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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Travel
Milo Boyd

Hotel cleaner warns Brits to 'never use' the in-room kettle and coffee machine

A hotel worker has explained why guests should never use the coffee maker in their rooms.

Tara Bee claims that brewing up a pot of the brown stuff in hotel rooms is best avoided due to the very unhygienic nature of the makers guests are provided with.

The hotel housekeeper, who goes by @_sourqueen on TikTok, says the number one thing she avoids doing when staying anywhere is using the machines.

"The first thing that I would never ever use in a hotel room is the coffee pot or any of the glass wear," she said in a recent video.

"Usually the housekeeper just rinses these things out into the bathroom sink and dries them off with the same rag that they use to clean the rest of their room with."

Urban legends about the machines have been circulating for years (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Tara's claims - as well as turning the stomach and prompting you to think back to trips past to see if you've ever unwittingly used one of the makers - unearths an age old topic of debate.

Over the years many people have suggested that hotel coffee brewers are the most unhygienic, most unpleasant objects an average person is ever likely to encounter.

In fact, it's previously been revealed that some guests use the kettle to wash their clothes, dunking underwear and socks into the boiled water. .

"By 'coffee makers' you really mean miniature underwear washing machines," one person recently wrote on Reddit on a thread about coffee makers.

Whether or not the horrible myth is true is difficult to verify, as few people who have had to resort to the unusual sprucing up method are willing to go public with details of what they've done.

Caroline Newton, a travel expert, recently wrote on Bon Appetit that the possibility that it may have happened is enough to stop her using the machines for good.

"Whether or not people really use coffee pots as personal washing machines, this legend is enough to keep me from using a hotel coffee pot again," she wrote.

Are you brave enough to go for a hotel room coffee? (Getty Images/PhotoAlto)

"My plan: investing in travel-size dish detergent and giving the coffee pot (and mugs and glasses) a good rinse if I absolutely have to drink from the pot—or I’ll just grab coffee somewhere else."

Another hotel worker, named Evangeline, recently explained in a viral video that she would never use a TV remote in a hotel without first wiping it down with an anti-bacterial wipe, as she likes to make sure the item is clean before she starts flicking through the channels.

However, even the remote isn't the dirtiest part of the room.

Evangeline said that the one thing she would never touch is the bedspread that can often be found laying across the end of the bed, as she insisted she always throws it on the floor as soon as she gets into her room.

Evangeline claimed that while some hotels do clean the bedspreads regularly, others will leave them without a wash for up to a year - making them by far the dirtiest part of the room.

In a video on her TikTok account, @queenevangeline, in which she ran through the five things she would never do in a hotel after working in one herself, she said: "I would never sit on the bedspread. I would never make myself comfortable on the bedspread. That thing comes off the first minute I walk into the hotel. Those things are not washed often."

Are you a hotel worker with a warning you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com.

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