We expressed interest in “Elisabeth”’s rental and, based on the write up, booked and paid for 33 days beginning February 1, 2022. On the morning of February 3, we abandoned the house for a variety of reasons, as outlined below. In doing so we were aware we would likely be losing our entire rent, but we felt we could not ruin our entire holiday in Vegas simply because we might lose our funds. As to whom we are, my wife and I are nearly eighty, and I am a retired CPA. Below you will find the reasons why we left, but first I print the beginning of a full page of notes we received from the “Host” before we arrived. (She asked to communicate directly, which is not apparently appreciated by Airbnb).
i would like just to remind you of few things of our listing
1. you can use the entire house except our Master Bedroom/ bath.
You are staying in the guest bedroom with queen bed with adjacent full bath, mini refrigerator and TV ( the living room TV is not working) , wifi and new washer/dryer adjacent to your room as well
2. We have a cat which pretty much « owns » the house and loves company. We have our house care taker of 13 years coming to the house twice a day to feed, change the water and clean the cat litter inside the garage. She also comes once a week from 8- 4 pm to clean the entire house and the backyard patio/garden and to clean your room /bathroom and changes the linens and towels
She is fully Covid vaccinated and keeps her social distance while inside the house, we require everybody to change shoes before entering the house, you will find mask and alcohol gel to use as well, we have a gardner coming once a week to do the front/backyard garden
and for consideration with our employees we ask you if you are vaccinated as well ( is not a requirement) but we like to disclose to them, they are very trustworthy and respectful
The house care taker was named Silvia and she showed us around the house upon arrival. We found it the living area rather overwhelming; not due to any grandiose pretension, but rather the large number of items scattered about, especially in considering this was a rental unit. I would guess square footage to be about 1,700, but we immediately realized that the owner’s comment about using the entire house (except the master bedroom) was meaningless. The living room and formal dining room were packed with furnishings and as such not readily accessible. It also had a full sized desk in front of the window with arm chair, and no place to sit comfortably in the rest of the room (not even the dining table, which was placed close by the kitchen entrance). To add to the crowding, furniture capable of holding anything was cluttered with parlour pieces, photos, knickknacks and mementos.
In short, it was difficult to even walk into this area, let alone enjoy it as a quiet place to relax in “the rest of the house” we had permission to use. To wit, off from the front door foyer was a large room that seemed to be a study, but it too was cramped with furniture and “stuff”, and we never went past the door. There was simply no point. Further back from the foyer was a narrow, open room housing a fireplace area and a single chesterfield. This was the only place we could really sit. However, all it did was face an empty fireplace with a large, broken TV above the mantle. Several cabinets/bookcases/shelves etc. filled the rest of this area, equally cluttered to a point of bursting with mementos etc. This left the lone chesterfield where we could stare at the broken TV screen and the empty fireplace whilst petting Lucky, the cat. I must say that he’s a nice, friendly, sleek and healthy cat that looks and seems to be one heck of a lot younger than his supposed twenty years.

Our bedroom was satisfactory, but also quite tight. It is definitely a “second bedroom”, meaning that the queen bed takes a good chunk of the room. The foot of the bed is perhaps four feet short of the wall, but in between there is the dresser with a cabinet holding a TV on top that actually does work. Unfortunately, what with the doors to hide the TV open, passage from one side of the bed to the other is quite narrow. Below the TV were four dresser draws, all of them full but one. This single drawer was presumably left for Marie and me , for the only place left to stash our clothes and unmentionables were the coat hangers in the closet. A glass faced cabinet stood on the other side of the bed and was, like everything else in the house, cram full of “stuff”.
The point of this?
The invitation “You can use the entire house except for the master bedroom” is empty.
The trouble is, the entire house was full of “stuff”. The fridge was cram-full leaving just a single shelf open in the middle free, which we took the liberty of using (yes, there was a cooler in the bedroom, but let us be practical.) The kitchen cabinets were also full, except for a small corner cabinet; all closets in the house (we were looking to stow our coats and suitcases) were stuffed with even more “stuff”, literally jammed from top to bottom (squeezed might be a better word). It quickly became clear that the owner of the house was indeed a “hoarder” with “stuff” parked and/or stored everywhere,
To summarize: that “advertised” run of the house, but for the master bedroom, turned out to be: our cramped bedroom; one chesterfield and a broken TV; a table and chairs next to the kitchen counter; and a cluttered