I just realized that I have a really major quirk. It’s not quite to the level of a phobia or OCD, but it’s not far off.
I don’t like to use anyone’s pillows but my own.* Hotel pillows are NOT happening if I can help it. If I’m staying at a friend’s it’s a bit different, I can get past it.
But for some reason, it totally squicks me to use the same pillow that a stranger put his or her head on the night before. And someone different before that. And someone different before that. And what if they used it during sex?
All those unknown skin cells and god knows what. :eek:
When I go on vacation to the house we rent in Maine, I take my own pillows (and the house is pristine!). If I’m traveling anywhere by car, I take my own pillows. If taking my own pillows isn’t practical and I’m staying in a hotel, I take my own pillow encasers (which block both allergens and bugs).
I’m not a big fan of using anyone else’s blankets, either, but you have to draw the line somewhere. I mean, I can’t drag my binkie around…
Well, ok, I sometimes do. I’m currently in “extended stay” hotel until my new apartment is ready, and I have both my own pillows and my own blanket. I’ve used the excuse that the blanket is to help calm down the cats, who like that it smells like home and all of us.
Does anyone else have this quirk? Am I overthinking the pillow issue? Do you have weird quirks about what you don’t like to share/use in a hotel? Has anyone noticed?
*except the ones at my mom’s house. I mean, not only is her house amazingly clean, we’re related so I’m not likely to get the crud from her.
I’m a complete freak when it comes to hotel rooms (and pillows). I will not rest my head on a pillow that another person has deposited any variety of bodily fluids, skin cells, or other organic matter on to. I’m squicked out by blankets too.
My theory on hotel rooms: Assume anything inside the room has been either pissed on, jizzed on or shoved up someone’s ass. I won’t touch anything until I’ve wiped everything I plan on touching down with a sanitizing wipe. And I bring my own dang pillows, and I remove the blanket from the bed before sitting or laying on it.
I stay in hotels 60 to 90 days a year. I have no issues with the pillows. In my mind, however, the room has only been used by 20 year-old beauty pageant contestants before me. The benefits of premier level rewards with the hotel chain…
As someone who averaged 140 nights a year in hotels over a 10 year period, I wish I could have your cavalier approach to hotel rooms. I really, really do. I have seen…unspeakable horrors. I have encountered… a billion tiny nuggets of nastiness. All of that adds up to the big sack of neuroses you see quivering before you today.
I’ll leave you now with an Onion headline I once wrote on an extended trip to Lansing, KS: “Hotel housekeeper can only speculate.”
When I took a professional massage therapist class, one little detail that was most emphatically emphasized was wiping the face-rest of the massage table with some industrial-strength antiseptic solution after every session.
Yes, they can be washed. Shredded memory foam FTW. Also antimicrobial and so on. Inside hot-water-washable pillow protectors that keep allergens and bedbugs out.
While I understand this is an issue than many people have, I’m glad that I am not one of them. It would drive me crazy if I had to worry about such things. Perhaps it’s because of the 50’s/60’s era I grew up in. We ate grass blades and drank out of garden hoses regularly (amongst other things).
It is bizarre behaviour to me. I couldn’t care less.
As long as the room smells and looks reasonably clean I won’t give it a second thought. We all touch filthy surfaces that have human residue on them hundreds of times a day. As long as you take the most basic of hand-washing precautions then I assume I’ll be fine. Seriously, a pillow is something that, until now, I’ve never even considered as a germ risk.
So did I in the 1970s. And three kids used to share one Coke or slurpee.
The main difference being, I’m fairly certain that nobody was fucking the garden hose, then leaving it out for us to drink out of. And I knew the other kids with whom I was sharing said slurpee.
I’m not normally germ-phobic. My first job was as a CNA in an Emergency Room, so I’ve had pretty much every possible human body fluid on me (and once, in my hair). It doesn’t phase me. I never have understood BDSM “water sports” kink because I don’t find pee to be demeaning. Tiresome, and stinky if someone has had asparagus, but not demeaning.
But pillows…I don’t know why. It’s fine if my cat puts his or her butt on it, but NOT SOME RANDOM STRANGER!
But… There is a clean pillowcase, right? And clean sheets? If you’re staying in a place that might be infested with vermin of some sort, the pillow is the least of your problems.
I have at times traveled with my own pillow because some hotels and motels have pillows that are too large and are not comfortable for me.
That was my thought. You lay on the mattress everyone else has laid on, but it has clean sheets on it. You put your head on a pillow others have used, but it has a fresh pillow case on it. What’s the difference?
I took my absolutely favorite, awesome memory-foam pillow to a motel last year and…left it there. And I don’t remember what brand it was. I’ve been bereft ever since.
I always immediately throw those scratchy polyester bedspreads in a corner if I’m staying in a sketchy hotel. Which we do sometimes, because I’m cheap, and sometimes it’s more about the destination than the amenities when you have a 6-person family to accommodate. I’ve seen the news reports on those things and how often they are cleaned. Ugh.
Last time I spent four weeks in the housing at NCED, I was a little stressed because the bed came with two sizes of pillows. One size was way too thick, and the other was just far too small.
So, first chance I got, I took the shuttle to Wal*Mart and spent 3 bucks on a regular-sized pillow and 2 bucks on a pillowcase.
Slept like a baby, and stowed it in the closet while I was in class.
