Yes, They Do Windows, Sometimes on Pointe – April 21, 1991
Jessica Weber still sighs in amused disbelief when she recalls the occasion a year or so ago when she was interviewing housecleaners for her 1,850-square-foot loft in Greenwich Village. One of the contenders was just about to get the thumbs-up sign when she announced, “I forgot to tell you: I don’t bend.”
She didn’t get the job, but that very day Ms. Weber, a graphic designer who works at home, found an advertisement in her mail box from Manhattan Feather Dusters, a cleaning service that employs ballet dancers, film makers, actors, artists, college students and the like.
“I thought the name was cute,” Ms. Weber said, “so I gave them a call.”
Quicker than you can say “Dustballs, be gone!” she was visited by Everet H. Goldberg, head of the Manhattan Feather Dusters, a housecleaning business he had acquired about three years before. Now in his mid-30’s, Mr. Goldberg began cleaning apartments when he was a student at New York University.
“I’m neat, fastidious, organized,” he said. His enthusiasm for sparkling bathrooms and kitchens may be matched only by his passion for the arts. He frequently attends his staff members’ performances and said he is convinced that artists clean living quarters with the same passion they give to an on-stage solo. Smart, Limber and Peppy
Ms. Weber, who signed up as a feather dustee, agrees. The loft she shares with her husband, Alan Peckolick, also a graphic designer, and a trio of chatty parrots abounds with pictures, prints, glassware and all sorts of off-beat objects — a basket of mateless mittens, for instance. Dancers in particular, she said, not only keep such things dust-free but tend to appreciate them, too.
“They take an interest in things,” she said of her housecleaners the other morning, as she zipped about the office part of her loft, in a onetime factory. “They’re smart, they’re limber and they’re peppy. I love pep!”
In the living area, Donell Stines, a 23-year-old choreographer and dancer, was exhibiting a most impressive display of pep and energy, rising on pointe to dust hard-to-get-to spots, cleaning the floor in deep arabesques. Dancers, incidentally, do not wear tutus for these roles. “One of the best things about cleaning is that there’s no dress code, just grabbies,” said Ms. Stines, who takes on three cleaning jobs a week.
The work helps build strength. “Dancers are always aware of their bodies, watching their placement,” she said. “Cleaning takes a lot of stamina; it’s a nice way to warm up before class.”
With utmost grace, she grabbed one of Mr. Greenberg’s custom-made feather dusters, performing a neat pirouette as she did so. “It’s great hearing Vivaldi while you work,” she said. A Little Elf at Work
Several dozen blocks uptown, on Park Avenue, Louise Gross, one of Baxter’s Little Elves, was zealously polishing a 19th-century silver English candlestick in the living room-library of Rebecca Bromley, a business consultant. The four-room apartment boasts a Jacobean-style fireplace, leaded stained-glass windows, 18-foot ceilings, 1,000 or so books and, seemingly, even more miniature tchotchkes.
Ms. Gross, a 31-year-old film maker, works for Vance Baxter Vogel, a choreographer from Memphis who started his cleaning business 11 years ago and has since moved into party planning as well. Mr. Vogel, 40, has not abandoned dance; he continues to be artistic director of Tapestry Dance Theater Company, based in Manhattan.
Ms. Gross, who has tried carpentry, waiting on tables and office work, much prefers housecleaning. “It’s less demoralizing than working in a restrictive atmosphere, the hours are flexible, and you have a sense of self when you’re cleaning,” she said.
Most of all she loves kitchens and bathrooms. (“They look so clean when you’re finished.”) Most of all she hates cleaning blinds. (“The worst! A hideous job!”)
Mr. Vogel instructs his 15 elves to “clean the way you would as if Architectural Digest were coming.” His employees, “have a sense of flair,” he said. “They go to galleries. They’re familiar with textures and prices and are as eager to clean a floor as a $50,000 vase.” Fanning, Fluffing, Placing
He has trained them in the art of fanning magazines on coffee tables, fluffing poufs and placing bottles so that they face out from the shelves of medicine chests. “God has given me some very good workers,” he said.
Some of those workers provide superintendent service for several buildings on the Lower East Side. Mr. Vogel pitches in, too, polishing, repairing, getting in touch with exterminators and performing other essential services. He also cleans his own Lower East Side apartment, which is decorated in a blend of Balinese and African styles.
The cleaners from both companies earn $7 to $10 an hour.
The Manhattan Feather Dusters, with a staff of 15, charges $45 to clean a studio, $55 for a one-bedroom apartment and $65 for a two-bedroom unit. The company works in Manhattan and Brooklyn Heights; telephone (212) 406-7024.
Baxter’s Little Elves charges $15 an hour for regular housecleaning, or $18.50 for particularly dirty jobs. There is a three-hour minimum. The elves will journey to all five boroughs and on the Long Island Expressway as far as Huntington, L.I.; telephone (212) 674-2629.
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/21/news/yes-they-do-windows-sometimes-on-pointe.html
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