Posted on 08/10/2006 3:23:26 PM PDT by SmithL
Debbie Phillips knew something was a little off when she came home one day in June.
Her Putnam County home, a single-floor brick house in Oakwood Estates, smelled a little fresher and looked a little tidier.
But how?
Fairies? A magical nanny? A burglar with a neat streak?
Phillips, who works for the Arnold Agency in Charleston and serves as Putnam County school board president, didn't remember sprucing up the place that much before she left for work earlier that day.
"My house isn't that bad to begin with," she said. "I try to clean up things before I leave, but I guess I thought I had just spent a little more time that morning cleaning things up."
But the more she looked around, the more she noticed things were out of place.
In her home office, the rugs were positioned slightly differently. Trinkets and other small items were rearranged. In the master bedroom, the bed was made differently.
Something didn't add up, Phillips thought.
At first, she questioned her husband, Philip Weikle, about the tidiness of the house, thinking he must have done some cleaning before she got home from work. Then she asked her next-door neighbor.
"I asked Phil if he cleaned things up, but he said no and kind of ignored me. He and everyone else probably thought I was going crazy because I kept asking them," Phillips said.
Phillips quickly realized someone -- not her, her husband or her sons -- had entered the house and straightened things up. It was, as she calls, a "break-in and cleaning."
Well, not really.
More like a funny coincidence.
It turns out a neighbor, with a very similar house number and hidden key set-up, had ordered a cleaning service -- Cottage Care in Barboursville -- to come to her house. Representatives of Cottage Care couldn't be reached for this story.
"The location was basically the same, the number of rooms to be cleaned was similar and the key was in the same place," Phillips said. "They just came to the wrong door."
Just in case something came up missing, Phillips called the Putnam County Sheriff's Department to file a report. At the time, she didn't know exactly what happened or who the mystery cleaner was or if there even was a mystery cleaner, but she figured filing a police report was the safe thing to do.
When she reported what had happened, she said the officer laughed at her.
"He asked me, What do you want to report?' " Phillips said. "I told him that someone came into my house and cleaned. He just laughed and asked what's the problem with that?"
She told the officer with a chuckle, "Well, they didn't clean the dust bunnies under my bed."
"But I explained that I was concerned because I think someone got into the house and that they weren't supposed to be there."
What happened became clear almost a month after the incident. Phillips' younger son, who is in school this summer, called his mother at work, wondering why there was a cleaning lady at their front steps.
"I said, well there shouldn't be. We don't have a cleaning lady," Phillips said.
After a phone conversation with the cleaning lady -- quite likely the same one who accidentally cleaned Phillips' house a month before -- the mystery was solved.
"She read the work order to me. It was the same number of rooms, but it was the house across the street," Phillips said.
Soon after, Phillips called the cleaning service to explain the situation. The owner assured her she wouldn't be charged for services rendered because of the mix-up.
"The thing is, to this day, I still don't know why my neighbor didn't realize her house wasn't cleaned," Phillips said. "I thought she would've noticed. I sure noticed that mine was cleaned."
Aww, I need the cleaning fairies!!!
Ping.
LOLOLOL!!
Charles Manson and his "family" used to do creepy crawlies where they would go into houses without anyone knowing, even if they were home. Another book I read, "Son", the freak/rapist would go into women's homes and straighten out their underwear drawers.
I'll leave my door unlocked tonorrow. The address is...
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