The Kitchen is the Heart of your Home

Deciding on whether or not to let guests use your kitchen is hard. There are a lot of pros and cons either way. I personally let guests use my kitchen.

The Pros of letting guests use your kitchen:

• You will get more bookings. When searching for places to stay, many guests will take you letting them use your kitchen into consideration. Like guests who want to stay for more than a couple days and especially international guests. It's my experience that international guests tend to want to eat out as little as possible on their vacations.

• If you like interacting with your guests this is the perfect way to facilitate interacting. I have had some of the most interesting and enlightening conversations while my guest and I are going about our way in the kitchen making food, or eating.

• Guests are more likely to NOT eat in their room. If you give them a place to eat they don't have to resort to eating in their rooms. I ask people to not eat or drink in their rooms, and to please make use of my kitchen table.

Tip: If you don't want them using your kitchen, think about having a outdoor area where they can eat any food or snacks they brought with them.

Tip: A hanging pot rack makes it easy for guests to find a pot and pan and are less likely to go through your cabinets looking for one. That means you can hide the good ones from them.

The Cons of letting guests use your kitchen:

• Things may get broken or they will wash things incorrectly. For example: I love cast iron pans and not everyone knows how to clean them properly.

• Your trash fills up extremely fast, and if you recycle trash will get thrown into your recycling or visa versa. I am constantly taking recycling out of my trash.

• You have to keep up on keeping your kitchen clean, and even if you get guests who clean after themselves, you WILL still have to do more cleaning to keep up with them using your kitchen. I.E cleaning the floors.

Tip: To help guests know whether or not the dishes in the dish washer are clean or dirty, I suggest buying a dishwasher clean/dirty indicator. There are few things grosser than realizing that one of your guests thought your dishes were dirty and they put their dirty dishes in your clean dishes and you don't realize it until you've put all your dishes away.

• You have to make space for them in the in the fridge and pantry.

• If you have a small kitchen, it can be difficult to have extra people preparing meals at the same time.

• You won't like all your guests, and it's very easy for them to corner you in your kitchen, and talk your ear off.

My suggestion to new hosts is to try it out for a couple guests, and to see how it goes. If you don't like it, you can always change your mind.