The 36-year-old Arko, who owns Port Richmond's Keep It Clean With Raylene, is a pearl in a national chain of caring that provides free home-cleaning for female cancer patients.

The group is Cleaning for a Reason, founded in 2006 by Debbie Sardone, who runs a Lewisville, Texas, house-cleaning service. Her idea of cleaning up for afflicted women zoomed across America and there are now 260 house-cleaning affiliates in 37 states, but Raylene's a lonely solo act in Philly.

To qualify for four free house cleanings, female cancer patients must register online at www.cleaningforareason.org and provide verification from a doctor that they are currently receiving chemotherapy or radiation treatments. Any cancer survivor, or relative of a survivor (as Debbie and I are), knows that the life-saving treatments are brutal. They can leave patients grossly sick, kitten-weak, rag-limp, depressed.

Raylene knows, too, because her grandmother, Alice, and her mother, Connie, fought breast cancer. Her father, Ray, is a brain-cancer survivor. Raylene knows first-hand the heart-gripping terror and stomach-turning pain of the disease.

So when Raylene heard about Cleaning for a Reason last October, she signed up her company, which has 13 employees who clean homes from South Philly to Bridesburg to East Falls.

Her business, her two young sons and her husband Tom leave her no time to do volunteer charity work, but Raylene knew cleaning was something she could do.

"We as women like to keep tidy homes," says Raylene, especially when company arrives, and many people come to visit and cheer up patients when they're having treatments. "Having their house clean makes them feel a little better."

More than better - it's a blessing, Rosemary Bendler, 62, told me when I visited her spotless three-bedroom Bridesburg rowhouse. She got her final free housecleaning last week.

"It was such a blessing because [my husband] Jack is disabled and he is able to do only so much and women like their house really clean, let me put it that way, and it's nice to know another woman can come in . . . ."

The word "woman" is a key, because they see little things - dust bunnies, a smudge - that a man might not see, but that drive women crazy.

Rosemary says, "They change your bed for you, they dust, they vacuum, they do your bathroom and they clean all downstairs . . . "

"They do the dishes, if there are dirty dishes," Jack chimes in.

" . . . they dust everything," Rosemary continues. "They dust the fans off that are up on the ceiling, and they're so cheerful when they come. They're in and out.

"Two hours doesn't seem like a lot, but for two people to clean in two hours, they did a wonderful job," chirps Rosemary, who's completed chemo for breast cancer and is now on drug therapy.

Raylene says: "Just seeing how thankful and happy we make them by doing something small like cleaning after being so sick, that's my happiness, and satisfaction."

I want to say something about how cleanliness is next to godliness and how charitable cleaning can be seen as a godly act, but I'll let you make that call.

"My goal," says Raylene, "is to enlist other cleaning services in Philadelphia so we can help more women."

If you're looking to fill some spaces in your heart, call Clean for a Reason toll-free at 877-337-3348. *

E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/byko.