‘Bacheloraid’ Handles Wifely Work With Less Cost, Bother

Kathy Richardson had noticed a recurring pattern in the men she dated. They were slobs.

Well, “slob” is a strong term. Let’s just say that they could use a little help around the house.

So the former home economics high school teacher--who was, coincidentally, looking to start a business of some sort--got an idea. Perhaps, Richardson thought, she could really clean up with a “housewife” service for single men.

Out of that inspiration came “Bacheloraid” 5 years ago. The flyers Richardson circulated to drum up clientele summed it up: “Cheaper than a wife, less trouble than a mother.”

Staffed by four maids, Newport Beach-based Bacheloraid promises to do (almost) any chore a homemaker would take on: the vacuuming, cooking, grocery shopping, laundry and even interior decorating.

Richardson says you can spare her all the “and just what else do you provide” jokes. She has already heard them. “When I first started, I got a lot of weird telephone calls, but they were mostly good-natured,” said Richardson, who is 44 and divorced.

“Sometimes I’ll return a customer’s call and his secretary will answer, and she’ll laugh when I say the name of my business. I’m always having to explain what it is we do, so she won’t think the poor guy is strange.”

Today, Richardson has about 30 regular clients, plus many “irregulars” who occasionally ask for help in catering parties or organizing closets.

“Most single men lack some nurturing at home,” Richardson said. “They live in stark apartments that aren’t very clean, without much furniture. Eighty-five percent of our clients have no food in the cupboard, except for a box of cereal or bag of popcorn. Women are better at nurturing themselves.”

Many Bacheloraid customers are recently divorced men, unaccustomed to running a household alone. “They’re in their 50s, and they’ve had a wife taking care of them for 20 years,” Richardson said.

“A lot of them still live in the place they lived with their wife, and half of everything is gone. There will be a big blank on the wall above the couch where a picture used to hang, a lamp missing from the end table, a knickknack shelf with no knickknacks on it. The guy will say, ‘There’s something wrong with this room.’ So we’ll patch it up--buy another lamp, buy another picture.”

“After my divorce, I moved into an apartment and didn’t know how to put it together,” said 51-year-old Newport Beach attorney John Duncan, who had been married for 23 years. “Kathy came over and set me up. She put the dishes that I use the most on the lower shelves, arranged my closet so that the slacks are all in one place and the shirts in another. Two years later, everything is exactly where she left it, like a time freeze.”

Duncan uses the service, every other week, to straighten up his apartment and do his laundry. “Sometimes I come home from a long day of work, and I’ve forgotten that it was cleaning day. I open the door, and my apartment is beautiful--vacuumed, dusted, smells good. I put my feet up on the coffee table and just sit there enjoying my clean home.

“There are a few things Kathy doesn’t do that a wife might do, but what can you say?”

On that note: No, said Richardson, she has never dated a client. “There’s someone special in my life right now. But I have met a lot of interesting men through my business.”

Richardson does most of the cooking--preparing meals on wheels in her kitchen. She offers clients a menu boasting just-like-mother’s entrees, such as spaghetti and fried chicken, which she will deliver with a couple of days’ notice.

“I especially love to cook for parties,” she said. “Then I get to make all this fattening food I wouldn’t make for myself.”

Cleaning fees are $45 for a two-bedroom apartment, $65 for a house. Laundry costs $5 a load, grocery shopping $25 a trip.

Boyd Mickley, 23, a property management consultant in Costa Mesa, relies on Bacheloraid to spiff up his condo once a week. “It’s not that I don’t know how to do this stuff myself, but it’s just nicer to pay someone else to scrub the bathtub,” he said.

He also makes frequent use of Richardson’s food service. “I get sick of frozen dinners,” Mickley said. “All the different brands have the same five or six variations of chicken.”

For the record, Bacheloraid does not discriminate against women. “I got Kathy’s advertisement in the mail 5 years ago and called her up and asked, ‘What about bachelorettes?’ ” said Judi Gorski, 34, a business administrator in Huntington Beach. “I could use a housewife myself.”

Nor does the service refuse couples. “My clients get married all the time and keep using us,” Richardson said. “Their wives think we’re great. Often, they work full time too and don’t have time for house cleaning.”

Although she takes charge of the cooking and interior decorating, Richardson leaves the cleaning to the maids--even in her own home.

“I use my crew,” she laughed. “I hate housework.”