Customer Reviews

Other People's Dirt: A Housecleaner's Curious Adventures

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

A quirkily interesting book, worth at least the couple of hours it'll take you to read it. The author, a thoroughly educated sometime-writer, works as a cleaner, cleaning people's houses. She tells us something of what that's like, and she also pokes into other corners of the cleaning world, talking to someone who cleans up after murders, talking to folks who get paid extra to clean in the nude, and spending a week in a spiritual community in Japan that finds sustenance in service, including cleaning.

The book is a somewhat uneven read; now and then we get close to an insight into the human condition, or a lovely bit of prose. More often, though, the text reminds me of Paul Theroux or William Least Heat Moon at their grumpiest: going to interesting places and having a lousy time, meeting interesting people and disliking them. The author of "Other People's Dirt" doesn't really seem to like anybody very much, and her dislike keeps her at a distance that prevents most real insight. On the other hand, she doesn't give in to the dislike enough to really get nasty; while she constantly claims to know lots of little intimate secrets about her clients, and apparently shares them with fellow cleaners, she doesn't share many with us, so we don't even get that naughty illicit fun.

Anyway, the book is worth the read. You may get a laugh, or an interesting wince, or learn something about cleaners and their clients. But don't expect it to change your life.

Although the notion of life as seen by a housecleaner is interesting--how much do our homes reveal about our "secrets"?--and the style is mildly entertaining, the chip on the author's shoulder detracts from the book. An example--she freely admits that she "overcharges" a lot of clients for various services, but then counsels those who use housecleaners to leave little uplifting notes like "you're amazing!" She wants top pay *and* ego-stroking for doing her job? Nice work if you can get it.

In one nearly repellant episode, while cleaning for a commercial service she considers exploitive, she notices that the home's owner has many books on his shelves about the exploitation of labor. Interrupting him as he works, she waves one of the titles at him and expects him to join her in a discussion of the plight of certain workers, especially those in the cleaning business. The poor man is, understandably, less than enthused at this prospect....he was hoping for clean floors; instead he's being harangued about social issues by some woman he's never seen before, one who's being paid to dust the books, not wave them at him.

The book is breezy and mildly entertaining, but the author's attitude is tiresome, and her manners are appalling (inviting your boyfriend over to make use of a client's bed when no one is home, and then charging someone for the privilege?). It's enough to make you scrub your own bathroom.

Amusing, especially in the beginning, but can't decide where it wants to go. Uneven execution of a clever topic. I appreciate the acecdotes, however, because I too am a cleaner. My clients have nicknames such as "Hair House" (too many dogs,) and "Witness Protection Program" (generic decor.) Therefore, I find her rantings funny much in the way a server finds commentary on the restaurant business a hoot. This book is not going to appeal to everyone, but doesn't warrent the outrage it generated. My main gripe with this book, and I have a few, is her half-attempt to explore the role of minorities in domestic employment. Search as she does, she never seems to find why, as an educated, white woman she fits so neatly into the cleaning business. Could it be that ultimately she sees herself as an outsider, perhaps even a minority? Maybe the answer lies in her lesbianism. We that are gay often fall into the non-traditional job role. It would have been interesting to see her explore this issue instead of conspicuously dance around it. In closing, to those finding it unreasonable/unacceptable for domestic help to ridicule employers I must ask: what planet are you from?

This book should be required reading for not only every person in the business of cleaning houses, but also for those who have their houses cleaned. "Other People's Dirt" portrays a truthful, funny, occasionally aggrieved, but always intelligent story of occupation--an occupation often overlooked and stereotyped.

As the owner of a vacation resort, a mom and pop operation where I'm not only the "glamorous" hostess but (on Saturdays) the very unglamorous cleaning woman, I could relate to the tales exposing sometimes surprising (sometimes revolting) lifestyles. While the author seemed to dive into lives of her clients far more than I would ever consider, it's clear she did so with the purpose of studying human nature. To call her "grumpy" or even resentful by exposing these stories in the book, critics fail to see the pure entertainment value of this quick, little read.

On the other hand, I've had weekly cleaning ladies enter my personal home(s) for many, many years. Through Louise Rafkin's book, I have learned how to keep anything truly personal, personal. For example, you bet I strip my own bed lest anyone attempt to get an inside look at my sex life!!!

Particularly because of the controversy and strong reader reactions it has caused, I think this book is a gem and I highly recommend.

Michele Cozzens, author of I'm Living Your Dream Life: The Story of a Northwoods Resort Owner

A collection of essays from an ex-academic and writer who cleans houses. Why does she clean houses? Well, therein lies the tale. She uses cleaning as an excuse to snoop, living out her faded CIA dreams; she cleans because it helps her organize the mental and emotional clutter of her own life; and she cleans, at least once, simply to serve (in Japan, where a cleaning sect called Ittoen does precisely this). Other pieces investigate how others clean: the aforementioned Japanese cleaning commune, ascetic and humble; her childhood Mexican maid, whom she interviews with minor success; the maid to nobility and American moguls; naked house cleaners; even a woman who cleans up after homicides and suicides. At one point, Rafkin joins Merry Maids, a corporate cleaning service, partly due to desperation and partly as a kind of experiment (the horrifying abuse of labor she encounters there echoes Barbara Ehrenreich's findings from her own similar experiment in Nickel And Dimed). Rafkin certainly has her downside: she gossips about her employers (in stark contrast to the proud, confidential maid to the ultra-rich she interviews), treats their possessions with indifference, to say the least (she doesn't even apologize for breaking one client's knick-knack), looks through their things, tries on their clothes, even makes love on one clent's bed. But her prose is crisp and clear, and she has an unusual power to be disarmingly funny about a mundane subject like dirt, or zeroing in on the tragedy of a life without wallowing in sentimentality. She's at her best when talking about her interview subjects rather than herself, but she's open about everything. It's a quick, edgy read, and everyone who's ever hired a maid should read it.

I thought it was very interesting how the author's described what she witnessed, and what evidence she saw of people's lives. The insight she gave into her own life and the lives of other house cleaners was also interesting and insightful. I thought the book ended a little strangely but I have learned that these types of books and their authors often end strangely.

I thought this book would be more about what the subtitle described: "A Housecleaner's Curious Adventures." It wasn't. As someone else said, she tries to give overviews of a lot of areas at least tangentially related to cleaning -- minorities, a Japanese spiritual commune -- but jumps from one to the next without exploring any of them fully. And if you're reading it to find out the "spy secrets" she can supposedly figure out about her clients, you've learned all you're going to get on the cover blurbs. She knows how to write, but apparently can't decide what to write about.

This book by a writer and cleaning professional is about more than just cleaning. Louise Rafkin explores the relationships between cleaner and employer, interviews a woman who cleans up after murders and suicides,and even visits a community in Japan whose members clean other people's toilets as part of their ethic of performing service for others. She's got a feisty attitude that definitely comes through in her writing. It's a quirky, unusual, and sometimes very funny book where cleaning sometimes becomes a metaphor for living.

I am also a writer who cleaned houses for a long time because it gives you flexible hours and a fairly high rate of pay. Cleaning and domestic work is always so invisible to the world of public notice, and it yet it's the kind of feminine work that sees everything, the ultimate voyeur. Louise Rafkin not only had all these kind of intimate observations, she also writes about it so poetically, and with such a spiritual interest in the nature of "cleaning up" that it really rises above some naughty maid's tell-all.

Every time we hire a new person to work in our home -- plumber, babysitter, cleaner, or anyone else -- we worry. Even if they seem honest and present the best references, we can't help but wonder -- are we truly safe with this stranger in the house?

In the case of anyone naïve enough to employ Louise Rafkin as a housecleaner, the answer should have been an unequivocal no. Rafkin consistently betrayed her employers' trust, having sex in their beds, trying on their clothes, pilfering their possessions, cruelly ridiculing them and exposing their most intimate secrets. Rafkin's book reveals her contempt for her employers (she admits that she overcharges and frequently only pretends to clean), for her family (she discloses her brother's drug use and prison record; she visits her family's former maid, near death, and attempts to goad her into mean-spirited gossip, "I wanted ... to find out secrets about the people in my squeaky-clean sixties neighborhood. I even wanted to hear that my mom was difficult to work for") and her belief in her own superiority.

The only dirt Rafkin refuses to expose? The truth about herself and why she is really cleaning houses. Raised by college-educated parents in a comfortable, middle class suburb, downwardly-mobile Rafkin hardly lacks employment options. Her only explanation is that there are few jobs for writers who can't type and can't spell -- hardly plausible for someone equipped with an advanced degree in literature. As Rafkin skips from city to city, job to job, lover to lover, it appears that she might have focused on cleaning up after others as a way to avoid dealing with the raging mess inside herself.