cleantok

This Mom Has A Cleaning Routine For When She Stays At Hotels & The Internet Is Split

She goes all out, and most of the products she uses are travel-sized.

by Katie Garrity
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
@operation_niki / TikTok

Hotel rooms can catch any germiphobe off guard. There have definitely been times where I’ve stayed at certain places that weren’t super clean — despite a cleaning service — and I felt the need to wipe down some counters and light switches.

No matter a five-star resort or a local motel, one mom doesn’t take any chances when it comes to cleaning up her hotel room when she arrives. In fact, she brings an arsenal of cleaning supplies.

“I always say, ‘This clean life ain't for everyone and that's okay! Do you!’ but I know that thousands of people check in and out of these hotel rooms and the majority of them have the mindset of most of these people in my comments,” Niki's Side of Cleantok (aka @operation_niki) begins in her viral video. “Which leads me to fully believe that these rooms are not as clean as you think they are.”

The cleaning video — which has more than 760,000 views — is a mom of three who doesn’t take any chances when it comes to a clean hotel room. She takes matters into her own hands.

In the video, Niki enters what appears to be a hotel room and begins cleaning and disinfecting different parts of the room using various cleaning products she brought in her suitcase.

“These housekeepers have a great work to do and simply don't have the time to clean as well as you think they do. I stayed in a hotel room the other day that had blood on the mattress cover. And this was a five-star hotel,” she explained.

Niki spritzes with a sanitizing spray that claims to "kill 99.9 percent of bacteria up to 24 hours," onto some switches and a small screen on a wall then opens up a packet of disinfecting wipes and wipes down a table area as well as a landline phone and a remote control with wipes.

She also cleans the toilet cover and seat, before cleaning the bathroom floor. Niki then sprays a disinfectant mist onto some couches in the room.

“I brought four products with me, three of which were travel sized and took up virtually no space in my suitcase. Not to mention this takes me about 20 minutes. I don't think that's much out of my entire week's day,” she explains before busting out a disposable sheet set.

“I'm not here to convince you to clean your hotel rooms. My videos are here to educate and share what I like doing for me and my family. The last thing I want to do is contract a disease or carry home bed bugs. Better to be safe than sorry, in my opinion,” she concludes.

After her video went viral, several TikTok users commented on Niki’s hotel cleaning routine, saying it was actually brilliant.

One user said, "So smart. The way this would make me feel so much more settled, especially in some rooms lol."

Another echoed, "This is a must in my family."

One user joked, “M’am they need you in Paris.”

Other users weren’t exactly sold on Niki’s cleaning mission once she’s in her room.

“If I’ve got to do that I’m staying home,” one user wrote.

“I do none of this and the result is the same, I sleep, I wake up and I leave,” another said.

However, one former housekeeper dropped a bomb that will forever be burned into my brain and said, “As a former housekeeper you should definitely disinfect the bathroom because where I worked we used one cloth to wipe everything including the toilet.”

What.

And listen, dirty hotel rooms do not discriminate no matter the star rating just like Niki said.

In fact, when it comes to the cleanliness of bedding and linens, five-star hotels had over three times as many violations as their four-star counterparts.

In fact, five-star hotels also had more violations than one-star hotels. And of all the hotels on the list, four-star spots had the cleanest linens by far.

That disposable sheet set doesn’t sound so extreme now, does it?

This article was originally published on