Linens.....Anyone Else Have High White Linen Waste?

Question

Morning MTR Community.  Linens....who else has trouble with keeping your white linens & bath towels long term?  I feel like I have to toss 10% of my white linens and towels after each guest.  My cleaners and laundry service seem to not be able to get stains out.  I have tried spraying with stain remover, but most times it does nothing.  Has anyone overcome this challenge?  I am considering supplying my units with darker color bath towels to avoid the need to toss the stained ones.  Or are most of you overlooking this issue and reusing them anyway?  Any input is appreciated.

Bonnie Low · Answer

My white linens are mostly ok outside of what I would consider normal wear and tear. The items that really seem to wear out quickly at my units are wash cloths. I don't know if they just get used more frequently and therefore washed more frequently, but even when bought in the same pack and/or product line as the towels, they just look rough and dingy sooner than anything else. I have one unit with all white towels, one with some gray and some white and one with some dark green and white. They're all aging about the same. But, like someone else mentioned, the colored ones sometimes fall victim to bleach. In the future, I'm going to buy the chlorine-safe colored towels.

Shannon Strickland · Answer

Hi @Heather Loyal,

In my only MTR, which started in 2023 and has hosted six different traveling medical professionals, I use white sheets with comforters and dark gray towels. Two towels were lost due to what appeared to be bleach marks but were actually the residue from acne skin cleaners (peroxide). Thankfully, no bedding has been lost so far. Overall, the cost of business related to damage and loss in the linens and bath category has been about 10%. Since this is my owner-occupied house-hack, I suspect they are motivated to take care of everything.

I liked the results of using white sheets with comforters and dark gray towels in my MTR, so I repeated this approach in my STR that started in 2024 and hosted 28 different stays. About 12 towels, 8 sheets, and 1 comforter were lost. Initially, stained sheets were discarded by cleaners who said they preferred to use OxiClean for stain removal, while the requested OxiClean remained largely unused. This resulted in a significant loss: about 25% of the towels and 67% of the sheets. The summer months experienced the largest losses. After changing cleaners, the loss rate of sheets dropped dramatically to just 1%. The new cleaner works diligently to successfully remove nearly all body fluid stains using OxiClean, similar to what @Lauren Kormylo mentioned. She takes care of my property as if it were her own, demonstrating the tremendous value one great cleaner can add as a teammate in a business.

Jeremy Jareckyj · Answer

dark grey for towels and I use dark great quilts as well.

for sheets. white is fine but i my cleaners use bleach and hydorgen peroxide. it knocks out about 90% of the stains. Stains seem to come out most easily on sheets.

Heather L. · Answer

Thank you Lauren :-) I'll grab those products for sure!

Lauren Kormylo · Answer

I have an STR, and use dark gray towels from Sam's Club.  The only problems I've had with them is when a guest washed one with a new white beach towel of their own, and the gray one had white lint all over it that I couldn't get off.  And I did have a white sheet that had pink dye or was stained pink from some drink or something.  But otherwise, I haven't had much trouble with my cleaners getting stains out of my white sheets. At home I use Spray N Wash Max, let it sit for 10-15 min, and wash. For really tough stains (even old stains), I use OxiClean MaxForce gel stick.  Rub it in on both sides, let it sit for as long as you can, up to 7 days, then wash.  I had a quilt at my STR that looked like a guest had set a paper plate of french fries down on it, and the oil was all over.  The cleaners couldn't get it all out.  I tried the OxiClean MaxForce on it, let it sit for 5 days, and it all came out.

Linens.....Anyone Else Have High White Linen Waste?

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