Please Don’t Put Your Suitcase There

Why do people put their nasty, dirty, grime-encrusted suitcase on my beautiful clean bed spread? Oh – that’s not you? You have a fancy suitcase that you take very good care of? Guess what – it’s dirty. Let’s go through a highly likely scenario regarding the scourge your suitcase, handbag, or backpack has picked up along the way to my house.

You pull your suitcase out of the closet and pack all of your items. You roll the suitcase out to the car and place it in the trunk. The day before you took your vacuum cleaner to be serviced so you set it in the trunk sideways where the bottom of the vacuum rested on the carpet leaving dirt and dust.   That same day your kids had a huge soccer tournament in the rain. Not wanting to muddy the inside of the car you had the kids leave their dirty cleats in the trunk. The mud, gum, spit and energy drink from the field is now also on the carpet in the trunk where you just placed your suitcase.

You get to the airport and hand your luggage to the airline baggage checker, who has a really bad cold and just sneezed into his hand. With that same hand he grabs your suitcase and tosses it onto the conveyer belt – the one that has never been cleaned since it was installed (circa1982). Your luggage travels down the belt to the end of the line where it lands on a pile of bags (likely all having a similar trip to that point). Another person – who just ate a greasy bag of chips – throws the luggage onto another conveyer belt (again, one that has never been cleaned) and into the airplane the bags are squeezed one on top of another. The routine is repeated in reverse order until you retrieve your luggage at your destination.

For those of you believing you avoided the disease and pestilence because you brought your luggage on board: think again. You placed your laptop, belt, shoes, handbag, or briefcase into the same plastic box, and on the same conveyer, where everyone puts their shoes, bags, belts, laptops, and other stuff. Those boxes, and that conveyer belt, are never cleaned. You wheel your bag down the aisle of the plane that has never been cleaned (and by cleaned I mean really cleaned like steam-cleaned, not vacuumed – by a dirty vacuum cleaner).

The aisle is teeming with germs from all over the country, including hundreds of trips to the bathroom where the floor always seems to be wet. Why is it always wet? You know why, because it’s pee, and it covers the wheels of your suitcase, the bottom of your shoes, and your purse (assuming you placed your purse under the seat in front of you).

You put your bag into the trunk of a taxi, or rental car, where yet another hundred pieces of luggage have been placed. When you arrive at my house you wheel your bag up the driveway picking up pieces of grass and dirt. Once inside you fling the bag onto the pristine guest bed. Upon seeing this I can hardly speak as all I can see are muddy shoes, spit, snotty hands, dirt, grass, grease, grime, and the germs of a million people all converging on my beautiful comforter. You might as well take off your shoes and rub them up and down the bed.

When I offer the wooden suitcase rack you say: “No – that’s fine – I’ll just keep the suitcase on the floor and put it on the bed when I need to get my things.” I say: “Let me tell you what’s on your suitcase.”