,” she said with a laugh.