Filed under: Storage & Cleaning, Storage & Organization, Cleaning
Who cleans up after the children of the rich and famous? See what life is like as an high-end cleaning lady and take a peek at some of the messiest, most disgusting rooms.Check out this story from our friends at The Daily Beast!
Since 2005, Kia Grasty has been cleaning up after Penn. While her partner at Diamond Cleaning, Candy Boyd, handles more conventional work-commercial buildings in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania-Kia has parlayed the effusive recommendation of one student, who found her on Google, into a customer base of dozens of Ivy League neat freaks and slobs-including high-profile scions like Kim Delaney's son, Vera Wang's daughter, and the heir to the Beverly Hilton-many of whom pay her for the entire year in advance.
Kia Grasty via The Daily Beast
Grasty doesn't judge her clients for a sense of entitlement because she doesn't see entitlement as a bad thing. "Students should be focusing on books not disinfectant and cleaning the bathroom," she says. That said, what she sees could sometimes inspire a proper horror movie, from hay-bale-sized piles of clothes to clogged toilets to, at one frat, mounds of defecation in a bathtub, which she captures for posterity with her cell phone camera. While Grasty will often scold her kids, telling them "they done lost their minds," that "they know better than that," at the end of the day, she'll still pick up the clothes or scrub the bathtub as long as it takes. Her only gripe: when they spent money on booze instead of hiring her more often.
Grasty recalls her first Penn cleaning job, a $45 fee from a student name Griffin Rotman. "I walked in and his house was de plorable," she says, speaking in a preacher's cadence and with a raspy cigarette voice. "Him sitting there on his bed like King Tut. After I finished, he said I'll keep paying you $45 'cause [my room is] big and I'm gonna trash it." Because of how much business he has brought her over the last six years, Rotman is another of Kia's "privileged" customers. "When Griffin calls me, I jump," she says. "I'm not gonna lie to you. As fast as I can get to him. I never tell him that 'cause I don't want his head to swell up, but I do."
Kia Grasty via The Daily Beast
As she lets herself into Cortese's house a few days after the party (she has her own set of keys) Grasty looks like an athlete-crew cut hair, a big T-shirt, sweats, and Nikes-hauling a sack of laundry in one hand and a box of cleaning supplies in the other. On her way to his room, she scans the rest of the place to see what kind of mess she'll be facing after she's finished folding his cashmere sweaters, lining up his shoes, stripping his linens, vacuuming-the full treatment.
More than a cleaner, many students view Grasty as something of a surrogate mother (Kim Delaney is far from the only parent with Grasty on speed-dial), who goes so far as to help coordinate moves and stock up apartments in advance of the new academic year. "To me it's more than just cleaning," she says. "I'm counting on my students to be the best that they can be. The smile on my face is when I ask my kids what's your grade point average. That's what inspires me." Her clients taught her how to text and she lights up whenever she receives messages during school breaks saying, "Kia! We miss you!" and, "Hey, we didn't want you to think we forgot about you."
Read the rest of the story over on The Daily Beast. And see more of those dirty rooms...Or check out these other great pieces:
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