Episode 015 – Room by Room: The Bathroom

We are going Room by Room to teach you just what you Should Have and what you Must Have inside each. This episode is the Bathroom!  Michelle is on a buying spree and has taken this as a great opportunity to pick up more properties.  While she's putting them together, she's put together a list for you of what is really important and what items are critical to have inside your Short-Term Rental.  We would love to have to add your two cents, as well.  So, please find our facebook page and add to the conversation.

Plus, contest details are inside this episode!  Enter to win BIG!!  Go and Grow!

Transcript of this Episode:

Hi, it's Michelle, a master of money mindset.

And you are listening to BNB dash boss podcast. And in today's podcast, we're continuing our room by room. Yes, we're doing our series of each room room by room, what to put into it. What's not to put into it and why. And we are doing bathrooms on this episode. Our show today is brought to you by. Audible is where you get your audio books online and get a 30 day trial into the audible membership for free.

By going to audible trial.com forward slash S T R revenue that's audible trial.com forward slash S T R revenue. You'll get your first audio book for free and 30 days into the audible membership just for trying us out. You'll love audible. Right [email protected]. You can find our $7 courses available for you to try out, find out how to cohost, how to do rental arbitrage, or how to invest in real estate.

We're all three, by going to B and b-boss.com and clicking on our store. And you'll find our $7 courses right there. Try us out. You'll love it. You'll love those courses and they're only there for a limited time. So. Also, don't forget our contest. We've got our contest running right now in every week.

We're picking up. And everyone's names are going to be put into a drawing at the end for a final price of an Amazon Dodd with a little clock on it. And your guests will love that. There'll be able to walk right in, ask Alexa to connect to their account, and they'll be able to play their favorite music for the weather or whatever else they want to ask Alexa to do pretty darn awesome.

And I would really greatly appreciate you going to iTunes and leaving me a five-star review. I appreciate it. So please. Take a picture of it, send it over to me at Michelle at BNB dash boss. Let me know that you did and we'll enter you in those drawings. So let's get started on the bathroom. The very first thing I wanted to talk about in a bathroom are the very clean white towels with a good grade.

Now here's the deal. Whenever we buy a property or rent a property, when we go into a bathroom, we know we're most likely going to paint and refresh it, but we want to make that bathroom look crisp and clean and just nice and bright from the get-go. We want to make sure that we have someplace where we can set our towels and our.

It's gotta be spacious. I really hate bathrooms with pedestal sinks. Always have there's no room for Jack shit in there. Like as a woman, I'm not putting my purse on the floor and I'm certainly not setting it next to a toilet. So I've got to have sinks, sinks are my thing. So I've just made sure when I buy.

So when you are buying a property or renting a property or co-hosting for somebody, look at the bathrooms, make sure you can use. Because there's gotta be a place to set your clean white house. I've talked about this with you before anything I say is what we do. And the reason we do what we do is usually because we questioned our guests.

We've sent questionnaires out to our guests in regards to the bathroom, a lot, mostly about the individual soaps versus the refillable dispensers or having Costco size ones. We've compared those. A few times, we've also compared colored towels a few times and asked what people prefer and we've done the same with sheets.

White is the way to go for our guests, but we're in the desert and we're in Florida. So our Arizona and Florida locations, those are the people we've questioned and that is what we've done. And we find it to be very easy to have the clean white sheets, but we make sure it's a positive grade. If you don't feel like doing that, you do not have to do.

You can do whatever you want, but this is what we do. White looks clean when it's clean and you can tell when it's dirty, because it doesn't look clean. So white is a gray color. It's a really great color. And so we just use it. We also make sure that we use top grade towels. Nothing is worse than getting out of a shower and having a towel, the size of a handclap.

And having it as thin as a paper towel and you can't dry yourself off, that is frustrating as all get out and it's not fun. So we make sure that we have nice fluffy everything right now. Most people recommend two sets of towels for each guest. And when we say sets of towels, we mean bath towels, hand towels, and base cloth.

So for each guest, We would have to have those two bath towels, two handhelds to face cloths, right? For each gas, or you can do four per bedroom or four per bed. And that's what we always do. Four per bed. So for every bedroom that's in there with a queen size bed, we've got four sets of two. For bath towels for hand towels for face cloth.

And we make sure too that for each bathroom, we have two floor towels and those are, are basically floormates that are made out of towels. So they're like someplace where, when you step out of the shower that it's not going to drop fall over. We don't let rugs be in there because rugs, they just get torn apart.

They don't wash. We want something nice and thick that people can stand on and then hang it over the side of the tub and it can dry. Those are great to have, but rugs not so great, not so great because they get wet and moldy. They've got to be washed. And then, like I said, they just wear out too quickly.

Those are our towel situations inside our room. Now we don't like to go 1970s to put towels anywhere. So if there's like a toilet and there's no shelves in there and no cabinets, we're not going to put a shelf above the toilet. It's just not our deal. It's like that's pretty 1970s, especially if it's got a rod that goes from the floor to the seat.

And, you know, sticks the cabinets up in there. That's a no-no okay. We might put shelving in there or more likely we might put wine racks a few years back. I saw a really cool wine rack where somebody took four wine bottles going sideways along the wall in this rack. It just held them up. If he took the wine out and you put towels in there, rolled up, it held them and it looked pretty cool.

So we've been known to do. But we don't want to busy up a bathroom or make more to clean, make it look more dirty and cluttered by adding. You know, cabinetry and stuff in there. It's just not, it's just not worth it. Now let's talk about individuals soaps. We want to display everything incredibly nice. So hopefully there's a place to display our individual soaps.

We use a set of five. Some people use a set of four people. Three. If you do three, you have shampoo, conditioner and bar soap. If you do four, you have shampoo, conditioner, bar, soap, and shower. And what we have is shampoo conditioner, bar soap, shower, gel, and lotion. Why we add lotion because in the desert, it is freaking hot and it is a dry, dry, hot place.

And most people, their skin gets really dry and cracks here in the desert. If you're not used to the desert, lotion is really nice. And so we add that. But you can do whatever you want. Now, again, we have done surveys with our guests and we have found out that our guests love individual soaps. They're not crazy about the Costco size soaps.

They don't like those at all. Those were the least favorite and some of them are okay with refillable dispensers, but most of them, the majority of our guests said that they would rather have individual soaps. And now with COVID. I would tend to agree and I would make that all the time. Right. Just make it all the time because it's just more sanitary and that's all there is to it.

So again, you can argue with me on this and go back and forth and question your gas and do whatever you want, but this is just what we do, but whatever you put out there, make sure you're displaying it nicely. Now of course put a garbage can in there. You've got to have a garbage can with a liner and something that your cleaning crew cleans out.

And it should always look and smell very clean. We put tissue paper in there, like Kleenex boxes, right. And for the one that we have out, we always have one spare underneath the sink. And the hairdryer is usually underneath the sink or on the wall. It depends. We also have a really good quality toilet paper.

Don't skimp on the toilet paper. It's a few cents more and it makes a huge difference. Guests really can feel the difference. And they're going to absolutely love the fact that you splurged a little and got some really nice toilet paper, and didn't give them that paper that falls apart in their hands.

They're going to love you for that. Now, two other things. We have our, our Q-tips and our makeup removal pads. Now we have them in little dispensers, depending on where you go. Some of our places down in Florida. The management companies that we use we'll have individually wrapped and moist makeup removal pads.

And those are nice and cool too. I love those, but if you can't have those, make sure that you have the little cotton round ones. We get ours at Costco a lot, and we put them all in. What's really nice about makeup removal. Pads is it keeps people from using your white washcloths on them. So also inside of all our properties, we have a sign that if you remove makeup on our washcloth and stain, our washcloth, you will be charged.

So please don't make us charge you. We actually have. Like a little comedy thing. Cause it's two people just crying. It's like, please don't make us do it. If you ruin our white washcloths with your makeup, we will have to charge you. And so we're just telling them ahead of time trying to be joking manner, but don't take your black mascara and get it all over our nice white towels.

It's just not a cool thing to. Another thing that we do inside. Most of our bathrooms, especially our smaller bathrooms is we used an arch shower. Now the reason why we do that is when you're standing in an already small bathroom and an already small tub, having an arched shower, rod makes you feel like you have more space to take a shower.

And there's a couple of different ones. So I want you to be really careful believer or not. We just redid. And I ordered it from the old place. And when it came, it was wrong. It was so arched that it set the bar too back when you put it in, I don't know how to describe it, but it's meant to push the curtain out a little bit, but not too much so that it doesn't fall out of the tub.

Right. But so that you can wash your hair and do stuff and not feel like the shower curtain is constantly touching you in the shower liner. That's all well and good, but the one that we got and we ended up running to a Walmart, believe it or not. And they had one there, cause the other one was really bad.

And the one that they had at Walmart was really good. So it was the normal size. So sometimes they can be too. And the one that we liked the most had, I forget what you call it, but th like the Springs, it was easy to set, so it wasn't too bad. I'll have the girls put some links up in the website for you guys, and that should help you out.

But obviously. A really nice shower curtain and a clean liner. We always keep very nice liners in our maid's closet, just in case they start to look dingy or whatever, and you want to get a good quality because if you get a good quality shower liner, you can actually wash and bleach them and they'll clean up really nicely.

But if you don't, they're going to fall apart or they're going to be too plastic-y and they're not going to be able to put in the washer or hang out in the dryer when we drive them, believe it or not. I know everybody goes, you've dry them. Yeah. But we're really careful when we dry our shower liners because they're plastic, you can't put them in the dryer very long.

So we put them in the dryer on high heat for like five minutes. And that will get them nice and hot and it gets the wrinkles out of them. Then we hang them up to dry. Like we let them drip dry the rest of the way, but they're still warm enough that all the wrinkles are out. And if you forget, you're going to melt them all on the inside of your dryer.

So you don't want to do that. You want to make sure you set an alarm on your phone or something so that you don't accidentally. But if you get a good quality shower liner, you can wash the shower liners too. So make sure you do that or at least have the extra ones on hand. Also try to get the soft clothes, toilet lids.

I know that sounds really weird, right. Well, let me tell you. Because I'm married to a man and my husband doesn't like it. When you put the toilet lid down and it slams down, he likes it when you put the toilet lid down and it closes gently without slamming. And he said, if he has to pick up a toilet lid all the time, he wants to make sure that it stays up and he wants to make sure that it doesn't slam down.

So we make sure. That we always get the nice oval lids that have a soft close, and we do that for my husband and all the other men in our life. So that's a cool thing that we put in there, but it actually does make a difference. We did have one person say something about it once, but nobody else, you know, I think maybe men notice, but they don't want to say anything.

But if we had to do a questionnaire, I bet you, the men would go, Hey, I really like this things too is open. I'll have to hold it with my other hand. I like the way it goes down. Nice and slow. So you're like, okay, you like it? Another thing we have underneath the toilet is a spray, like a Lysol spray or some kind of disinfectant, but nice spray that doesn't overpower the bathroom just in case somebody goes potty in there and they want to cover the smell when you're on vacation with people, maybe it's the first time you're on vacation.

And especially when people are sharing bathrooms, having a nice Lysol spray that they can just give it a quick little shot. That's nice for everybody to have. Now, like I said, when you're purchasing a property, you want to make sure of a couple things. You want to check the water pressure when you go in there and make sure the water pressure is good.

And you also want to make sure you're getting really good, hot water and that it doesn't take too long to get to the bathroom that you don't have to run it forever. Because honestly, when you have a bunch of guests staying there and they're taking showers at different times, and they're all running the water for, God knows how long, and they could get busy and forget and just keep the water.

And you're paying those bills. You want to make sure that the water gets hot fast. So those are some of the things that we look for when we are buying, you know, to make sure that the water heater works well, that heats bass and that there's good water pressure, and that the hot water gets there quickly.

Now some of our higher end properties. And I've talked about this before, too, is that we've got a few higher end. And in our higher end properties, we have like a sort of basket that we put in there. And inside there, we have some nice disposable razors, not the super cheap ones, but the nice ones, disposable, toothbrushes, and tiny travel toothpaste, just in case somebody forgot there's a lint roller.

And anything else you might want to throw in there that is, you know, some people put suntan lotion in there. Some people put bug spray in there. Especially when you're down in Florida and there's mosquitoes and this mosquito season, but you can put a lot of really cool stuff in these little baskets, but when you have a higher end place, it's nice to have those.

We also make sure in those locations, and actually now we can put them in every location because we found at Ikea for like $10, these mirrors, they're not as good quality as some of them. But we call them shaving mirrors. They kind of stretch out kind of accordion out so people can shave. Men can shave and see close and women can tweeze their eyebrows or something, but they're on the wall and they accordion in and out.

And we used to buy the really good quality ones that were very expensive for our really nice properties. But now I Kia sells those and we have an Ikea buy a so for 9 99. Let's put those in all our places. We'll put the cheaper ones in the cheaper places, but people will appreciate those love, those mirrors.

They're super cool. There's one other thing you might want to think about when you're doing your bathrooms and that is how to work the water, the hot water. If it's tricky. Now, if anybody can walk in there and just turn it on and figure out, which is hot, which is cold, which is. You know, but there's some really weird shower nozzles and water temperature gauges.

I mean, it's just confusing as hell on you kind of look at it and go, what the hell is this? Especially when you get to Europe or you go to places that are out of our country, you're like, I don't even know what this is. And I don't even, I don't even want to ask. And right now I'm standing here naked trying to figure this out, freezing my butt off and going, how do I get the hot water to work?

If you have something that's confusing in any way, shape or form. Make sure you have instructions on how to make it work and you might want to just place a card next. You don't have to put something on the wall because I don't like to put things on the wall that take away from the decor of the room, but you can definitely place a card that's laminated, you know, next to the toilet or something and have a few of those laminated cards are so cheap and so easy to do that.

You don't care if you go through them. If somebody throws it away accidentally, it's no skin off your back. But it does tell people how to use the shower, just in case it's confusing. I got to tell you a story real quick. So a motto and his wife, Chris and I, uh, we partnered in, on a property in Tucson recently.

And Chris she's got with her dad that they've got about 490 units in Tucson over by the university. She deals with student housing and she had, I think it was last year or the year before. Chris rented to a college kid, a college soon nemesis first year in college. And she got a call from an angry mother of that.

He didn't have any hot water that all the rest of the kids that he was sharing a house with their bathrooms seem to work fine, but his bathroom was not working. There was no hot water. And she was like, that's weird because they only have like one water heater for all three of those bathrooms and I'll have to go check it out.

So she sent a guy and he checked it and everything was fine. And then the mom called back and she was yelling and complaining and Chris was like, okay, I'll send somebody over there again. And again, they said, yeah, we got everything is working, you know, here it is. And they had the temperature thing and they showed Chris on the, and she's like, okay, temperature thing.

And then she gets a call from this mother and the mother is like, now, like livid, like I've sent you over there. This is the third time, you know, he needs hot water. So she went over there with her maintenance guy and the young man was there and she said, show me your bathroom, show me what you're doing.

So they went into the bathroom and she said, okay, show me how you're turning it on. And the young man turned the nozzle on the cold, and then he put his hand under there, said, see, it's just cold water. Then she just kind of looked at him and she looked at the maintenance man. And then she reached over and there was a hot nozzle too.

And she turned that on and she said, now feel it. Obviously he had the hot water was coming out or no, it was warm cause they add cold and hot on. So it was more on water and he kind of looked confused and he goes, well, there's only one at our house. So he was only turning on the cold cause it was an older unit and he had to turn the hot and the cold on.

But literally guys, there are people who will freak out. Of course, Chris called the mom and explained to the mom and the mom was quite embarrassed and she promised Chris, you wouldn't call again. Bye. Oh, we all thought that was really funny. I was like, oh my gosh. I said, it just goes to show you that not everybody understands, you know, all plumbing issue.

They just don't get it. Look at it and go, I don't understand what this is for. And so you want to make sure that if you've got anything that is weird at all, like not super easy that a two year old can't walk in there and figure it out. Well, maybe not two but five five-year-old can't go in there and figure it out.

Then you need to write instructions for that and put it somewhere that they can find it. Nice laminated card so I can get wet and then wiped off and dry. And put it in there. So that's it for the bathroom. We're going to go over it really quick again. We've got clean white towels too, for each guest, the bath towels, the hand towels, the face cloths, the floor mats, right?

Two formats for each bathroom. And when I say floor mats, I mean, they're like towels, right? You guys know what I mean? We use the individual soaps, the shampoo conditioner bar, soap, shower, gel, and lotion. You don't have to, you can use a set of three, a set of four or a set of five, like. I do recommend people love the shower gels.

So some people would opt out of the bar soap for the shower gels. And you can totally do that, especially if you already have your hand soap, which is the next thing on there, because we have hand soap by each of the sings and that's just a pump bottle of hand soap. And it's absolutely different than everything else.

But tissue Kleenex, tissue, garbage cans with the liners, your hairdryer. A good quality toilet paper, Q-tips makeup removal pads. That can be the individual cotton ones or the individual packets of the wet ones. Doesn't matter. The arch shower, curtain rods with curtains and extra liners. Right? And remember those shower curtain rods are not all created equal, nor are the liners for the shower curtains.

So make sure you get a good quality of those. We like the soft closing toilet seats that are oblong. We love those, a nice wine rack or someplace to display your towels nicely, maybe a little basket to display. Your individual soaps nicely. Make sure, like I said, before you go into a property that you're checking the water heater, the water pressure, right.

That you have shelf space for all those things and space for your shampoo space, for your towels and stuff. And if you've got an upscale property, you might have razors, a disposable toothbrush, toothpaste, lint rollers, bug spray, suntan lotion, also a shaving mirror. And remember to write directions. If there's anything weird about the way you turn on your hot water.

Okay. Make sure you do that. So that's all about the bathrooms. I hope you enjoyed today's show. We're going to try to get you out all of these so that we catch you up. God bless you guys. Stay safe. Have a great day. Go and grow!