October 27, 2026

#208 What Your Airbnb Cleaner Wishes You Knew: Lessons From Britt Greenwood

Do you really know who’s behind the reservation? Ela Mezhiborsky, co-founder of AutoHost and Checktiv, found out on Christmas Eve, when a Toronto police deputy called asking permission to raid one of her rentals. A known gang member was posting photos with automatic weapons from inside her unit, and her guest screening hadn’t caught it.

After that call, screening stopped being about parties and noise complaints. It became about knowing who you’re handing the door code to.

From Gut Instinct to a Guest Screening Decision Tree

Britt Greenwood started cleaning more than a decade ago to bring in extra money as a mom. Today, Blue Jay Cleaning serves Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and Destin, Florida, and after thousands of short-term rental turnovers, Britt knows exactly what your Airbnb cleaner wishes you knew before they ever walk through the door.

Here’s what stood out to me in this conversation.

Some of your biggest cleaning headaches aren’t cleaning problems at all. They’re decisions you made when you set up the property.

Your Airbnb Cleaner Sees Your Property Differently Than You Do

You see the listing photos. Your cleaner sees what wears out faster, which surfaces always look dirty, and what slows a turnover down.

That’s a different kind of data. And most owners never ask for it.

Britt isn’t saying you should sacrifice aesthetics. She’s saying every choice should be intentional, because the best design works for the guest, the owner, and the person getting it ready again and again.

Hiring and Keeping a Great Airbnb Cleaner Changes by Market

Britt runs teams in three very different markets. And she was honest: hiring in Tulsa doesn’t look like hiring in Destin.

Finding good people is only half of it. Retaining them is the real work.

If you keep losing cleaners, look past the cleaner for a moment. How easy is your property to clean well? A frustrating property is hard to staff in any market.

Why Britt Would Skip the Pull-Out Sofa

When I asked Britt what she would and wouldn’t put in her own short-term rental, she started with sleeping capacity.

“More people in a property isn’t always what you want,” she told me.

More guests, more work for your Airbnb cleaner

A pull-out sofa looks like easy revenue. Add two more guests, raise the rate, done.

But more people mean more linens, more dishes, more wear, and longer turnovers. In Britt’s experience, the extra wear and tear can cost more than the added revenue brings in.

This is a pricing decision disguised as a furniture decision. Are you maximizing occupancy, or maximizing profit?

Small Material Choices Your Airbnb Cleaner Notices Every Turnover

Some of the most practical moments in this episode came down to materials.

The plastic toilet seat case

Britt prefers durable plastic toilet seats over painted wooden ones. Painted wood can make it harder for a cleaner to deliver a consistently clean appearance, even after a thorough clean.

That matters. If something looks dirty, your guest won’t care that it’s been scrubbed. Cleanliness is a trust signal, and some materials work against you every single stay.

Condo Resorts, Special Assessments, and Vetting the HOA

We also talked through the pros and cons of condo resort ownership. There are real benefits. There’s also the risk of special assessments landing on you.

Britt’s advice is to vet the HOA carefully before you buy. At a minimum, I’d want to know how it’s funded, how decisions get made, and what assessments owners have faced before.

On the surface, this isn’t a cleaning issue. But it’s the same pattern: what you decide at purchase shapes your operations for years.

The Owner’s Closet Is an Operations Tool

A dedicated, organized owner’s closet sounds minor. According to Britt, it makes cleaning, linen storage, inventory management, and owner-cleaner communication significantly easier.

When supplies live in one labeled, consistent place, your Airbnb cleaner isn’t guessing. And you aren’t fielding texts about where the extra towels went.

If your cleaner has to ask, the system isn’t holding the work yet.

Protect the Mattress Before It Becomes a Bigger Bill

Britt is firm on this one. Mattresses, pillows, and bed foundations should be properly protected and encased.

It helps prevent expensive damage, and it’s a strong line of defense against bed bugs. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation notes that an encasement has to cover the entire mattress and box spring to work against bed bugs.

It’s a one-time setup decision that protects you from a much bigger problem later.

Standardization Makes Life Easier for Your Airbnb Cleaner

Excess dishes, extra linens, piles of blankets, decorative pillows, unnecessary decor. Every one of them adds time to a turnover.

“Standardization is key,” Britt said. “And the more complex anything is, the harder it is to manage.”

Every item should earn its place

Britt shared the questions she’d ask before buying any furniture or decor. Does it serve a purpose? Can it actually be cleaned efficiently?

If the answer is no, it isn’t adding to the guest experience. It’s adding to your cleaner’s workload and your turnover risk.

Oversized Furniture, Bunk Beds, and the Liability Question

We also talked about scale. Oversized furniture and the wrong bed sizes can crowd a room, slow down cleaning, and make guests less comfortable.

Bunk beds bring their own trade-offs, including potential liability. Britt encouraged owners to think through function and safety, not just how many people a room can sleep.

Design for the Stay. Design for the Turnover.

Here’s the bigger lesson from Britt.

Most hosts design for the listing photos. The hosts who build stable businesses design for the turnover too.

Your Airbnb cleaner already knows where your property is working against you. The question is whether you’ve built a way to hear it.

Start with one thing this week. Ask your cleaner which item in your property slows them down the most, then decide whether it’s earning its place.

Listen to the full conversation on the STR Sisterhood Podcast. And if you want to work through decisions like this alongside women building the same way, come join us inside the STR Sisterhood.

Click here now to listen to the full podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY POINTS:

Golden Nuggets:

• “More people in a property isn’t always what you want.”
• “Standardization is key. And the more complex anything is, the harder it is to manage.”
• “Just because you want something and you have a goal and you’re working towards it doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be easy.”
• “I believe that God has a plan for all of us, even through the hard times.”

Connect With Our Guest:

Website :  bluejaycleaning.com Facebook :  facebook.com/BrittGreenwood Instagram :  instagram.com/theBrittGreenwood

 

Full Episode Transcript:

[00:01]  Stacey: Okay, here we go. So today we are joined by Britt Greenwood and we are going to have such a fun conversation around cleaning. Britt, thank you so much for being here.

[00:13]  Britt: You are so welcome. I’m so excited to be here and just kind of share a little bit from the other side of the spectrum, a different point of view for these short-term rentals.

[00:24]  Stacey: You know, I love that we’re having this conversation because this is the first time I’ve ever had a cleaning company on my podcast. And I’m saying this like I own a cleaning company, but I’ve never had someone else. And so we are going to talk shop. And I’m really excited about this. First of all, let’s have you share with our audience a little bit about who you are and what you do.

[00:53]  Britt: OK, so I have been in the industry for over ten years. It started in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I was just actually about twelve years ago. I was just a mom need to make some extra money. And I started cleaning and it quickly grew into multiple locations and So we have location in Tulsa, in Oklahoma City. And in twenty twenty, we made when the world was going crazy, we just decided we took a leap of faith and really felt called to open up another location in Florida. So we have our third location in Destin, Florida, and that’s where I live right now. And so yeah, ten years in and still running the other locations remotely.

[01:40]  Stacey: That is so great. And I also know how difficult it is and complex it is to run a business remotely. And so kudos to you, for doing that because it is not for the faint of heart. It’s one thing, of course, to run our short-term rentals remotely. There are all kinds of systems that we can set up. One of the things I think is most challenging about running a cleaning company, and I’m curious to get your perspective is the people, the staffing, right. And the management of the staff. And that I think is very, it’s very challenging sometimes to do that from far away. What say you?

[02:27]  Britt: It is absolutely challenging. What’s interesting is we’ve actually had a harder time staffing our Destin location than we have our Tulsa and Oklahoma City location, which is wild. And also staffing challenges, over the course of the a hard thing to navigate in twenty twenty two when it comes to hiring is not the same thing we’re facing right now. And it’s always changing. And we’re trying to to pivot and navigate like, OK, is Indeed not working well this year and giving us good candidates or who. Right. And I wish I had it figured out that we’re just continually having to pivot and change every single every single year.

And for whatever reason this year in Destin hiring, we are getting a lot of really young candidates that are not, they don’t quite fit the criteria. Of what we’re looking for because we do, as you know, short-term rentals, you need a little bit of experience. And it’s not an easy type of cleaning. And most of our cleans here in Destin are either VIP clients for residential or they’re short-term rentals. So I can’t, it is really hard to take a young person. It’s their first job from the ground up. They’re just not quite ready for that. So that’s something we’re facing in Destin. And in Oklahoma City, we have such a strong crew.

And a lot of our cleaners stay with us for years, which is, that is at least one place where I can be really proud of us as a company is we do take care of our team members. And they do like, if they’re a good fit, they like to stay. It’s just finding that good fit.

[04:20]  Stacey: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I could talk about staffing challenges all day long, but I want to get to the fun stuff. So one thing that I think is going to be a really cool part of this conversation is for our listeners and watchers, our viewers, they are on the opposite side that you are. So they are the short-term rental owners, hosts, property managers, co-hosts. Who are perhaps working with cleaners, third-party cleaning companies. And one of the things that you are working towards is owning your first short-term rental, right? You said you own rental property but not – To date, not to date, do you have a short-term rental in your property?

[05:10]  Britt: Right. We own land. That’s in actually Helen, Georgia.

[05:14]  Stacey: Okay, great.

[05:15]  Britt: It’s a good market, but it’s just land. We’d have to build a cabin if we wanted to pursue that.

[05:23]  Stacey: There you go. So what I thought would be fun to do is get your perspective on if you were to have a your first short-term rental, what have you experienced that you’re like, hold on, no way would I ever do this in my short-term rental? Because you’ve seen it for ten years. You’ve been experiencing this on the opposite end from a cleaning standpoint. So let’s talk through some of those things because I’m really eager to hear your thoughts on this. What is something you would not do?

[05:57]  Britt: I have a hot take and although this is a wonderful tool to set like for realtors to sell a unit my hot take is I wouldn’t have a pull-out sofa.

[06:08]  Stacey: Interesting okay so let’s talk about a pull-out sofa so So many owners and short-term rental folks are thinking heads and beds, right? And sometimes we will look at AirDNA as an example and get a projection that says, I’m totally making the numbers up. If you sleep eight people in this property, you could earn seventy three thousand dollars per year as a as a projection. But if you sleep ten people in this property, you could earn eighty five thousand dollars per year. So I do feel like a lot of owners and hosts are eager to get heads in beds to make more money.

[06:57]  Britt: Yes.

[06:58]  Stacey: What say you about sofa beds, why would you not put one in your own property?

[07:05]  Britt: So what we have noticed, and we’ve done thousands and thousands of cleans and short-term rentals, is anytime the sofa bed is used, the property itself, you can tell it has so much more wear and tear. There’s too many people in there. And they’re usually small, especially in our Destin location, they’re small units. And you really don’t, you really don’t want, you know, four to six people staying in five hundred square feet. It’s it’s you got you could have plumbing issues. It’s a lot on the washer and dryer and appliances. And just it makes the you know, for the cleaner, it makes the cleans harder. But they’re on every single thing in that unit they’re going to be using more of.

And whether it’s linens, there’s just a lot of things that you know, these places are not meant, especially the infrastructure. I mean, cause we have to sometimes deal with the clogged drains and then the toilet’s broken. And I’ve just known, and also I like to think of it from the guest perspective of, you know, they don’t really know when, until they get there, what it’s going to feel like. To be in a small space. And I want, you know, when I have a short-term rental, I want my guests to have a great experience every time. And I don’t want them to feel crowded or cramped. And, you know, I’ve had to go into these units where they do have, you know, it’s at capacity, sometimes more than capacity.

And you go in and you can like I have to maybe I’m dropping off something for the owner, but you can hardly walk because there are groceries everywhere, suitcases, and there is just no room. So that’s just what I’ve seen and experienced.

[09:04]  Stacey: Yeah. You know, it’s, it’s funny. So we do have several owners that have, pull out sofas in their properties. I will tell you in my own three bedroom property, in Myrtle beach, originally when I purchased it, I purchased, a sofa bed for the family room. Because again, I’m thinking heads and beds, you know, The projections weren’t that much more for that particular property, but I thought, hey, I might as well just go ahead and spend a couple of hundred extra dollars to get a pullout bed. What was interesting is when it was time for me to buy a new sofa, I went back and I analyzed the data to say from my previous four years of guests, how many times has my sofa bed been used?

Meaning how many times have I slept ten people instead of eight? One reservation. So when I purchased that new couch, I did not purchase a sofa bed, a pull out sofa. And it’s been no change whatsoever as far as rental revenue. What I will say is You’re spot on, in my opinion, about wear and tear. More people in a property isn’t always what you want. You might have an additional three thousand dollars a year in revenue. But if you have an additional five thousand dollars a year in having to repaint the place, having to fix flooring, because when people are using the sofa bed, chances are they’re moving the coffee table.

You’re they’re scraping it along the floor they’re potentially moving other pieces of furniture and you might have additional wear and tear and fixes that need to happen so that’s a really interesting hot take.

[10:58]  Britt: Yes so I haven’t I I have another I would saying I would never ever in a million years put this in my rental And this one is pretty simple. And this is, it drives me up the wall and any of the units we do now, if this is the case, but when owners have painted toilet seats versus plastic.

[11:27]  Stacey: OK, so sorry. I’m like, who in God’s green earth is painting their toilet seats? You’re talking about like wooden toilet seats that have white paint on them.

[11:36]  Britt: Yes.

[11:37]  Stacey: Gotcha. I’m thinking like, are people stenciling their toilet seats? What are we talking about here? OK. All right. Gotcha. Yes. Talk to us about that.

[11:47]  Britt: OK, so, you know, a cleaner, when we go in, we really do. I say we as in cleaners. I’m representing the most of the people who clean short-term rentals. Granted, you got some bad eggs, but most of us really do want to deliver an excellent clean. And we want your guests to have a great stay. And a painted toilet seat or a wooden toilet seat that has white paint on it, what will happen, and this is going to be so gross, but this is real. When, especially in Destin, when people eat so much fried food and drink so much alcohol, when people go to the bathroom, if the…

I’ll try to put it more scientifically. If the pH level in…

[12:35]  Stacey: Oh, just lay it out, girl. Lay it out in real terms.

[12:40]  Britt: It’s acidic poop.

[12:43]  Stacey: Okay.

[12:44]  Britt: So if the poo is acidic, which… It’s easy to happen. It happens. It just happens. It will eat away at the paint. And it could be, it could be one single time. Like somebody has a real.

[13:01]  Stacey: Yeah.

[13:03]  Britt: I actually got fired as a cleaning company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, because one of the homeowners, one of their, one of their guests or children, Had one of those episodes and she fired us because she said that we didn’t clean her toilet seat, which wasn’t the case at all. But also when we clean a toilet seat, we do, especially in these humid areas like Destin. We do like to have sometimes a bleach based cleaner to deal with. If there’s a mold issue, we can tackle it pretty quickly. But if it’s a really gross toilet, you know, we can, if it’s plastic, we can just spray it. We don’t even have to have a concern about anything.

Like it’s going to be fine. But if we spray a painted wooden toilet seat with that cleaner, that will eat away at the paint too. So it, and it looks terrible. It looks dirty. It looks gross. Just just get a nicer higher end plastic.

[14:07]  Stacey: Yeah that’s so funny so I’m so glad you broke it down in real layman’s terms because I’m thinking I don’t even know what a ph thing on bathrooms is so now that we’re talking the real things acidic poop we could put that on our check-in form do you have acidic poop yes or no no it’s probably not a good idea but.

[14:31]  Britt: Probably not a good idea.

[14:33]  Stacey: But I’m so glad we’re talking about this because I have seen one of those wooden toilet seats that you’re talking about. And it does not look good.

[14:41]  Britt: No.

[14:42]  Stacey: And it’s funny because as an owner myself, I’m always thinking about the wooden toilet seats are nicer. Right there, they’re more luxury and I don’t have luxury properties, but I always want to focus on delivering the best for my guests. It’s really interesting to get that perspective from you. Thank you for sharing that. The next time I buy a toilet seat I’m gonna pay special attention.

[15:08]  Britt: Yes like I said it can just take one time to one one bathroom incident and it’s done so oh gosh okay so I have a next one yeah so one of my personal things, and I know the numbers work for a lot of people, but this is just what I have seen in Destin, Florida. We don’t really have much of these opportunities in the Oklahoma markets for these types, but short-term rental condos in these large complexes, I don’t know if I would ever own one. And it doesn’t have much to do with the cleaning, but what I have seen in Destin is the special assessments have been wild and it breaks my heart for my owners because I know like, let’s say they were going to have a profitable year and then all of a sudden they get hit with a fifty thousand dollar.

I’ve seen them up over one hundred thousand dollars. How do you how do you do that?

[16:14]  Stacey: Yeah.

[16:16]  Britt: You know, and it’s so that that’s part of it. But the other part is not being able to control what like the neighbors, how they are taking care of the property. Because what we’ve seen is somebody above can have a leak and it’s going to affect your property and your guest stay or heaven forbid, an infestation of any sort. Or if there’s a mold issue, it can come from one over from one unit to another. And also something in, cleaning wise and generally we can tackle it while we’re there, but, sometimes it just smells and it usually is, you know, usually it’s weed, but, and a lot of times it’s, it wasn’t even necessary.

It’s, It’s somebody next door.

[17:03]  Stacey: Totally. Yeah. I just saw that this week. So most of my properties are in condo resorts, okay? Now, I want to push back lovingly on, for some people, like for Britt, it’s not right for her to own in a condo resort. One of the reasons why I chose to specifically purchase in a condo resort was, number one, I live ten hours away. So especially in a market where there are weather events that can happen in Destin, in Myrtle Beach, any beach area, we can have hurricanes. Okay. I intentionally wanted to not have to worry about the roof coming off of my property, about someone going to board up my windows when I was ten hours away.

Okay. The other thing that is wonderful about condos is that you often have an HOA fee that some people think is high, but you have one payment that’s a flat payment for your water, your trash, your Wi-Fi, your electric. So it doesn’t matter whether someone’s cranking your AC to fifty degrees in the middle of the summer. Your electric bill doesn’t change if your if your HOA fee covers electric. Same thing with water. If you’ve got people taking shower after shower after shower, your water bill never changes. So there are pros and cons, no doubt. Those are some of the pros. The other thing I want to say about special assessments, because I do understand that there are a lot of people who have been hit with special assessments that can really negatively impact them.

I am going to say that I think special assessments are important within reason. Now, if it’s a fifty thousand dollar assessment, that tells me that that HOA, either there’s something drastically wrong with the building that hasn’t been tended to or the HOA is not solid. So if there are small assessments to, hey, we’re painting the outside of the building or we’re updating the elevator, I’ve been hit with two thousand dollar assessments, eight thousand dollar assessments. If they are focusing on keeping the building healthy, that’s really important. And those small assessments aren’t so bad. However, if there have been no assessments and then you get hit with a hundred thousand dollar assessment, what does that tell you?

It tells you that HOA is not solid. Okay. So before buying in a condo building, I would always, always ask to review, the HOA documents. What are the rules and regulations? What’s the, master CCR. And also, look at, their meeting minutes from their recent HOA meetings, ask to see the budget, do a full assessment of how good is this HOA? Your HOA, if they’re not good, they can provide a very negative experience for you as an owner. Sorry, my dog is barking and she must agree with me.

[20:29]  Britt: So I know in Florida, building code, building code codes were updated and all of the condos had, I think up until a certain time to come up to date. I don’t know all, I don’t know all the terminology, but I think, I think it was just jarring for us watching from the outside like, wow, because we’d never seen such major assessments. And I’m not kidding. There were definitely places six-figure assessments. But it was structural. So that’s really where I feel like maybe I have just been scarred a little bit just witnessing.

[21:15]  Stacey: Of course. And to your point, sorry to interrupt you, to your point, you know, if a building isn’t up to snuff structurally, it will absolutely tank your property values. So I happen to manage for a client who, right, do you remember… Several years ago in Florida when that one building collapsed. I think it was in Miami, perhaps. The building collapsed. This was, I don’t know, probably within nine months of that, we got a call as her property manager from the HOA one afternoon saying, evacuate your guests. There’s a structural issue with the building. Call your guests and get them out now. So we had to, again, do just that.

And that building was closed for over a year. And they had gotten hit with major assessments. I think their assessments to date have been in excess of sixty five thousand dollars. And also it has totally tanked their property values. So, you know, before you’d have a two bedroom in that building selling for, let’s say, three hundred grand. You’re now at. Eighty thousand, ninety thousand, maybe. And so it’s been horrible for those owners who have been hit with that. And I go back to the HOA. The HOA is so important. So when you buy in a condo resort, you must, must vet that HOA, vet their meeting minutes, vet their budgets, just like you’re vetting the property.

[23:13]  Britt: Mm hmm. I think that’s good advice for me and anyone listening, especially because I imagine some areas just it’s not as big of a deal. But I know in Florida, this is a huge thing that I guess if anyone is looking to buy here, they need to make sure because at some point these buildings have to get updated.

[23:35]  Stacey: Yeah, yeah, for sure. OK, give me the next one.

[23:39]  Britt: So this is something I’m really passionate about. And that is so in just a little preface, we don’t work with property management companies. We used to we work directly with owners. So we only work right now with with like owner managers, they’re self managing. And I’m so passionate about this because it can really make our jobs hard or our jobs easy. And that is prioritizing a good space for an owner’s closet or your cleaners and a locked owner’s closet. I have a couple of situations where we don’t have an owner’s closet and It’s just a mess. We’re storing stuff under beds and it’s not organized. Having an organized owner’s closet, things are labeled, sheets go a certain place, towels are a certain place.

We fold things a certain way. Our laundry service folds things a certain way. And everything has its place is going to make not just the clean easier but also inventory easier so when I see we’re running low on something and and we can just send a quick message to our owners hey we need some more towels or you know but when we don’t have a dedicated owner’s closet space it’s It’s just chaos. There’s no other way to describe it.

[25:09]  Stacey: And so, you know, let’s talk about this because again, in a single family home, dedicating a closet for an owner’s closet is no big deal. However, if you’re in a condo resort and you’re in a little studio condo, there physically may not be any space for an owner’s closet. What do you do in those scenarios? How are you navigating that?

[25:32]  Britt: Well, so one of our clients is in one of those scenarios and what they did, well, I guess they do have a kind of a closet for their guests, but they have this space that they were creative, but it looks good. It doesn’t look tacky. They bought stand-up Rubbermaid storage. They are taller than me, so they’re probably about six feet tall, about three feet wide, and they have shelves in them. And it’s just a one-bedroom unit, and it locks. You can put a lock on it. And in order to hide it’s kind of in this cutout. They put it in the cutout, and then they actually hung a curtain.

And so they hit it they hit it behind a nice curtain and in the setting it actually works like it makes sense and it’s organized whereas we have you know one a one bedroom where you know everything goes under the bed and or if we can’t fit it under the bed we just have to put it in the drawers of of a dresser, which isn’t the last thing we want to do. But when you run out of space, we don’t know what to do. Creating, I would, if it was my place, I would have built out something in the unit.

[26:54]  Stacey: One of the things that we’ve done, because again, in some of these condo buildings, you are so limited. One of the things that we did for one of our owners is we got a decorative trunk that looked like a coffee table, if that makes sense. And we use that as her owner’s closet, we had a lock on it.

[27:15]  Britt: Okay.

[27:16]  Stacey: But again, we positioned it in a way so it was decorative. And it looked like it belonged as part of the aesthetic of the unit. But it was very functional, because obviously, our cleaning team could go in, open the trunk and get all the supplies out. So I don’t know if that’s helpful in any way, shape or form. But.

[27:38]  Britt: Yeah, no, it’s, it’s clever. And we have to be careful because these are not our properties. So we can give advice and, or requests that ultimately our owners get to decide what they want to do. Now granted, I get to decide if I want to work with them or not, but, it’s, it’s, it’s definitely challenging. And, but yeah, if I, if I had my way, I would, definitely right now, a few of our owners, I would, we would work something else out than what we’re currently doing.

[28:13]  Stacey: Yeah. There you go. There you go. All right. So we’ve talked about some very fun things. We’ve talked about assessments. We’ve talked about toilet seats. We’ve talked about sofa beds, owner’s closets. What else you got for me?

[28:28]  Britt: Oh I this is something that you know we try our best to keep up with us in all of our our units but every single mattress and every single pillow you should have not just a mattress protector those babies need to be encased yes you’ve got to have anything because that’s going to keep the bed bugs out and or or if it just so happens that somebody had an accident and it went through that mattress protector your mattress which is good ones are expensive you know it’s protected so yeah that’s like it’s to me it’s a no-brainer but not so much and we don’t you know at our units but in when I travel and I’m in other cities staying at other Airbnbs I would say the majority of places I travel, they do not have mattress protectors or encasements.

[29:29]  Stacey: OK, so let me let me just say having encasements is an absolute must with a capital M. First of all, we are spending, as owners, we are spending a lot of money on these mattresses, okay? And as Britt just said, why on earth would we spend one thousand, fifteen hundred dollars, two thousand dollars on a mattress that could easily be ruined by one guest? And when we buy a fifty dollar encasement, it protects that thousand dollar investment like that is a no-brainer I will tell you I’ve traveled to some hotels where their pillows are not encased and that is totally gross to me because as I’m laying my head down on a pillow I’m thinking is a bug gonna come out of the pillow and you know visit me overnight so again it’s really important not just your mattresses also your pillows Think about your bed foundations as well.

So your box springs, those are also places that bed bugs can hide. So let’s not forget about those. And again, it’s a fifty dollar thing that will save you thousands over time.

[30:51]  Britt: Totally agree. Yeah.

[30:52]  Stacey: Encase it.

[30:55]  Britt: Encase it.

[30:56]  Stacey: You got it. Love it.

[30:58]  Britt: All right, so one thing I did want to bring up is in units, a challenge that cleaners come across is really if there is excess of anything. For example, my company did a deep clean for a short-term rental in Destin, and it’s not one of our normal clients. And when we do those deep cleans, we’re pulling everything out of the cabinets. This was a two bedroom unit and they had over one hundred cups. I counted them because there’s so many. I was like that. This is wild. But the reality is if your unit has too many and I’m talking about what is out for the guests to use.

Too many blankets, too many decorative pillows, too much decoration, too many utensils and plates. And it makes the managing of those things more complicated and more time consuming. And as in any business, standardization is is key. And the more complex anything is, the harder it is to manage. That’s just business. So if a unit has unnecessary decorations. Now, I went to school for studio arts. I’m all about aesthetics. I love beautiful properties. I love thoughtful design like that. I’m all about that. But you go into a property and there’s just knickknacks everywhere. It’s one more thing to dust. And if it doesn’t just if it doesn’t have a reason or and I do believe aesthetics is a reason, but it’s just haphazardly there.

And then you’ve got four four throw blankets that some of them have a reason. But you just have random blankets around or you have six decorative pillows on your short-term rental bed, that can be problematic for your cleaner to try to keep up with everything. Because there is only so much time to clean those properties.

[33:12]  Stacey: Yeah. Let’s talk about that because there’s a fine line, no doubt about it. And I see both sides of it. So again, we clean our own properties. So I definitely understand that there are some owners that lean in heavier to… And we’re not talking… Specific design okay we’re talking about the little trinkets the little teeny knickknacks the shelves with you know all types of different you know frames and fish and crabs and you know signage I mean there’s all different types of decor that we could have and I think what you’re saying and I don’t want to put words in your mouth is intentional design is great because honestly it creates a story for a property it acts as a way to draw someone in so it doesn’t look like a hotel it looks like a thoughtfully appointed home And it’s warm.

Like I always talk about how does a property feel when you walk in? For me, I want it to feel like home. I don’t want it to feel stale, right? That being said, it’s really important that we are intentional about what we’re decorating with. And we’re also intentional about not wreaking havoc on our cleaners, right? So… I think the biggest thing that I could say is, for me, it’s making sure, like you mentioned, throw blankets. OK, a throw blanket could be super functional for a guest, OK? A workaround might be, OK, if I want one throw blanket, I’m making this up, laying over the couch decoratively in the family room.

And then we could place the other throw blankets and tie a ribbon around them so we know they’re clean. And if that ribbon is still tied around that throw blanket and it’s in the closet, we know that it’s clean. We don’t have to go clean that throw blanket. Otherwise, you could walk into a family room with a basket full of throw blankets and go, I have no idea if these are clean or dirty, so I’m going to wash them all. So there are some systems that hosts can put in place to make cleaners lives easier when it comes to things like throw blankets, if that makes sense.

[35:47]  Britt: Now, absolutely. And, you know, there’s a lot of talented cleaners that can do like we love to make designs out of blankets and stuff. I don’t I’m trying to think of that. I don’t know what they’re called, but they’re they will, they will go, they can go at the end of the bed, but they’re really thin and they’re almost covered.

[36:07]  Stacey: Well, they’re [unclear].

[36:11]  Britt: Yes. Okay. So, yes. So, and we can have fun with those. And it doesn’t, the laundry cost for something light like that, isn’t that big of a deal. For one of the things that we have to consider as cleaners is like, let’s say there’s excess blankets. My we here in Destin or oklahoma we have different processes but here in Destin we do outsource our linens to a commercial laundry facility just so we can just so we can manage it all.

[36:45]  Stacey: Yeah.

[36:47]  Britt: And they charge us ten dollars a blanket to wash. So that’s that’s something, too, is there is definitely costs associated to having especially excessive linens for.

[37:00]  Stacey: Yeah.

[37:02]  Britt: Yeah. And also whenever like someone is purchasing something, whether it’s decor or let’s say you’re renovating a property for short term rental, you’ll want to make when you’re picking things out. A good like test to kind of, to run it through like a litmus test is, is this, is this functional? What, what purpose is this serving? And like I said, aesthetic is totally a purpose to me. So just to look cool, that’s totally fine. But also, so, okay, it’s going to do that. It’s going to serve this purpose. Is it easy to clean? I think that’s a question every owner is we asking because, Is it, you know, you have to, now I have to like show up at a property and there’s a succulent with, it’s a fake succulent with a million different, ins and outs, how am I gonna dust that?

Because that’s Florida and these places get humid in the inside too. Like the dust will just stick to it. It’ll take me ten minutes to dust that one little. So these are the things and like lighting fixtures. I always, it’s a little hard to describe but if you have a lighting fixture that opens up like that where dust can fall in, versus a lighting fixture hanging like this, that lighting fixture is going to get so dirty. I don’t even know why they designed them like that. But they’re out there. And these are just little things to think through if you’re going to buy a decorative rug.

If you buy a white decorative rug, I mean, it’s going to last about two weeks here, maybe less. So, you know, and pattern, you know, for rugs, patterns are wonderful, you know, and it was just these things to think through when you, as a short-term rental owner, when you are outfitting your space, you know, what what’s that you know does this fit what purpose does it serve and can we clean it.

[39:00]  Stacey: Wow yeah that’s a really really great point about the succulents because succulents are a way to make a property feel warm and again inviting and at the same time we have to make sure that They’re easily cleaned. Otherwise, either one, they’re not going to be cleaned, and that’s not what we want, or it’s going to create excess time on our cleaners. Great point about the direction of the light fixtures. If we have lamps, I actually haven’t thought about that, but that’s a really great point. If we’ve got a light fixture that serves as kind of like a bowl and is – shooting the light up, that’s going to naturally and organically just collect dust.

The other thing that I would also say along with that is dark furniture, like black furniture, don’t get you started. I don’t know if that was on your list but you know it is it is something especially like you said in humid environments our team wipes you know we have to wipe every surface. We have to sanitize every surface. You can wipe a black piece of furniture and five minutes later it looks like it has dust on it.

[40:17]  Britt: Yes. Yes, I’m laughing because one of our residential homes, we just cleaned it and had to redust one of the bedrooms about three times just to make it acceptable. Yeah. Well, when it comes to decor and really when an owner is making decisions on how they’re outfitting their space, One of the biggest headaches we have as a cleaning company, and I can only imagine how the guests feel about it, is if the furniture is too big for the room or there is too much furniture in a room. We have several properties where and so sometimes, you know, me and my husband have to jump in and clean and he’s a bigger guy and he can hardly even get around like the side of the bed to make a bed.

And, you know, and like, I’m little. I’m five two. And if it’s challenging for me, I can only imagine how hard it is for anybody else or any guest. And, you know, we have some… I think potentially maybe one of the things that some owners want to, they’re not willing to get a queen bed versus a king, so they’re just going to make it fit. Yeah, I was going to say, but I can’t clean, it’s so hard to keep the floors around large furniture like that clean if it’s filling up the room.

[41:46]  Stacey: Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. So there are different schools of thought. There are some people that think, I’m going to have a king bed in every bedroom no matter what, right? And then there are some people that are like, it doesn’t matter to me. I want the bed to fit the size of the room. And again, to me, it’s like there’s no industry stat that I’ve seen yet. Maybe there will be one in the future that says a king bed in every room will earn you X number of dollars extra in revenue. What I will tell you is when I first started, I was buying studio condos and in a studio condo, you could fit two queen beds or one king bed.

And, I bought multiple condos in the same year and set them up with king beds, set some of them up with two queen beds.

[42:44]  Britt: The data testing going on.

[42:46]  Stacey: Yes. So the data has shifted. So early on, the two queen beds outperformed the king beds by about a thousand dollars a year in revenue. And that has flip flopped now. So now again, and this is one example in one market. So again, I’m not saying this is the truth in every market, but now a king bed is outperforming a studio with two queen beds. That being said, again, I think it all has to make sense for your ideal guest avatar. Who are you looking to host? It’s interesting to hear you talk about king versus queen. I would have suspected you to be talking about bunk beds.

I would think that bunk beds would be exceedingly difficult to clean. What say you on that?

[43:39]  Britt: So with the bunk beds, we have a system and essentially I just have an agreement with my owners. We do not fully make the bunk beds. So when there is bunk beds, what we will do is we will put the fitted sheet on. We will fold the blanket neatly and fold the flat sheet neatly, put it in the corner and then have the pillow. You know, it looks cute. And throughout, like I said, thousands and thousands, I mean, five years in Destin and in our Oklahoma City short term rentals, we’ve not once ever had a complaint. And. And I it’s something actually I’m not willing to budge on either is I’m not going to fully make that bed because the first year we moved here and it was like all these bunk beds I wouldn’t and I’m I’m cleaning a lot and helping and I’m going home with bloody knuckles And I’m not kidding.

I mean, my fingers were swollen. They were bloody from trying to make all these stupid bunk beds. So our system now is, because I’m little, I’m not big enough to pull the mattress off the top bunk. So I still have to get up there but I can maneuver but if you’re you know if we have any like if my husband’s helping or any we have any larger people a lot of times they’ll just pull the mattress up off and they’ll put the the fitted on and then then we can essentially we’re staging the bed and so it’s it’s just work for us They can be challenging and we have certain bunks.

They’re, they’re better than others. My biggest complaint about the bunk beds are the ones that, they’re not very sturdy and makes me a little nervous. Just liability wise. It makes me nervous.

[45:20]  Stacey: Yeah. It’s funny, you know, when folks ask me about bunk beds, whether I recommend them or not, I never recommend them personally because I feel like in addition to making our cleaners lives more difficult, it is a liability that I don’t want to take on. Right. As an owner, we do manage some properties with bunk beds. And our cleaners are not in love with them at all as far as having to make those. But, you know, from a guest perspective, it’s so easy for a kid to jump out of a bunk bed to break a bone. And that’s not something that I personally want to put in my properties.

Again, there’s no right or wrong. It’s just my own choice. But I do personally stay away from bunk beds.

[46:08]  Britt: Oh, I totally understand the liability. Absolutely.

[46:11]  Stacey: Yeah. Yeah. Britt, this is so fun, and we could go on and on. What I want to do is I want to move to the lightning round, OK? So I’m going to ask you some questions, and I just want you to answer with the very first thing that comes to mind. First question is, where is your favorite place to vacation?

[46:30]  Britt: Oh, OK. So one of my favorite places in the world is Sedona, Arizona.

[46:34]  Stacey: There you go. It is stunning out there, isn’t it?

[46:37]  Britt: Yes. Yes. One of my favorite places used to be Destin, but now I live here. So that’s great.

[46:47]  Stacey: That’s great. Okay. What’s one place you’ve never been that you want to visit?

[46:52]  Britt: So my husband and I are wanting to go to Banff, Canada.

[46:56]  Stacey: Yes.

[46:56]  Britt: And we are almost empty nesters. So that trip’s going to count my, hopefully in the next couple of years.

[47:01]  Stacey: That’s so fun. My favorite memory of Banff is we went up there. Gosh, it was years ago. And at the time, You could sit out in the field and all of these little prairie dogs, they look like little miniature squirrels. They would come up and eat out of your hand and like come sit on your lap. And probably now I’m thinking they’re probably like rabid. Like what am I doing having wild animals eating out of my hands? But it was so cute at the time.

[47:30]  Britt: It’s like your Snow White moment. I love it.

[47:32]  Stacey: I know. All right, next question. What’s one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you started out in the world of short-term rental cleaning?

[47:48]  Britt: I wish I knew how to set boundaries sooner.

[47:54]  Stacey: Talk to me about that.

[47:55]  Britt: So it is very easy for, especially when you’re first getting started as a cleaner in this industry, they’re I mean anyone who’s owned a short-term rental for any amount of time knows there are endless problems and they just come out of left field they’re unexpected and especially if you are not local to where your unit is you need somebody to help solve that problem and I used to do so much for my owners for free And essentially, and this is my mistake, I train them to take advantage of me. And always being available, always saving the day. And then we actually launched a second company that we still operate it, but our second company is essentially a property maintenance company.

And what we found out is we had spoiled some of our owners so much. By fixing so many things for them and and handling the problems and fixing sometimes we fix things they don’t even know we did it right I’m like fix your table last week I had my screwdriver and like screwed back together I didn’t even tell you but I really wish early on we would have had pretty standard boundaries. Because now, you know, when we gave this offer to our clients, a lot of them declined the offer because we had done so much of this stuff already for free. So that’s a really… Expensive business mistake we made.

[49:45]  Stacey: Yeah. Yeah. No. And I think too, setting boundaries is difficult because we, by nature, we want to please people. We want to be able to help others out. We want to support. And sometimes what we find is when we don’t set boundaries, we do that at our own expense and our own, our family’s expense. And so I think it’s a really important lesson to set boundaries. There’s nothing wrong with boundaries. Nothing wrong at all. In fact, they’re needed for sure.

[50:17]  Britt: I’m working on it.

[50:19]  Stacey: There you go, girl. Okay. Another question. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

[50:27]  Britt: The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given. I, so it really comes from a book and this book really, I mean, it’s hard to get emotional, but I mean, it changed the trajectory of my life listening to this book. And, I, my children were younger. I had just started my company, and things were hard. And, actually me and my husband were on a road trip and we listened together. We listened to the book Grit by Angela Duckworth. And, I was a college dropout, and I had a full ride, and I dropped out. So I felt like a loser in a lot of ways, and I felt like a failure.

And in that book, that advice essentially is don’t quit. And there’s so many times I I wanted to quit and things would happen and and you know just if you’ve owned if anyone’s owned a business for a certain amount of time it’s just a matter of time before really crazy things happen and it makes you question like can I do this and not I would always think back to that book and and I mean it’s just like okay it’s you just keep going.

[51:51]  Stacey: Mm-hmm.

[51:55]  Britt: It’s, you know, over the course of the long term, what you can accomplish. And it’s, you know, and trying to think outside that moment.

[52:06]  Stacey: Yeah, I think it’s interesting. First of all, you know, I think listening to books is one of my very favorite things, especially when I’m on a road trip. And for me, I don’t know about you, for me, sometimes it really resonates with me in a different way because I’m listening to it versus reading the words on a page. So I think so many people look at… Hard times as I’m going through difficult times so it must not be meant for me and so I’m gonna quit because that’s what I’m supposed to do yeah so how do you push through that fear how do you push through like hey this is tough but this is a season and I’m gonna get through this how do you do that internally.

[52:59]  Britt: And I am a person of faith I’m a Christian and a lot of I look back on the times of my life and I’m like, okay, like not once in any circumstance was like, did my God ever fail me? Like, for example, COVID, I mean, you know, just, I’m not going to go too much into the story, but essentially, and my husband was still the breadwinner and all the money I made was that was our excess money. And that was supposed to be our investment money. It was supposed to be our spending money, vacation money. And, and then in COVID, he lost his job and it’s, it’s March or is April of, and we’re like, what do we do?

I mean, hardly any cleans are happening and and that’s when you know we were just like it was it was just a God moment and he was like we’re supposed to go to Florida that’s that’s what we’re supposed to do and if and I look back now like when I’m having a hard day I’m like if we can go through what we did going through that COVID, we lived in an RV for a year and a half when we moved here.

[54:15]  Stacey: Wow.

[54:15]  Britt: Yeah. And, you know, and now we have a beautiful home and everything’s great and I don’t regret any of those days in the RV. It was a lot of fun, but, we sacrificed a lot. And sometimes I think, and what I try to teach my boys is just because, just because you want something and you have a goal and you’re working towards it, and it could even be a God-given purpose calling on your life, that doesn’t mean it’s supposed to be easy. And with me, if I truly feel like, oh, no, this is what I’m called to do, there will be provision. It’ll work out. And I look back.

I look at the data. I look at the data, and the data says, every he’s been faithful so yeah that’s kind of where I’m at.

[55:08]  Stacey: Thank you for sharing that so every morning I get up with my 90-Day Momentum Maker this is a workbook it’s a hybrid planner in journal that is an accompany to my Live Big book that I wrote this was this morning June 24, 2026 when we’re filming this I start out every morning and write down three things that I’m grateful for that morning. And the first one says, God, because he helps me do hard things. And I actually wrote down God for all three of them for different reasons. And I think, you know, it’s not very often that I get to talk about faith on this podcast because I don’t want to be weird.

And if you’re not a Christian, just know I love you just the same. It’s not about pushing faith on anybody. But I am a believer and I believe that God has a plan for all of us, even through the hard times. He has a plan. And there can be really catastrophic things happening. And I think when we intentionally look for the silver lining and we intentionally look for the lesson, sometimes it doesn’t show up right away. Sometimes it shows up months, weeks, years down the line when, oh, that’s what he wanted me to learn from that.

[56:33]  Britt: Yes. Oh, yes. That’s what he wanted to show me.

[56:38]  Stacey: I also believe God will never fail you. So thank you for sharing that.

[56:43]  Britt: You are welcome.

[56:45]  Stacey: So good. Britt, if someone wants to learn more about you or your cleaning service, where is the best place for them to find you online?

[56:55]  Britt: So the best place business-wise, like for the cleaning service, and we are in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and some of the surrounding cities in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, surrounding cities. And Destin, we don’t go too far outside of Destin. You go to bluejaycleaning.com. And for me personally I don’t you could follow me on Instagram or find me on Facebook I’m all about as long as you’re not a weird person you know you can be my friend on Facebook so.

[57:30]  Stacey: A check-in form do you have acidic poo and are you a weird person.

[57:34]  Britt: Yes so sorry I like it I like it but yeah, it should be, facebook.com/BrittGreenwood. And then, it on Instagram, it’s, instagram.com/theBrittGreenwood. Cause somebody stole my name already.

[57:56]  Stacey: That’s not good. That’s not good. Britt, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for being here.

[58:02]  Britt: Oh, thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate it.

[58:06]  Stacey: You bet.

Did you enjoy the episode? Don’t forget to Subscribe, Rate, Review, Like, and Share!