This! All of this so much! Coincidentally I read about insect hotels recently as well and also on the topic of cleaning them and also that many commercial ones

This! All of this so much! Coincidentally I read about insect hotels recently as well and also on the topic of cleaning them and also that many commercial ones are just completely inadequate (wrong type of holes and materials and such). I figured out that our yard actually already provides perfect insect hotels. Those leaves I didn't get to shred and put on the compost pile before the weather was too wet? Perfect for certain types of insects. The birds think so too as they rummage through it every spring. What I will try this year is taking some of the firewood and drilling the right size holes in it. The good thing? I can just burn it in summer in the pizza oven and not worry about cleaning up. I'll just take some new logs and do the same thing. And all the kindling, which is just branches that fall from the trees all the time anyway get collected in a big pile. Perfect insect hotel. By the time I start using it in summer, they'll have moved out. I also compost in place for most flowering plants. E.g. my Hostas. I do take the flower stems out so they don't stick up and "look bad" but I just break them once of twice and leave them in place. Doubly so for the leaves, those of course just stay in place. Perfect compost for the new Hostas next year without having to actually spread compost everywhere. And it probably doubles as an insect hotel as well.