To make income while interning for a dance company in New York City, Lizzie Feidelson worked as a "consultant" at an environmentally friendly boutique cleaning company. She wrote about her experience in the fall issue of n+1. The entire essay is engrossing but these are some of the most fascinating details about her time "detoxing" homes.
1. At a "spotless" downtown Manhattan condo, Feidelson discovered that the client's young son has a highly controlled diet. "His meals were shrink-wrapped and labeled in the refrigerator with his name and an intended time of consumption. A typical snack was a single pre-peeled hard-boiled egg."
2. Documents were left out for Feidelson to see exposed private details about clients without her even having to snoop. "Receipts for abortions and letters announcing academic probation were pinned to the fridge."
3. Others went far beyond documents. "There was the young man with an actual pile of women's underwear by his bed, whose Google history (discovered when I opened his laptop to stream a podcast) revealed a single search for 'rash from too much sex penis.'"
4. Feidelson saw a lot of lavish clothing — not that her clients cared. She describes "the mounds of expensive purchases they left on the floor to collect cat hair and dust" and the "kitten heels with delicate feathers on the ankle strap, miniskirts made of heavy fabric (in what weather would these be worn?) and covered in a thick carpet of sequins, which I'd carefully smooth so each shiny disc faced the same direction."
5. She would have to clean the homes of clients her own age. "They never seemed to notice that we were peers, or if they did, the information didn't seem to embarrass them the way it did me."
6. One lady asked Feidelson to spend extra time in the bathroom because every surface of the space had been covered in "soiled cat litter." "I spent several hours loosening urine-soaked clods of litter from the tub and matted tufts of hair from the sink drain. As I vacuumed away the last bits of clay, I found an elegant dangling earring hugging the back of the toilet bowl."
7. The story of Feidelson's "favorite client" is perhaps the most heartbreaking. "When I dusted his bookshelves, I found that his books weren't real: they came away in discrete sections, hollow volumes fused together at the spine." In his walk-in closet, he had "complimentary T-shirts from conferences and car washes and diners hung delicately on individual clothes hangers like formalwear." Later, she found a "photo of a woman clipped to a death certificate," then a "letter from Mayor Giuliani expressing his condolences to the families of September 11 victims."
You can find the full text of Feidelson's essay here.
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Helin Jung is a writer and editor based in Los Angeles. She was formerly the executive lifestyle editor of Cosmopolitan.com.
