Window Washer Brightens Evanston Businesses

Tom Anderson washes windows Monday on the 1700 block of Sherman Avenue in Evanston. Anderson recently celebrated his 30th anniversary washing windows around town.

Window washer brightens Evanston businesses: Tom Anderson had an appointment this week with Todoroki Hibachi and Sushi, a new Japanese restaurant on Davis Street, about doing their windows. Anderson was cleaning the windows on another restaurant across the street, and one of the managers, watching, approached him and asked if he would also do Todoroki’s. “I get that all the time,” said Evanston’s premier window washer. “At Cosi Restaurant (at Clark Street and Sherman Avenue) the manager saw me doing the Visual Eyes eyeglass place when he first opened up and he was like ‘C’mon over.’”

Tom Anderson washes windows Monday on the 1700 block of Sherman Avenue in Evanston.

Anderson, 51, blue eyed, his baseball cap stuffed in the cart he pulls along, recently celebrated 30 years in the window washing business, ridding storefront windows of their smudge, fingerprints and grime. In Evanston, he has a business base close to 200 customers. Recessions, boom times, “most places want to keep their places looking nice for their customers,” said Anderson, whose business is T& J Cleaning Service. He started March 1, 1982. The Mexican Shop, still in existence today at 801 Dempster St., is his oldest customer.

Went door to door: Just married at the time, “I started doing carpet cleaning with somebody and then a friend of mine was doing windows so I started working with him. I ended up just going door to door getting these jobs.” His tools are a brass squeegee, a strip washer and cloth towels. He works from left to right, up and then down. If hopping, he can do seven jobs in an hour; the raised print on doors and windows reappear in fine relief. On the other hand, “today I did Quartet Copies inside and out,” he said last week, “and it took me an hour and forty-five minutes for one job.”

Tom Anderson washes windows Monday on the 1700 block of Sherman Avenue.

He wears soft shoes for balance on downtown sidewalks where the panels, not manufactured for Evanston’s climate swings, are constantly coming loose. “I have broken a bone in my foot just from stepping on these little cracks because you’re doing this back and forth and I stepped in a spot where it cracked,” he said, pointing out a one spot on Clark Street. “I’ve seen people with walkers that are just having a ridiculous time maneuvering these brick sidewalks.”

Tom Anderson washes windows for Coucou on the 1700 block of Sherman Avenue in Evanston.

Anderson maintains a list of places he can go to refill his water bucket, which has to be changed five times a day sometimes, depending on how many jobs he has or how dirty the water gets. “Some places have these tiny sinks that don’t really do me any good. I do have places where the people are nice, but they really don’t want you to walk through the store with a bucket of water, which is fine.”

Tom Anderson lathers up a downtown Evanston window.

Saville Flowers, then, at 1712 Sherman Ave., is as welcoming as an oasis in a desert. The people at Saville Flowers are glad to see him, too. “He’s just the happiest, nicest person,” said Suzie Saucher, helping out at the store on Monday. The price is right, she said. Also, “he’s adorable. He’s kind of like, ‘Can I borrow your water?’ And (we say), ‘Go ahead.’” Clean windows are a must at a flower shop, said Saucher, glancing to the blue and green flowers on display in the up-front window. “That’s why they change them (the windows) all the time. Everybody walks by. They see the window … and (take in) the smell.”

Anderson spends three days a week in Evanston, and the other days in Wilmette and Winnetka. “All my customers are really nice,” he said. “I’d love to spend all day talking, but if I’m not working, I’m not making money,” said Anderson, in constant motion.

Tom Anderson uses a squeegee on a pole to get hard-to-reach windows.