I love hotels. The first thing I do when I get to my hotel room, no matter where I am, or how long I am staying, is unpack. I carefully hang my clothes in the closet, place my toiletries on the sink in the bathroom, and put away my suitcase. Even if I am just staying one night.

“Why are you unpacking everything?” Jenny will ask me on occasion. “We’re only staying one night.” I like things to be orderly in the hotel room, I tell her.

After I unpack, I look for the hotel information, usually in a binder titled Guest Services. I like to know when check-out time is, or how to get on the internet, room service options, fitness facilities and other helpful hints.

One of my favorite hotel lobbies.

A a kid I was often left to my own devices. Especially on family holidays. My siblings were a good bit older and didn’t want their kid sister hanging around. And my parents might have a dinner party to go to and didn’t want a ten year old tagging along.

“Oh don’t worry about me,” I’d say. “I’ll just stay here in the hotel and order room service.” Or if it was daytime I’d offer, “You all go ahead without me. I’ll just go to the pool.” It was a win-win situation. They didn’t want me hanging around, and I much preferred being on my own, especially if it involved a full-service hotel.

I imagined myself as Eloise, the young fictional character who lived in the Plaza Hotel in New York. Like Eloise, I would say, “Charge it to my room, please,” with an air of importance.

I’d roam the hallways. “May I help you?” a concierge might say, seeing me wandering aimlessly around the lobby. “No thank you,” I’d reply sitting down on a comfortable couch watching people walking in and out of the hotel.

Ordering room service was my favorite activity. “May I help you Miss Khan?”

“Yes, I’d like to order some dinner please.” This would usually consist of a hamburger.

“Will there be anything else? Some dessert perhaps?”

“Oh, yes please,” I’d respond. Possibly a slice of chocolate cake, or a scoop of chocolate ice cream, which I might have to eat first in case it melted too quickly.

I travel all the time for work now, and I stay in lots of nice hotels. I’m always trying to save the Foundation money, so I usually Priceline a hotel room. I have some basic criteria. I only stay in four star hotels, five stars if I can get it, but my price range usually goes no higher than $125, which is pretty good for a four star hotel, and almost unheard of for a five star hotel.

I frequently travel to San Francisco, where our main office is. At least twice and sometimes three times a month. For a brief moment I considered renting a room up there, but then I thought the better of it. “Then I’d have to do laundry in two places,” I told Jenny. This made her chuckle, because I don’t usually do the laundry at home, Jenny does. “And apartments don’t have room service,” I continued.

Room with a view.

My hotel etiquette of unpacking my bags and carefully hanging up my clothes does not apply at home, for reasons that Jenny is still trying to figure out. “Are you going to unpack your suitcase?” she asks me a day or two after I return from a trip.

“Yes, I’ll get to it,” I say, putting it off another few hours or another day. When I finally do take the clothes out of the suitcase, I tend to leave them in small piles on the washer-dryer, or the chest in the bedroom.

“Are these clothes dirty?” Jenny will ask me pointing to the pile on top of the washer.

“No,” I respond. “I need to put them away,” which I might not do for another day or two. “And what does this pile mean?” Jenny will ask, confused about the clothing on the chest in the bedroom. “I need to put those away too,” I say. And that hardly ever happens. The pile of clothes on the chest in the bedroom is a revolving pile. These are clothes that are not clean enough to put in a drawer, but not dirty enough to be washed. Or they might include a sweater or two that I wear with some frequency, so why bother putting them away?

When I do finally get around to putting my clothes away or putting them in the laundry, I might have a separate pile for delicates. “That’s delicate,” I’ll say, not realizing how delicate the whole situation may be from Jenny’s point of view. I think she’d prefer me to be as orderly around the house as I am in hotels.