Make the fleece wick before the pigs move in
Fleece bedding fails for one predictable reason: new fleece is coated to repel water, so urine pools on top and the pigs sit in it. The preparation is unglamorous and essential — wash the fleece three or four times in hot water with detergent and no fabric softener or dryer sheets, which re-coat it, until a dropped spoonful of water vanishes through the fabric instead of beading. Underneath goes the absorbent layer that actually holds the moisture: old towels, washable incontinence pads or a purpose-made liner, laid flat without lumps. Stretch the fleece taut over the top and tuck the edges under the liner or clip them to the cage base, because a guinea pig who tunnels under loose fleece can panic and overheat, and a rucked floor is a floor nobody can spot-clean.
Lay the cage out in zones
Guinea pigs organise their own lives by zone if you let them, and fleece stays cleaner when the layout works with that. Put the messy business at one end: the hay rack or hay pile, food bowls and water bottles form a kitchen, and many keepers put a litter tray or a disposable bedding patch under the hay, since pigs toilet where they eat and that one patch can be swapped daily while the fleece lasts the week. Keep the middle open as the running track — guinea pigs do joyful laps and want a clear circuit — and put sleeping quarters at the far end, away from the food smells. Water bottles over the absorbent kitchen end drip harmlessly; a bottle over the sleeping fleece soaks the beds.
Hideys: one each, plus one spare
Hideys are not decoration; to a prey animal they are the entire point of the cage. The rule is one hidey per guinea pig plus one extra, because pigs have favourites, favourites get claimed, and the pig who loses the argument needs somewhere that is not the open floor. Choose hideys with two entrances where you can — a single-door house can become a trap when a dominant pig blocks the doorway — and mix types if space allows: a wooden house, a fleece tunnel, a simple step stool they can sit under and on top of. Place at least one hidey away from the cage's busy front edge so the shyer pig can be properly out of sight. Cardboard boxes with two doors cut in them are excellent free hideys and can be replaced when chewed and soiled, which they will be.
The cleaning rhythm fleece demands
Fleece trades the big weekly muck-out for little-and-often: sweep or shake off droppings and stray hay once or twice a day, swap the kitchen patch as needed, and wash the full fleece set every few days to a week depending on herd size — which is why two complete sets are near-essential, so a clean set goes down the moment the dirty one lifts. Wash hot, skip the softener again, and check the absorbent layer each change for damp patches that show you where the pigs actually toilet most. KinsLe's Care Teams fits this rhythm neatly: the daily sweep, the midweek patch swap and the fleece wash can be set as recurring duties on the pigs' profile, assigned to whoever is on cage duty and timestamped when done, so the fleece system runs on a rota instead of on whoever finally notices the smell.