Wrong house cleaned in Kelowna Valentine's Day mix up | iNFOnews | Thompson-Okanagan's News Source
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Wrong house cleaned in Kelowna Valentine's Day mix up

Image Credit: ADOBE STOCK

KELOWNA – Kelsey was standing in the bathtub when she realized she was in the wrong house.

In the 45 minutes she had been there she already dusted two floors and cleaned two toilets. She was halfway through scrubbing the bathtub when her cell phone rang.

It was her boss, Heather Hays Williams.

“She picked up the phone like nothing’s wrong,” Heather says. “I asked where she was and she said, ‘I’m in a bathtub.’ I had to break the news to her that she was in the wrong house.”

Kelsey’s services were a Valentine’s gift from Paul Gillespie to his wife Julie. This was Kelsey’s first time cleaning the Gillespie house, and she showed up at exactly 8:30 a.m.

“I sent her the address, but she must have entered it into her phone wrong,” Heather says. “She texted me at 8:30 and said no one was home but the door’s unlocked.”

Heather texted Paul, who told her to go in and get started.

Almost an hour later, he called again.

“(He) said no one was at his house. I was like, oh no, this is not good,” Heather says.

Kelsey, 24, grew up in Summerland. She worked in a butcher shop the past few years but recently decided to give professional house cleaning a try.

“This will be my third week,” she says.

When Heather phoned and told her she was in a stranger’s house without their permission, she says her heart sank.

“I panicked at first, I was knee deep in their bathtub scrubbing it,” she says.

Heather says the mixup was perfectly understandable and told her to rinse out the tub, finish what she was doing and leave a note.

“She was kind of in a panic. I was laughing,” she says. “She dusted the whole house and cleaned both their bathrooms.”

Kelsey collected her supplies as quickly as she could, and scribbled a note, which she left on the floor by the entrance.

“I started a new job as a house keeper and got the address mixed up,” she wrote. “I was in the middle of cleaning when my boss called me. I am so sorry.”

A Kelowna family will return home to this note, left after a new house keeper mistakenly cleaned the wrong house today, Feb. 15, 2018.
A Kelowna family will return home to this note, left after a new house keeper mistakenly cleaned the wrong house today, Feb. 15, 2018.
Image Credit: Submitted

Julie Gillespie says once Kelsey was finally in the right house, “she did a fantastic job.”

"She just sort of hung her head, started laughing and got to work."

Heather says nothing like this has happened in the ten years she’s owned Homerun Cleaning Services.

Kelsey, on the other hand, isn’t surprised at all.

“I have a way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” she says. “I have a tendency to be kind of clumsy. For me to wind up in the wrong house is kind of a clumsy move.”

Heather says Kelsey will be paid for the time spent cleaning the wrong house and says her job is safe.

“Somebody’s going to come home and find a much cleaner house,” she says. “We don’t know who it was for, but I hope they’re fine with having their house cleaned by a stranger.”


To contact a reporter for this story, email Adam Proskiw or call 250-718-0428 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

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