In the news this week: a major home-rental platform said that, for stays booked from 20 November, hosts may only ask guests for light checkout tasks - used dishes in the sink rather than washed, used towels gathered rather than beds stripped, trash sorted into indoor bins rather than carried out, the heating switched off rather than banned.
Leave the dishes.
Keep the card short.
Paste the checkout list you give guests. Every request drops into a front-desk pigeonhole - fine as is, soften it, cleaner's job, or local need - and you get a short door-hanger card for guests and a list for whoever turns the place over.
1 Your checkout list
2 The pigeonhole rack
3 The door hanger
For the cleaner
Everything that moved off the card - for your cleaner, or for you if you turn the place over yourself.
4 Write the card
One run reads every request like a front-desk manager: a slot and a reason for each, the heavier asks rewritten into their light versions, a door-hanger card in the voice you picked, and the cleaner's list.
The verdict follows a fixed order: rewrite the list if three or more requests are real cleaning; otherwise trim a few if anything is softened or moved; otherwise ready to hang.
5 Saved cards
Light versus heavy, at a glance
These four pairs follow the examples in the news report above. Local needs - wildlife, a septic system, freezing pipes, embers from a stove - can still earn a specific request when the request says why. This page is a rule of thumb, not any platform's policy text, and it is not affiliated with any platform: check your own platform's current house-rules policy before you rely on it.
How the free side works
Each line of your list becomes one slip. A keyword pass guesses its slot in the same order the writer uses: local need if the line names wildlife, a locking bin, a septic system, freezing pipes, embers or a hot tub cover; soften it if it asks for washing dishes, stripping beds or laundry, carrying trash outside, or not using an amenity; cleaner's job for vacuuming, mopping, wiping, scrubbing or cleaning; everything else is fine as is. The draft card swaps each softened line for its light version and leaves the cleaner's jobs off. A written reply is checked against all of it: every request sorted once, the verdict against its own slots, no cleaning or invented time on the card, and one cleaner's line per moved request.
Leave the Dishes is a writing aid for hosts. It never names a platform, a company or a fee, and it never says what any policy or law allows.