*knock *knock "Housekeeping!"

I've said it before and I'll say it again, every human should be required to work a hospitality job in their lifetime. Hostess? Great. Dishwasher? Awesome. Server? Even better. Bar tender... you get the point. Whatever it is, dealing with the average screaming, crying, complaining, ever-needy guest is a life skill that I believe we all should a take a turn experiencing. You can always tell if a person's worked in the food industry before by the way they treat their server, and interestingly enough, the same goes for housekeeping.

If you read my last blog, you know that I recently acquired a four-month position at The Monhegan House working as a housekeeper, or as my mom pointedly likes to call it: a chambermaid. Pro tip: always tip your maid! Speaking as an, ahem ahem, three-day seasoned housekeeper myself, our behind-the-scenes job is never ending and we (literally) have to clean up your shit on the daily.

Housekeeping is nothing I've ever dabbled in before. I've been a server, a busser, a food runner, a wedding/event caterer, an intern, even an impromptu bar tender––but never anything that had to do with a hotel. I suppose it's noteworthy to mention that for a few summers I did clean a local camp for seasonal renters once a week, but it was incredibly easy, and in my opinion, an overpaid gig for the half-assed work I put in.

Needless to say, my first day on the job here was a tad bit overwhelming.

While I absolutely despise working at restaurants, there's something to be said for the sense of camaraderie and commiseration in the hectic and exhausting atmosphere. Someone's always crying over what a customer said to them, a micro-managing higher up is pacing through the dining room, there's a plate shattering in the background, and everything generally feels like it's on the brink of falling apart. Only it doesn't. That's just the rhythm of serving the public, controlled chaos.

Well apparently inns work in exactly the same way. Only for me, it's no longer "Table six needs their check, 14 wants another round, and the high top needs a birthday sundae," now it's "Room 14 needs to be stripped, the suites are all full turnovers, and we've got seven showers that need cleaning."

While our cleaning routines are fairly unwavering, there are printed schedules and reports everyday that highlight what chores each of the three housekeepers (myself, Rachel, and Jasmine) are in charge of completing and when. After downing breakfast by 8 AM, we start taking care of the shared bathrooms and showers, which there are five of each. They're all located in a hallway on the first floor, though two bathrooms are found on the second floor. That brings me to another point. The Monhegan House uses the old French system when referring to floor levels. To a normal person, we have four floors, but apparently the stairs sound less daunting to guests when we go by “ground level, first floor, second, and top.” Simmons really should've considered such language when offering me a double on the un-air conditioned, fourth floor of Morse Hall back in freshman year. Anyway, there are standard cleaning supplies on each floor: spray cleaners, vacuums, brooms, trash bags, extra glasses, paper towels, etc. but most of the stuff we need is found in a backroom on the first floor: linens, towels, glassware, trash, dirty laundry, and restock of everything.

My exquisite breakfast of champs.

Shared bathrooms hallway located on the first floor.

The back room filled with linens, towels, and a gamut of cleaning tools.

Apologies for the sidetrack, now back to the daily grind.

So from around 8 AM to 10:00 AM, we unlock the outdoor public restrooms and clean the bathroom hallway. Everything from the toilets, to the sinks, to the soap dispensers, to the floor gets sprayed, wiped, swept, scrubbed, and dried by hand in a meticulous order with specific cleaning solutions. Once that's done, we move onto working on our assigned rooms which depending on the day could be anywhere from zero to 27 individual rooms. Our daily reports list room numbers, amount of guests, and status of stay i.e. "Departed," "Staying Over," "Ready/Clean," or "Arrival," that way we know exactly what we need to do to the room and which ones should be done first based on urgency of guest arrival.

A housekeeping glossary that you'll probably (hopefully) never need to know about:

1. Turnover: Room needs to be completely stripped of linens, trash, and glassware, and completely cleaned and re-made up for an incoming stay.

2. Stay Over: Stay overs are sort of a fast and dirty check-up, it means guests are staying the night so we need to knock, say the classic "housekeeping!" and if they're there we ask if they need anything, if not, we enter and take out trash, replenish towels and glasses, and make up their bed.

3. Stripped: All dirty linens, trash, and glassware have been removed from the room. All it needs is a cleaning and a fresh set of everything.

4. Arrival/Departure Time: This varies of course from place to place, but at The Monhegan House, arrival time is 3:00 PM and departure is 9:45 AM.

The procedure for room-flipping is fairly standard. We start by checking drawers and under beds for items left behind, then we dust and wipe down all furniture and window sills (Monhegan's a windy place). The next step is to strip the room and then make it up with the proper linens and towels––I've become a real master of tri-folds and hospital corners. As a little Monhegan House extra, we throw out some glasses with cute doilies and tissues for the sneezy folk. The final step is vacuuming and re-wiping high-touch areas such as door knobs, drawer handles, coat hangers, locks, etc... you know, for COVID. The guests are primarily old people after all. Suites however, have their own bathrooms in which case means another set of cleaning the shower, toilet, sink, and floor.

And voila! A finished room that's ready to be taken over and destroyed by the next guests only so we can repeat the process all over again!

Post-room work entails cleaning common areas which I guess is a fancy way of saying the "lobby and parlor" (which is an even fancier way of saying the room with free coffee). We have to vacuum everything in each of these spaces including furniture and wall/ceiling moulding and dust all surfaces, especially picture frames. Aside from those tasks, there are usually dishes to run and put away in the parlor (these people really do go wild for the free tea and coffee) and the trash gets emptied and replaced with new bags. There's also a bathroom in the dining room that gets cleaned in much the same fashion as the others, but it usually goes pretty quick seeing as the floor is wooden and only gets swept instead of washed. Hurray for cutting corners, am I right?

We typically finish up those chores with some vacuuming of all the hallways and stairs around 3 PM and are then allowed to break for lunch, naps, or whatever our hearts desire until 4 PM. Actually two of the housekeepers get to clock out at that point while the other is the only one to return at 4 PM. Can you guess who the 4 PMer has been this week? Why me of course!

I find the midday break to be a bit difficult with the recent chilly weather. It's too cold and wet for a walk and I'm too gross to lay in my clean bed for a nap so I usually end up grabbing a bite to eat and then huddling on my bedroom floor, hunched over my laptop.

The 4 PM chores are, in theory, not that bad. Toss in 45-degree weather and 100% pouring rain though, and they become miserable.

Once clocked back in, I start by cleaning the outdoor public bathrooms which is somehow even less fun than it sounds. Yesterday for instance, I spent 35 minutes mopping the muddied floors (damn you hikers with anxious bladders) and cleaning the urinal/toilets until my fingers were so cold and raw from rain and cleaning chemicals, I actually couldn't feel them. Normally the public bathrooms are a painless sweep and wipe-down event, but I had a feeling Susan wouldn't be too happy with me had I attempted to sweep out mud with a broom. Anyway the real issue I have with the outdoor potties is the locking process! There's this teeny tiny key we use to lock up after cleaning and for some reason it seems no one knows how it actually works aside from jiggling it inside the hole and hoping for the best. I'm sure you can imagine how well that played out for a rain-soaked Helen, frustratedly trying to jam a minuscule key into some bathroom door locks with numb fingers. Eventually I gave up on the last one. Well actually Susan saw me struggling and offered to do it herself as I'm sure she was afraid I would break the entire doorframe out of anger.

The dreaded outdoor public bathrooms in question, but imagine more rain, mud, and stress.

The last few chores of the day are checking all indoor bathrooms for trash, soap levels, and obvious scum. Then there's the bathmat bin which needs to be taken out and replaced with a new bag and the basket of towels is refilled. The hallways and stairs get checked over with a Dyson for dirt piles and spills and the common area gets a final once-over for trash, dishes, and out-of-place furniture. Once the last bags of laundry and garbage are taken outside to their rightful spots, my day is finally finie around 5 PM. I scream an internal "hallelujah!" and clock out before anyone can give me more responsibilities.