Hi, so I had a post I was planning on sending out today but I pulled the pin on it because I wasn’t fully happy with it. I realised it felt rushed, and that’s because it’s been a busy few weeks. And honestly, I’d rather send you something I am happy with, even if that means it’s an oldie from the archives.
This segues into my other update which is that the next post from me will be out in a month from now. I have an idea I’m working on which requires a bit more time, and I want to be working on the ideas I’m most excited about, even if they take a bit more time. And not putting them off because it won’t meet the deadline. Imagine this is a restaurant and you’ve ordered the Premium Crumb Platter. I don’t want to be sending you out any old plate of dusty crumbs. That’s only going to get your goat up and then you’ll end up torching me on my Google listing.
Mostly though, I don’t want to waste your time or mine.
I hope all that makes sense. In the meantime, please enjoy this post originally sent out back in 2024. Take care and I’ll see you in a month with a Premium Crumb Banquet.
Your life changes when you become an Airbnb host.
You find yourself thinking about things you wouldn’t normally think about. Like: is there a more elegant way to tuck sheets under a mattress when you’re making the bed, instead of just scrunching them underneath like a savage?
There is, it turns out. A technique called hospital corners, which sounds like a violent game invented by teenage boys but is actually an exquisite fold that you do with bed sheets, which makes the corner of your mattress look like an origami crane. It’s honestly a game-changer, and if you’ve ever wanted to up your bed-making game (who doesn’t) - and you’re not doing hospital corners, I don’t know what to tell you except that you’re really sheeting the bed on this.
Here’s another one: Airbnb hosts have an irrational fear of people with dark coloured hair. This is a particularly confusing feeling when you yourself have dark coloured hair, as I do.
Let me explain - if you’ve ever stayed somewhere and discovered or noticed a strand of hair, I’m betting your first reaction wasn’t ‘oh well, at least the rest of the place is sparkling clean’. Instead it makes you question everything, and pretty soon you start wondering what kind of rat infested crack den you’ve somehow found yourself in. You look suspiciously over at that complimentary bottle of champagne they gave you, a thoughtful gesture that’s now soured in your mind, just like the rancid bog water that it’s almost certainly filled with.
Things unravel pretty quickly.
Obviously, people with light coloured hair drop hairs as much as darker haired folk, but the difference is: you can’t see them. Your hotel bathroom is probably like a hair salon floor with all the light coloured hairs, but one single black hair sitting on your white porcelain sink or bed sheet? It’s game over.
It’s enough to make any Superhost break out into a cold sweat.
I say all this because KB and I are Superhosts. A title we’ve been given due to the fact we are not only house sitting, but also looking after an Airbnb for family friends.
And so lately we’ve been doing Superhost things. Things like baking bread for guests. Do you know how much people love getting homemade bread? So much. People always mention the bread in the reviews. It’s not even properly homemade. It’s from a breadmaker. But guess what? It doesn’t matter, they still love it.
We give them homemade jam too (made by the owner). And cereal and milk. Plus all the obvious things: tea and coffee. Not the shit generic stuff, but nice coffee and a range of different teas. And it has a fully stocked kitchen too. Even a rice maker. You never get a rice maker in an Airbnb.
There’s a special way we fold the towels on the bed. Two bath towels rolled up and placed neatly next to each other, and then two small hand towels rolled up and placed on top. I’ve been doing this thing though where I place them diagonally on top rather than crossways. Aesthetically I think it just adds something, as opposed to crossways which in my opinion, is fine but there’s too many right angles in the room already. I try to get both rolled hand towels flush, and lined up perfectly so that the opening sits underneath, and the label of the brand faces the ceiling.
I obsess too much, particularly with the towels. I shouldn’t, but for some reason I can’t help it.
I watched a movie recently called Perfect Days. Have you seen it? I won’t give any spoilers, but it’s not really that kind of movie anyway. The style is more slice of life, and it follows a Japanese man named Hariyama, who works as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo.
The movie is made up of moments from his day, beginning at dawn when he wakes, to the moment he goes off to sleep. And it cycles through. We see the same moments repeated: choosing which cassette he wants to play in his van as he begins his day, sitting in his favourite park to eat lunch, taking photos of his favourite tree, and then the book he is reading before he goes off to sleep.
It’s an incredibly beautiful movie, and the thing that really stood out to me was how it felt like this man’s life was one of an artist. The way in which he appreciated art, how he curated his entire life with the things he enjoyed, finding beauty in the mundane - and, most importantly - the care and artistry with which he performed his job. Something he took great pride in, and completely at odds with what you would expect from someone whose job it is to clean public toilets.
Why care that much? What purpose does it serve?
These are the questions the viewer is invited to ask. It’s also something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately while KB and I perform our new temporary roles as Superhost.
It’s also brought to mind all the Airbnbs I’ve stayed in over the years. Particularly all the soulless ones, of which there are many these days. We’ve come a long way since the first Airbnbs. Now they feel more and more like display homes. Stark and minimal.
Owners of course have a right to present it this way. Why bother with hospital corners or give people bread or iron the pillowcases. No one would know about all these small touches if you didn’t do them. It’s easy to get away with.
And I suppose one thing I’ve learned from all this, and one of the messages I’ve taken from the movie, is that: it feels good to care. And it feels good to obsess over small details. Not only because of the gift you’re giving to guests, but also because when you give importance to it, that’s a gift to you.
Here’s a perfect example: people love homemade bread, but also, it turns out I absolutely fucking love giving people homemade bread. I take it out of the breadmaker and slice it up and put it into a little basket with a white napkin folded underneath it. I love it, they love it. It’s a shit ton of good vibes all round. And then when we first go into the apartment after the guests have left, we can see what they’ve eaten, and honestly, we carry on like it’s Father Christmas.
‘Ooh they had some of the bread!’
‘Some of the fig jam has gone too.’
And why obsess over the towels? Yes it would be nice if someone mentioned in the review that they had a lovely stay, but the towel arranging was the real talking point. A tour de force, they might say. I certainly don’t do it because I’m expecting some psychopath to complain about the lack of diagonal lines in the bedroom.
When I think of Hariyama’s character, to me he is an artist because of the way he lives his life. And I think that’s a great example to live by. That your whole life can be a canvas. Everything from the way you enjoy assembling your breakfast bowl, to how you interact with people in public, to how you clean a toilet.
I’m not about to throw the towel in on writing and drawing and then dive headlong into bed making, or even bread making, as my primary art form. I don’t think it’d be possible, mostly because at this point, even with a metaphorical towel I would need to roll it carefully first and place it neatly on a bed. But it certainly feels nice to have a full canvas to work with. That it can all bleed together, and all are opportunities to obsess over the finer details: the right word, the right colour, the right way of folding a sheet. And then at the end of that, to stand back and admire your handiwork.
I’ve enjoyed being a Superhost. I think I’ll miss it. And I hope that when I hand my badge back and go back to being a regular citizen in a few weeks, I can carry some of these ideas with me. I suspect some of it will bleed together.
Hope you enjoyed your stay at Life Crumbs! How was the bread? Let me know in the comments, and give the post a like if you enjoyed it.
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