'Cleaning fairy': Man accidentally breaks into to stranger’s home to clean it

"What do you mean you don’t have a cat?" A man who was supposed to clean the home of a friend-of-a-friend realized he was in the wrong place - but it became a source of smiles.

News 12 Staff

Jul 21, 2021, 9:49 PM

Updated 1,212 days ago

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A South Jersey man has earned the nickname “the Cleaning Fairy” after he accidentally broke into a stranger’s home and cleaned it. Louis Angelino III, of Barrington, documented the whole mishap on TikTok in a video that has now gone viral.
“I had no clue I was going to become the South Jersey cleaning fairy,” Angelino says.
Angelino says that he was supposed to clean a friend-of-a-friend’s apartment in Cherry Hill, but unknowingly went to the wrong address. Both dwellings had keys under the doormat.
“’I’m sitting in your living room right now with your cat on my lap waiting for you to walk in because I’m done,’ and he was like, ‘Louis, I don’t have a cat.’ And I am like, my heart drops and I’m like, 'What do you mean you don’t have a cat? You have to have a cat, where am I right now?’” Angelino says.
That's when he says he realized that he had cleaned a stranger’s home from top to bottom.
“Obviously they’re going to know somebody was in their house, so I freak out and run out of there,” he says.
That condo belonged to Beth Motzel and her husband Tom Kenny.
“He said, ‘Beth, somebody broke in and cleaned our condo.’ And I said, ‘What? Come on, what are you talking about?’ And he said, ‘I’m not kidding. It smells like Swiffer. It smells unbelievable, it’s super clean,’” Motzel says.
The couple says that when they found out what happened, they started to laugh.
“If it was anybody else, I don’t know how it would’ve went. I think it was just fate, to be honest with you,” Angelino says.
Angelino and the couple say that they hope to meet in person. In the meantime, Angelino’s video has hit 1 million views.
“I’m just glad that with everything going on in the pandemic and people have such loss and such pain that this is something to laugh at. And you know, you have to laugh at yourself,” Motzel says.
Angelino says he's had many people reach out and ask him to clean their homes. He says he's hoping to start a South Jersey Cleaning Fairy business in the near future.