Neat burglar breaks in, tidies home

I can’t help but be just a tiny bit envious of Nate Roman.

He’s the Boston man who came home from work recently with his 5½-year-old son to find that someone had broken into his crib … not to rob it, but clean it. And spend about 90 minutes doing so.

Finding the door unlocked, Roman found the boy’s room, which had looked that morning like it had been attacked by a giant egg beater, neat and clean. Ditto for his own room. The shower and the toilets were scrubbed down. The intruder had vacuumed and — get this — even left toilet-paper roses in the bathroom.

“His theory is that a cleaning service came to the wrong address, but his kitchen was untouched, which makes him second guess his suspicion,” according to the story on CNN.com, which was accompanied by a video.

Roman did call police, who “took the incident very seriously.” Cops cleared the house and spoke to neighbors to no avail. Roman was creeped out enough to change his locks, but he kept the toilet-paper roses. Perhaps more on this case will have come out by the time this column runs.

The story left the impression that Roman was single, so there were no doubt speculations that his ex broke in, wanting to make a point about his sloppiness … or perhaps a new love interest, auditioning for the role of Mrs. Roman, wanted to prove herself. Others may have speculated that the intruder was a bona fide burglar, but a person of standards who saw the sloppy place and decided to take pity on the guy.

And we all have probably speculated that the kitchen was just too big a disaster area for the benevolent breaker-inner to bring himself/herself to fool with.

This reminds me of one of the strangest cases that came up during my husband’s days working the police blotter as a reporter for a small newspaper in Monroe, La.: Someone had broken into this woman’s house, cooked her food … in her kitchen … and eaten it. And cleaned up afterward. “I guess they wanted the lady to think nobody entered the house because there was nothing else (clothes, jewelry, etc.) … taken,” Dre says.

Yes, I realize the seriousness of any break-in situation. No, I shouldn’t joke this away. But, I’ll be honest: Hubby and I, being busy freelance and “9-to-5” writers, could use what I’ll refer to as a cleaning donor, anonymous or otherwise.

Not that we don’t make any effort. We sweep, only to find the floor/rug in need of another sweep later on in the day. Even if we had

a dishwasher, there would probably still be dishes in the sink. We wash the dishes, only for more dirty dishes to magically appear shortly thereafter. The bed is a constant casualty of restless tossing and turning, thanks to hot flashes and night sweats; too much to bear is the thought of bothering to making it up, only for it to all too soon look once again like we were a couple of hormone-ridden 20-somethings who had a mad, passionate romp in it. And geesh, why does dust come back so quickly? Dusting seems to be the biggest exercise in

futility since trying to figure out the love lives of all the Kardashians.

The main thing, though, is our books. We have far more of them than the apartment, and our multiple bookcases, were ever meant to accommodate. We suspect that like bunnies, they multiply by themselves. And they certainly present their own dusting challenge.

“A lick and a promise” cleaning isn’t good enough. And the little free time we have we want to use as … free time. So if home cleanliness is next to godliness, I’m sorry to admit that we are usually teetering dangerously close to heathen category.

The case of the Boston

man may spark some cleaning services, at least those in the Boston area, to adopt a motto: “We’ll clean your house — including the kitchen!” Or, “When we clean your house … you’ll know it’s us.”

Meanwhile, I feel like the man’s son does. He wanted the intruder to come back and do the kitchen.

Hey, assuming you’d also not do us any harm, or rip us off … come do our place. No need for the roses. We won’t mind if you cook yourself a little something and eat it. Good luck on catching anything in the fridge, though.

Let me do a bit of housekeeping and provide contact info: