For many travellers, the sight of a perfectly made hotel bed is a welcome promise of comfort and cleanliness. Yet, for writer Annabel Lee, this image is instantly ruined by the presence of what she considers a hygiene horror: the decorative cushions and throws that adorn so many hotel duvets.
The Unseen Dirt on Display
Lee describes the all-too-familiar scene: you enter a pristine room with crisp, laundered sheets, only to sit on the bed and disturb a cloud of dust from the cushions. She points out that the bedspread or throw, often draped across the foot of the bed, has likely been sat on—or had feet placed on it—by every previous guest. Unlike the sheets and pillowcases, these items are rarely, if ever, washed between visitors, making them a repository for strangers' skin cells and dirt.
Her immediate reaction is one of revulsion. "The first thing I do on seeing them is remove them with the tips of my fingers and shove them in the wardrobe," she writes. This act can become a physical struggle, thanks to tightly tucked hospital corners, sometimes resulting in the entire duvet being pulled off in the process. The ritual is frustratingly repeated when housekeeping replaces the items the next day.
A Pointless and Disgusting Practice
While Lee maintains she has a fairly normal standard of cleanliness, she is filled with dread by these fabrics. The core appeal of a hotel stay, she argues, is the illusion of a fresh, untouched space. Meticulously restocked minibars and sealed toiletries reinforce this feeling. Therefore, placing a pile of potentially grimy fabric at the centre of the experience is both puzzling and counterproductive.
"It might be for aesthetics, and sure, a scatter cushion or textural throw might look nice," she concedes. "But any visual pleasure is instantly undone by the full-body cringe when you consider the volume of strangers’ dust particles trapped inside it." For Lee, these items are not just pointless but actively disgusting in a shared accommodation setting.
The Call for a Cathartic Clean-Up
Lee finds a kindred spirit in the 2004 romcom Along Came Polly, where Jennifer Aniston's character liberates Ben Stiller's from his 'tyranny' of scatter cushions by encouraging him to stab them with a kitchen knife. That sense of catharsis is what Lee craves when faced with a hotel throw.
Her plea to the hospitality industry is simple: ban these unhygienic accessories immediately. She argues that the joy of a clean hotel bed is spoiled by their presence, and guests would be better served by the simple, sanitised promise of well-laundered linen alone. For Annabel Lee, liberation from the decorative cushion is the next frontier in hotel hygiene.
