Guest Rooms

A. Rationale and Procedures for Guest Rooms (if familiar skip to B)

Residents of Cambridge Cohousing (CCH) want family, friends and colleagues to feel at home in the CCH community. As part of our common extended and shared home, we maintain two guest rooms that residents may reserve to host their guests. Both are simply and pleasantly furnished. Guest Room 1 has a double bed  and  Guest Room 2 has a double bed and two single beds. Both rooms share a small hall and a bathroom. We are not licensed as a guest room business to rent guests rooms. We maintain guestrooms for residents to be able to extend hospitality as our units are small.

The community expects a donation of $35 a night per room. This is much less expensive for any of us than maintaining a couple of extra guest rooms in our private units, and low enough that any of us can afford it. The donation is deposited in the community checking account to help defray the costs connected to maintaining the and sometimes to support social events and activities of our shared community life. All of CCH benefits.

In addition to the donation to the CCH community checking account, an additional donation in cash is made at the time of reserving space of $35 per room.  For a stay longer than 5 days an additional $2 a day is requested for each additional day per room. The Guest Room coordinator receives the cash gift for taking on the responsibility of keeping the room clean and ensuring  that the room is always ready for another guest at 3 pm on the day of the departure.

Because of the informality of this arrangement and because it is not a business,but an extension of personal hospitality, if a guest cancels, no refund of the donation to CCH will be given. Two guest room vouchers per calendar year may be given to each household. They never expire and are transferable. The household must keep track of the voucher coupons and submit them to use with a new request to reserve. The Guest Room coordinator does not track these.  Because we are not a business we don't keep informal records. However, the cash donation for cleaning and maintaining the room will be returned if the room is not used. We do encourage co-housers who have guests cancel, to advertise the availability of the rooms to the community, and arrange directly to have someone else reimburse you for your prepaid, but unused reservation and cleaning. As you may imagine, all of this was put in place to prevent community members reserving for iffy unconfirmed guests and thus preventing others the opportunity to reserve the guest rooms until too late for most plans, a frequent happening in the past. Plus every effort is made to keep the administrative work manageable for a community volunteer.

No receipts can be issued for business reimbursement as we are working informally with donations. We are offering personal hospitality. Again, we are not a guest room business. Many have requested receipts and we have honored none, we cannot.

B. Guest Room Sign Up:

The procedure is as follows. Feel free to contact the Guest Room Coordinator (Laura) with questions and support in following these procedures. 

1. Check calendar for availability, a paper one is located in the CCH coat room and an electronic one is located on the CCH Wiki. Reservations are made in the order they are received. The Coordinator will process the request within 24 hours of receiving it. Within 15 minutes, the dates and host are recorded and on both the physical and digital calendars at the same time. (The coordinator is the only person who enters this info unless someone is publicly deputized to step in to do this for a short period due to absence)

2. Fill out a reservation form for each night requested, continuous nights only on a signup sheet.  Forms may be downloaded from the Wiki or taken from the wall folder in the mail room. 

3. To complete your request, the full donation is required for the room plus the gift to the person who takes charge of the cleaning and resetting the room. ($35 per night per room for family, friends or travelers from other Cohousing Communities. Checks are made out to the Cambridge Cohousing or cash may be given to the Coordinator who transfers it to the community events checkbook accounts keeper. The $35 gift to the cleaner is also due at the time of reservation.)

4. After payment is made, place the completed form and donations in the mail room cubby of the Guest Room Coordinator (Laura) who will enter your reservation on the physical calendar in the Coat Room and the digital calendar on the Wiki. You will then receive a written confirmation of the reservation.

(In the unusual event that a resident wishes to host a casual business acquaintance or friend of a friend, or someone you would not expect to host in your home, CCH asks for a donation of $50 per night to the community. The cleaning donation remains the same.)

C. Cancellations

• There are no cash refunds for room reservations. Cleaning contributions will be refunded.

• The only way to be reimbursed for a room you have reserved is for you to find someone to use the room in your place and reimburse you personally for the donation you have made to the Community Account. Please let the Guest Room Coordinator know of any changes of hosts and if the room will remain vacant as last minute requests are frequent. 

• Each unit has 2 nights of cancellation credit per year.

D. Postponement

If a shift in dates is requested for the reservation, the coordinator will attempt to oblige.

E. Arrival

• Guests are welcome to use the room after 3 on arrival day.

• Keys to the rooms are in a plastic key box in the lowest cubby in the mail room. Hosts sign out the key to your guests.

• Hosts are responsible to ensure their guests are hosted, oriented to Coho,  shown to their room(s) and provided a key. Introduce your guests to the common areas, to the laminated guidelines/checklist provided in each room, and to the various ways of cohousing. If a host cannot be present, please find another co-houser to do this orientation in your place, and inform the Coordinator of the arrangement.

F. While at Coho, hosts are asked to inform guests of our community policies:

• No smoking on the property

• No animals in the guest rooms or common areas (unless a service dog for a guest according to the law)

• No food or drink, other than water, in the guest rooms (those with medical needs to have food available are welcome to have small amounts well packaged)

• Guests are expected in general to use the host's kitchen for storage and cooking, but if necessary they are welcome to store well-marked food in the CCH fridge. Masking tape and a sharpie are provided for marking and dating food. Guests may use the kitchen facilities except when the community is preparing a meal or an event, and they may not use the gas stove or gas oven.  They can use the electric stove top, electric oven and microwave.

G. Departure

• Departure time is 11 a.m.

• Guidelines for how to leave the rooms are provided on laminated instruction sheets and a check-list is also in the guest room. Guests should place all soiled linens and towels in pillow cases by the door and tie all bags of trash. All windows should be closed and locked and the thermostat set at 68. Any food stored in the Common House kitchen should be taken or disposed of. 

• Departing guests should leave keys on the bureau in the guest room, and the room resetter will return them to the key box in the mailroom, or return them to the host who will do the same. 

• Cleaner may enter after 11a.m. on the day of departure.

• Hosts are asked to make every effort to check the room after guests leave and before the cleaner comes in, but are flexible onthis due to residents' work or other life commitments.

H. Extra cleaning fee

In the rare event that the cleaner finds the room in poor condition, or for any reason the room does not conform to the checklist provided for departing guests, and therefore takes longer to clean, there will be an additional cleaning fee of $25 for the extra effort. The cleaner will place a notice in the host's coho mail room cubby.

Cleaning Checklist

Before 3 PM on the day of departure the room will be cleaned by the Coordinator's designated cleaner unless specific arrangements are made with the Coordinator and the person resetting the room is a community member, not a guest, who is able to comply by resetting the room the way that it was before the guest used it. (See the list below to understand that it is far more than changing the bed sheets.) Because of the idiosyncratic schedule of arrivals and departure, a commercial cleaner is not able to take this over. Therefore this is how we keep our guestrooms clean and sanitary. 

Cleaning supplies are kept under the bathroom sink and in the hall closet outside of the guestrooms. Toilet paper is kept in the top cabinet to the left of the common house freezer. Other supplies may be purchased at Tags or a store of your choice to restock a supply that is low or out.

Bathroom:

• clean sink, toilet, tub and floor

• clean counter, mirror, windowsill and all surfaces including knobs

• rinse non-slip tub mat and hang on grab bar.

• replenish soaps and toilet paper

• empty waste basket

Bedroom:

• remove and launder used linens and towels

• make beds with fresh linens

• leave folded fresh towels on made beds

• dust surfaces and windowsills

• empty waste baskets

• vacuum rooms and hallway, use carpet spot cleaner if needed.

Security and thermostat outside the room:

• confirm that all windows are locked

• leave curtains open and shades 3/4 up

• reset the thermostat to 68 if needed

• sign in and return guest room keys to mail room 

• restock laundered linens to guest room shelves, if not occupied, or place in the rolling hamper in the coat room closet for the Coordinator to restock on the shelves when the rooms are again vacant. 

• Check coho fridge to be sure the guest has not left any stored food.

• Take all trash and recycle and dispose of them properly

Incomplete cleaning may result in a cleaning charge and loss of a self cleaning option in the future.

Revised community guidelines amended 11/18, Updated 12/23