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The secret to keeping a clean house is to “just do it now. If you make a mess, clean it up now,” according to Margie Arington, the 2025 Warsaw Housing Authority Choice Voucher Program Good Housekeeping Award grand prize winner.
Arington was surprised with the award Wednesday in the community room at 802 Center apartments, where she lives. Along with a framed certificate, she received a $150 gift certificate from Walmart and a little party with cookies.
Before presenting the honor, Vicki Haines, WHA program manager, explained, “We are going to present our grand prize winner of the Good Housekeeping Award. So what we do is, they are required to let us inspect their unit once a year if they’re on our program. So Tom (Bulger), our inspector, he goes and inspects their units and he looks for all the safety things.”
If the program participant’s apartment has been well taken care of and they’ve reported anything that needed repairs throughout the year, Bulger gives them a Good Housekeeping Award. Administrative Assistant Alena Foltz sends out the certificates to the program participants.
“If they receive that, then we put their name in a drawing and then in December, every year, we draw a name out of Warsaw and of Goshen for a grand prize and a runner-up, and we always surprise our grand prize winner - that’s what we’re doing today,” Haines said.
She said WHA feels by doing the awards, it entices the tenants to take care of their units, which in turn makes the landlords happy.
“We always are needing new landlords, so we like to have happy landlords,” Haines stated.
When Bulger and Foltz brought Arington down from her apartment to the community room, and Haines told her she was the grand prize winner, Arington said, “Oh my gosh!” The other tenants at 802 Center applauded Arington, who thanked everyone.
Arington said she was totally surprised with the award.
“I get (the certificates) whenever (Bulger) sends them to me, or they send them to me, and I just put them in my housing folder. I just thought they were ... verification that they found my place clean,” she said.
To get her down to the community room, Arington said they told her she needed to sign some papers. She knew there was a holiday party going on in the community room, too, but she thought “they were going to be giving us some more government rules or something like that.”
As for what she’s going to spend the Walmart gift certificate on, Arington said she’ll probably get her niece and nephew Christmas presents.
Arington said it’s always been important to her to have a clean house because there were a lot of kids in her family.
