Why You Shouldn’t Use an Ice Bucket in Your Hotel Room

If you’re traveling this summer, you might want to reconsider using an ice bucket in your hotel or motel room. According to this video posted on TikTok by former hotel manager Melissa Hanks, there’s a good chance someone used the jar for something incredible.

“I wouldn’t use an ice bucket at all,” she says in the video, “people use it for things you don’t even want to think about.”

But I really want to think about them, Melissa, as do the video commentators, many of whom are hotel staff or guests who want to talk about themselves. ( Warning : if you’re sick of describing the disgusting actions of disgusting people, I would stop reading right now.)

Partial list of disgusting things people use hotel ice buckets for

• Dog bowl: Housekeeper MaeeGnav_ says, “I don’t trust ice buckets… people use them like dog bowls.”
• Trash Can: “Is that an ice bucket?” Asks vitalina_vs: “I thought it was a small trash can.”
• Vomit Catcher: “I threw up in an ice basket. It’s either that or the floor,” Makkuldud says.
• Foot bath: “I remember reading that the Disney ‘hack’ was to soak sore feet in a bucket of ice,” reports sm.865 .
• Diaper bucket : “People use the ice bucket as a diaper bucket and I never fully recovered from it,” Jill told The Real Deal .
• Toilet: “My ex got drunk and pooped in an ice bucket once, so be careful,” warns kmoney26.
• Severed Finger Carrier: The grand prize for the most heinous use of an ice bucket in a hotel goes tonykko393 , who commented: “When I was a paramedic, we were called in for random amputations and fingers or whatever ended up on ice in ice containers. “. (Starts.)

So, how can you get ice in a hotel room without using an ice bucket?

Luckily, most hotels and motels provide plastic liners to separate your much-needed ice from the walls of the portable toilet/diaper bucket in the room. Use those. If you don’t want to bring ice even close to the bucket, feel free to use separate bags or fill disposable cups in your room with ice (however, if your room has glasses instead of glasses, they might be dirty). too much). You can also pack your own Ziplock gallon to fill with ice. Large, resealable plastic bags can be used on any trip and should be on your travel essentials list. You can even bring your own ice bucket – this will show them.

Ice machines are disgusting too… and everything else

Bringing your own ice bin with you on vacation may solve the immediate problem of disgusting ice buckets, but it will lead to a bigger sanitizing problem: the ice maker itself. It is impossible to determine how often the management of the recreation center cleans this machine , and mold, rust, E. coli can form on it. Other hotel guests put their dirty hands in there to get ice, and as shown in that episode of The Office , someone could use it to get their feet wet. A drunk person could urinate there. It’s too much to think about.

So maybe you should stick with hot drinks from the coffee maker in your room, but on second thought, maybe not. These things are rife with bacteria, fungus and mold , and people are reportedly using coffee makers in motels to cook food and do who knows what else. And don’t tell me how disgusting the duvets and sheets in motel rooms can be. And carpets. And air from deflectors. And inside boxes. And toilets.

What can you really do about a disgusting hotel room?

Checking online reviews is an obvious first step. If the motel room is dirty, people will express their dissatisfaction on the Internet, I promise. But Yelp alone won’t save you.

Hotel rooms are disgusting because other people stay in them, and people are disgusting. It can’t be avoided, only mitigated, but the room cleaners aren’t paid enough to deal with our rudeness. Even if they were the most meticulous cleaners in the world, they would still miss something. Someone will rip out a novel somewhere, hide a corpse under a mattress , or use the TV remote as a sex toy.

However, you can pack an arsenal of cleaners and disinfectants to try and fight limescale in your hotel room.

Creation of a basic set for inspection and disinfection of a hotel/motel

• Personal ice bucket.
• Clorox travel wipes
• Gallon plastic storage bags.
• Travel sanitizer spray
• UV disinfectant spray
• UV black light

About acceptance and ice buckets in hotel rooms

Personally, I don’t do any disinfection or inspection of the premises when I travel. I take the “I’m not going to think about it” approach to dirt and just assume everything is clean enough as long as it looks clean and doesn’t smell. If I don’t bring my own ultraviolet flashlight, I’ll never know there’s a dried blood stain on the carpet. As far as I know, I never got sick from a motel room and I have stayed in some unpleasant rooms. Ultimately, this is a matter of risk assessment.

You probably won’t get sick from a hotel room.

In addition to the “I’m exhausted” factor, people fear the spread of infections or diseases due to the lack of cleanliness in hotel rooms. But this is not the usual way people get sick while traveling. According to the Centers for Disease Control, if you want to avoid getting sick on the road, you should wash your hands, stay away from people who are sick, make sure your food is fully cooked, and drink bottled water. “Avoid the ice bucket” wasn’t on their list.

Obviously, you can get sick from trash left in a rented room, but at least hotel rooms are cleaned and disinfected regularly, even if this is often hesitant. You never know about restaurants, public transportation, your friend Gary’s house, or any other place you visit. Exposing yourself to foreign pathogens is an inevitable risk of doing anything other than rotting in bed, and it’s usually not worth thinking about other than taking a few common sense steps. So go ahead, use that ice bucket if you want! Just because I soaked my socks in it yesterday doesn’t mean you’re going to get sick.