If you decide to take and submit this survey, thank you.  I'll tell you why it's important to me.

We've (Summer) rented our future retirement home, aka The 'G' Spot Maine, for the past two years.  We only rent it out on a weekly basis, only a few weeks each year, only during warm weather months, and ONLY because we love our 'spot' so much that we want others to be able to get away to such a peaceful place.  That's the honest truth. 

Sadly, and actually rather shockingly, our beautiful home has been treated abominably by some of our past guests.  To be frank, it stymies me.
I'm trying to understand why this has repeatedly been the case?  Surely, these same people wouldn't want us to enter THEIR home(s) and destroy their things, would they?  Break their window blinds, stain their rugs (some to the point of having to be thrown away)?  Steal HTML cables?  Allow children to run amok and urinate (or worse) all over the place, or climb-up our bookcase and flip (off) our emergency (propane) switch?? 
What about allowing children to paint, with real paint, our gorgeous loft bathroom's slipper soaking tub?  Is that acceptable?  That would be a 'no' from us.  :(
What about breaking our large 5-foot wood & canvas model sailboat?  Is it our fault for even having them (placed up high, but) out on display?  I suppose I'm confused about where our responsibility as hosts vs their responsibility as guests begins and ends?  Hence this blog.  Help me to understand please.

Going back to my point about being 'old school'...  I'll go ahead and say it.  'Back in my day', I would've hated life if I had, in ANY way, shape, or form disrespected someone's home or belongings (including, btw, my own parents/family).  Quite literally, hated life.  Ugh.  I cannot fathom, to this very day, the thought of destroying or breaking something that does not belong to me. 
Certainly, as far as vacation rental homes go, I have ALWAYS left our rental homes (ones that we've rented over the past 30+ years, not owned) cleaner than when we arrived.  It's a respect thing.  It's a way of saying 'thank you for allowing us to stay here, we loved it, so much so, that we've cleaned up after ourselves to show our appreciation'.  Plus, truthfully, we also wanted to ensure that we'd be invited back the following year!

OK, the point?  Mr. G & I charge a cleaning fee at The 'G' Spot Maine.  We also insist that guests tidy-up after themselves.  Why?  Respect.  But ultimately because our cleaning fee goes, in its entirety, to actual house cleaning. 
Our housekeeper cleans, now to even more stringent COVID standards, 3,800+ square feet of living space.  ALL OF IT.  From top to bottom.  Inside and out.  Plus she does all of the laundry, remakes beds, restocks shelves & supplies, (often re)washes dishes, steamcleans dirty rugs, mops floors....  Every single handle, remote control, light switch, door knob, handrail, headboard, sink faucet, etcetera, etcetera, must be cleaned, then disinfected.  Then there's disposal of our guests' trash. TONS of smelly (usually old seafood) trash.  *gag*  Since there is no curbside trash pick-up where we're located, that trash has to be physically loaded into a vehicle and driven to the nearest transfer station.  Oh, and all of this has to be done in just a few hours in order to prepare the house for the next arriving guests who, in turn, also want & deserve to walk into a bright, sparkling, & completely clean home.

Why am I telling you all of this?  I'm telling you because the next time that you reserve a vacation rental home, please consider more than just your end of it.  Yes, you've paid good money and yes, it's YOUR vacation - I get that.  But DO consider that you are staying in someone else's home and treat it (as grandma used to say) 'as you would want someone to treat yours'.  There's a reason that these sayings are well-known clichés.  They are incredibly wise bits of sage advice that never go out of style.  N.E.V.E.R.