Neat Freaks at Holiday Time

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; / The stockings were hung by the chimney with care ... with extreme care, actually, as they're aligned within 0.1 milimeter accuracy.

Behold, cleaning at holiday time! Jesse McKinley wrote this intriguing article at the New York Times that every extreme cleaners (or neat freaks, depending on your point of view) and their loved ones should read:

Sabrina Cusin, who runs a high-end cleaning service called (no kidding) New York’s Little Elves, is currently dealing with the annual flood of holiday deep-cleaning jobs. And with the neurotic customer demands that inevitably come with it.

“We have people who say, ‘I only want you to bring new mops, sponges, brooms and unopened fluids,’ ” she said. “What can I say? Some people never wear underpants twice. One woman insisted on new vacuums. I drew the line. So she went out and bought two Mieles.”

That doesn’t sound so unreasonable to Nancy Bock. Ms. Bock, a spokeswoman for the American Cleaning Institute, said there was nothing outrageous about insisting on virgin machines and supplies. Not if it offers “the certainty that the product is the one that was originally poured into that bottle and that nobody else’s sponge has touched the lip.”

After all, she added, “What’s extreme?”

Link (Photo: Eric Striffler/NY Times)