Picture the scene: you enter a lovely clean hotel room. There are newly laundered crisp sheets and fluffy fresh towels. But as you sit on the bed, the cushions let out a cloud of dust and you realise the bed is covered with an unwashed bedspread that has been sat on by every other guest who has ever visited this room. It’s usually slung across the bottom of the bed, so lots of them have probably put their feet on it, too.
I hate decorative cushions and throws on hotel beds. The first thing I do on seeing them is remove them with the tips of my fingers and shove them in the wardrobe. Doesn’t everyone? Due to the often impressive efficiency of hospital corners on the bed, removing the throws can be a challenge, frequently resulting in wresting the entire duvet off the bed so I can discard the offending bedspread. And don’t get me started on when everything reappears on the bed the next day, and I have to begin my weird ritual all over again.
I have a fairly normal standard of cleanliness. I’m not too bothered by the occasional cobweb or spot of dust. But the sight of cushions and throws on hotel beds fills me with dread. I can’t help thinking they are massively unhygienic – and ultimately gross. Who knows how many other people have used them and when they were last, if ever, washed.
It’s puzzling as to why they are there, when part of the charm of staying at a hotel is the promise of a clean, fresh space to sleep. We all know other people have slept in the hotel bed before us, but something about the level of cleaning between each guest helps us to suspend disbelief and allows us to forget that we are sharing a bed with hundreds of strangers.
The room is usually perfectly made up with a freshly restocked mini-fridge and packaged-up toiletries. We are made to feel as if we are opening the door to a place untarnished by other people. So why then, on the bed, the centre to all this, do they plonk this pile of old, unhygienic fabric? It might be for aesthetics, and sure, a scatter cushion or textural throw might look nice. But any visual pleasure is instantly undone by the full-body cringe when you consider the volume of strangers’ dust particles trapped inside it.
In the romcom Along Came Polly, Jennifer Aniston’s free spirit Polly is seen helping free Ben Stiller’s uptight Reuben from the tyranny of his multiple scatter cushions. She does this by encouraging him to plunge a kitchen knife into his useless bedding accessories. “I’m liberating you,” she tells him. “Wow, that feels really good,” he replies, destroying the pillow.
This catharsis is what I need when facing a hotel cushion or throw. At home they might feel pointless but in a hotel, they are both pointless and disgusting: plain wrong. Please liberate me from the horror of ever seeing them again on top of a joyfully clean hotel bed.
