'Eughhh!' What happened when we let Instagram's clean queens inside our writers' less than pristine homes

On Feb 7, a woman in Essex posted a ­picture of her living room on Instagram. It got 80,000 likes. This says something about the room, which is a sterile, silvery vision of almost supernatural cleanliness and tidiness. It also says something about one of Instagram’s fastest-growing and most surprising trends: cleaning.

The author of the living room photo, 28-year-old Sophie Hinchliffe, is one of the behemoths of this trend. ­Hinchliffe, better known as Mrs Hinch, has acquired in the region of 1.8 million followers since she began sharing cleaning tips. Her fans, the “Hinch Army”, refer to cleaning as “Hinching” and call purchases of cleaning ­products a “Hinch haul”. Mrs Hinch’s recommendations, some of which are ­sponsored by manufacturers, prompt so many Hinch hauls that they cause supermarkets to sell out of her ­favourite products.

Other members of the Instagram cleaning cohort include Nicola Lewis, the 43-year-old decluttering tipster known as This Girl can Organise; Gem Bray aka The Organised Mum; and ­Lynsey “Queen of Clean” Crombie, of whom more later, who uses basic tools such as lemons and bicarbonate of soda to achieve immaculate results.

Hinchliffe, Lewis, Bray, Crombie and their fellow cleaners of Instagram, have ­inspired their followers to post countless pictures of the results of their own cleaning. They have built such ­followings that all four of them are making a near-simultaneous leap to publishing, with Lewis’s Mind Over Clutter coming out March 14, Crombie’s How to Clean Your House and Tidy Up Your Life on March 21, Hinchliffe’s Hinch Yourself Happy: All the Best Cleaning Tips to Shine Your Sink and Soothe Your Soul on April 4, and Bray’s The Organised Mum Method on Sept 5.

But why is this stuff popular now? Let’s start with more recent ­developments. If your ­Instagram feed seems fuller than usual with stuff to do with cleaning, it might have something to do with the turn of the year. Pamela Rutledge, the director of the media psychology research ­centre at Fielding Graduate University, California, argues that the trend has been accelerated by New Year’s resolutions. The early part of the year, she says, “is always when people feel the need to establish order, whether on the home, diet or exercise.”

It’s also not long since Netflix dropped Marie Kondo on us. With Kondo on TV and cleaners on our ­social media feeds, we have been culturally pincered into improving our cleanliness. As Dr Rutledge points out, Kondo’s show reinforces our existing association ­between squalor and moral failure. Even if you haven’t watched it, you’ll be aware of the premise: by helping messy Americans bring order to their homes, Kondo brings order to their lives. Cleanliness was once next to ­godliness; they’re now becoming the same thing.

But there is more to this trend. It often feels fairly boilerplate to ­attribute changes in the way we live to some sort of post-Brexit/Trump anxiety; yet it makes sense, as Dr Rutledge says, that we might see cleaning as “asserting our sense of agency over our environment. In times of chaos and uncertainty, ­people feel the need to reaffirm order and safety.”

So we might not wake up and think, “Oh, boy, I’m anxious about No Deal – better clean the fridge!”, but we might find ourselves experiencing more satisfaction than usual in controlling our environments. Crombie, who featured on the Channel 4 show Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners, says that her cleaning is a constructive output for her obsessive tendencies, and observes that many of her followers have said that cleaning has assuaged, if not cured, their mental health problems.

You could say, on the other hand, that promoting perfectionism is unhelpful in this regard. You could also point out that it’s unfortunate that it seems largely to be women who are ­running, and following, the biggest cleaning ­accounts.

At least in a technological sense, though, Mrs Hinch and her colleagues are leading the way. Jodie Cook, a ­social media consultant, says that several of these Instagram accounts exhibit ­“perfect” Instagram use. “The best ­examples use their Instagram feeds for polished, perfectly framed and aspirational pictures of their home, which they are clearly proud of. They use their stories for behind-the-scenes glimpses into the life of a lady cleaning her home, complete with personal touches such as nostalgic backing tracks and names for cleaning tools.” It’s here, says Cook, that Hinchliffe “gets across the authenticity and ­silliness” that is lacking in the show-home splendour of that picture of her living room. “Her content isn’t just saying ‘Look at me and my amazing home’, it’s saying ‘Here’s me having fun, not caring what anyone thinks, and here’s how you can use my tips’.”

Cook explains that this kind of informality and authenticity lends itself well to the relatively new innovation that is the Instagram story. “Stories don’t need to be thought through because they disappear in 24 hours. This means they can be ad hoc and candid. It’s the perfect place to deliver short cleaning tips rather than via YouTube videos.”

The enthusiasm of the cleaners of ­Instagram goes a long way, says Cook. “They have brought the fun into something many consider mundane. They’re unashamedly in love with cleaning and it’s really nice to see someone with such a passion for something so everyday.” The easier it gets to touch up our photos and peddle narratives of ­perfection, the more we value accounts that offer straight-talking practicality.

Are cleaners of Instagram likely to stay popular? Probably. It’ll be a while, unfortunately, before humanity is able to outsource cleaning to robots and, as tip-dispensing mediums go, Instagram is a much more convenient port of call than home economics courses and books (pending the imminent four-way battle for readers).

In any case, surely the one thing more convenient than following these people on Instagram or reading their books is having them visit your home. We invited three of Instagram’s most prominent cleaners to our houses – read on to find out what happened.

THE FLAT-SHARER WITH BLACK MOULD

Lynsey Crombie visits Tom Ough at his flat in Brixton

Lynsey Crombie, the Queen of Clean, has a bad feeling about my microwave. A really bad feeling. “I daren’t look inside,” she says.

“You must!” I tell her.

“No, I’d have to touch it with my finger…” she says, her voice beginning to quaver with panic.

I can’t resist. “I’ll open it for you,” I offer generously.

She makes an involuntary guttural cry: “Eughhh!”. Then, with the reluctance of a husband agreeing to a vasectomy: “Go on.”

I press the button. Sproing! The door swings open like the maw of an ogre, an ogre who eats rubbish and has never flossed in his life.

Crombie’s reaction is basically a series of bouncing neon exclamation marks. “Oh, BLOODY HELL! Shut UP! No WAY! You don’t put FOOD in there!”

The inside was once white and is now smeared with ochre-yellow stains, the legacy of a small internal bonfire I once caused while trying to defrost some sourdough. It just sort of happened, I tell Crombie, regretfully. And now we have to eat our food out of it.

“Oh my gawd,” she whispers, “well – bless you.” Then – “LOOK AT YOUR BIN LID!”

Imagine this interaction occurring again and again for approximately ever and you will get a sense of what it is like to have Crombie, the Queen of Clean and the lodestar of nearly 110,000 Instagram followers, around to your house. The most innocuous of sins, such as not cleaning your oven for two years, makes her gag. “You’re going to get poorly!” she gasps.

I take her on a tour. The sitting room “could do with a good vacuum”; my bedroom is “not too bad”, but when she finds out that I change my sheets every two to four weeks, she screams. Then she tells me to vacuum my mattress every week.

Next I lead her upstairs to the bathroom. Since she’s behind me, I can’t see her face, but I imagine she is wearing the dolorous, tight-lipped expression of a doomed soldier standing in a rattling mine lift that is taking him deep underground to fight an ancient and nameless evil. It is worse than she could possibly have imagined, with black mould in our grouting, limescale in our lavatory bowl and some kind of unholy stink rising from the sink plughole.

I want to get something straight here, which is that my two housemates and I – that splatter is the sound of me hurling them under the bus – are not the trio of hogs that we might appear to be. We do try. We have been in mortal combat with the black mould since we moved in. We keep the kitchen and sitting room tidy.

It’s just that Crombie has a laser eye for the kind of filth I’d never even thought to look for. Her sensitivity seems to cause her frequent and voluble discomfort but, then again, she finds cleaning therapeutic.

The story behind this is heart-rending. She’d always liked cleaning, but it became obsessive after the breakdown of her first marriage.

Crombie became depressed and scrubbed her skin, trying to vanquish her ex-husband’s memory, and then her home. She no longer suffers from depression, but has retained her enthusiasm for cleaning.

This enthusiasm, she argues, is a good influence on her followers. She says that many of them have found purpose and motivation in cleaning their homes. This is the implicit offering of her Instagram account and those of other cleaning gurus: by tidying and reorganising and scrubbing and polishing your home, you can effect something similar on your life.

I feel something of this thrill as we work. She helps me clean the kitchen sink (spoon some bicarbonate of soda on to the flesh of a halved lemon, watch it fizz and bubble, then scrub until you see your wheezing pink face in the metal), the shower door (spray a mixture of white wine vinegar and water, then wipe), and even, to some extent, the oven door (white wine vinegar again, although I’ll need to repeat the process again and again and again to return my oven to its prelapsarian state).

The products are cheap and natural, the results are quick and impressive, and the process induces a mental state in me that is not unlike “having fun”.

We don’t touch the microwave, though. Some things are just unsalvageable.

Household hacks from the Queen of Clean

1. To fight limescale, fill your kettle with a mixture that’s half white wine vinegar and half water. Leave it to sit for 30 minutes, then boil the kettle. Then tip the mixture out and rinse the kettle thoroughly.

2. Melted wax on your tablecloth? No problem. Cover the waxed area with brown paper and then apply heat from your iron or hair dryer to lift the wax.

3. Halve a lemon. Take a lemon half and put a few spoonfuls of bicarbonate of soda on its flesh. Wait for it to hiss and bubble, smooth it down, and then use it to scrub a metal surface, such as a sink, cooker hob or fridge. When you’ve finished, rinse off the pulp with hot water.

4. Take a glassful of Coca-Cola, pour it in the lavatory and leave it for an hour. The acid will break down lavatory rust and limescale. Yes, this really does work!

For more tips visit queenofclean.blog or follow @lynsey_queenofclean on Instagram

THE PARENT WHOSE TEENAGER WON’T TIDY

Nicola Lewis tackles Lucy Dunn’s son’s bedroom

I’ve tried everything to get my 18-year-old son, Callum, to tidy up his room: nagging, pleading, wheedling. I’ve resorted to bribery. I’ve even scattered black rice on his carpet and pretended it was mouse poo – it didn’t work: you cannot hoodwink a teenager who has grown up with Google Images at his fingertips.

Sure, his room is a minuscule box room, barely big enough to fit a desk and bed, but now that he’s a strapping 5ft 9in lad whose feet are almost poking out of the door, it has become so untidy I can’t take more than three steps into it without stepping on something unsavoury.

So can Nicola Lewis, a blogger specialising in tidying and storage with nearly 80,000 followers on Instagram, rise to the challenge?

I lead Lewis to his room. She doesn’t pass comment when she sees the bombsite before her. Instead she turns to me: “We’ve reached peak stuff,” she says. “People are so overwhelmed, so busy. Not only this, but homes are smaller and the trend is for open-plan living. No one prioritises storage any more, and it’s so important.”

But Callum’s room does have storage, installed by me after a mad Ikea dash during one of my past attempts to control his mess. But it has long ago been buried in his sea of “boy stuff”: sporting memorabilia, papers, phone cables, books, spoons, knives, forks, more spoons…

Lewis, who’s always been clean and tidy, came to blogging relatively late. She was commuting to the City, working full-time in investment banking, and long hours meant she had to be super-organised at home so she had time for her children. But it was like “groundhog day”, so she eventually decided to leave. “My mum thought I was mad giving up a paid job, but it made sense to do something I was good at – being organised.” She started leafleting her services, then discovered Instagram, putting up before-and-after pictures of a friend’s wardrobe “and then it all started going crazy”. In January 2018 she had 800 followers; a year later she had 50,000.

I half-expect her to freak at a mouldy cereal bowl I spy teetering on a shelf but, instead, she turns to Callum and says calmly: “So you’re about to go to university? I bet you’re holding on to loads of stuff from your childhood, but do you need it when you go?” She suggests that Callum make a memory box to put them in. Remarkably, he agrees. I’m agog – previous attempts at tidying up have ended up in screaming matches. “It’s really important to involve your child in decluttering,” she explains. “Too often people do it behind their back, but you really need to get their cooperation for it to work.”

She tells me a neat trick she used to prune her daughter’s own cuddly toy mountain when she grew out of them: “It’s one of those things parents find difficult to get their children to part with.” Instead of sending them to a charity shop, she donated them to a local hospital, “and she was really happy that they were going to be played with by other children”.

Callum is well past that stage, but he has memorabilia aplenty (he takes after his hoarder father, not me). Thanks to Lewis’s methodical manner, things go into the memory box and into the loft without argument.

So, does her strategy work? Miraculously, yes, eight bin bags later, Callum’s room is as neat as a pin – well, as much as an 18-year-old’s room ever could be.

And the biggest win of all? My cutlery drawer in the kitchen is full again. For now, anyway.

Nicola Lewis's golden rules

1. Take everything off any shelves or out of cupboards and put it in three piles: one to chuck, one to keep, one to sell.

2. Tackle one area at a time and store everything in clear boxes.

3. Clear out stuff before you buy storage so you know what you need.

4. Involve your children in decluttering: you need their cooperation.

Nicola Lewis’s first book Mind Over Clutter comes out on March 14 (Thorsons, £9.99); for more information go to thisgirlcanorganise.com or follow @_thisgirlcanorganise on Instagram

THE MOTHER OF TWO WITH NO TIME TO CLEAN

Gemma Bray pokes around Maria Lally’s home

Growing up, my mother used to say: “The housework will be there tomorrow, but children grow up fast.” My mum would rather help my brother and me build a camp in our back garden than dust. Unlike my friend’s mother, whose house was so spotless the neighbourhood children were terrified of going in it.

Now I’m a mother myself, I’ve created a home like the one I grew up in. We have a constant stream of the girls’ friends traipsing in and out, wearing muddy trainers and carrying sticks, and my house often looks like it’s been burgled (by somebody who enjoys scattering Lego and spilling hot chocolate).

But unlike my own mother, I work, so I never get on top of the housework. I suppose I could clean on Fridays, my day off, or over the weekend, but there’s always something else I’d rather do, like take the girls to the park or read a good book. So instead, I clean like a butterfly: flitting from one room to the next, doing one chore for a few minutes before fluttering off to another. I surface-clean and surface-tidy, doing a little bit of everything, not particularly well.

As a result, my house “looks” OK, but take a closer look and you’ll see dust everywhere and a kitchen floor that needs a good scrub. And it’s this butterfly approach that’s the problem, according to Gemma Bray, creator of The Organised Mum Method (TOMM), who came to my house to give it the once over.

Twelve years ago Bray gave birth to her first child, Thomas, and like a lot of new mothers, felt overwhelmed. “Everything was spinning out of control,” she tells me. “So I cleaned obsessively, thinking if the house looked good at least I was in control of something.”

However, she was heading towards burnout and set herself a cleaning rota of 30 minutes a day on week days, with no cleaning at weekends. “I was doing less, but getting more done.”

This formed the basis of TOMM and two years ago her eldest dared his mum to set up an Instagram account. “I said, ‘Who’s going to follow me, banging on about mops?’” The answer? More than 140,000 on Instagram and a further 84,000 on Facebook.

“Nobody was more surprised than me,” says Bray. But I’m not. After a few days doing TOMM my house starts looking clean and ordered. Bray was once described as “a personal trainer for your home” and her 30-minute method – like a quick jog over an hour in the gym – means even a housework refusenik like me can do it.

Gemma Bray's tips

1. Focus on one room for 30 minutes, the next day move on to another, then another the next day, until you’re going back over the same ones, which will get cleaner.

2. Get an ostrich feather duster, found cheaply on Amazon. They’re great for kid’s bedrooms, because the feathers attract dust.

3. I’m moving away from chemical cleaning products and back to old-fashioned methods like hot water and white vinegar for windows. Use hot soapy water for reducing product build-up in kitchens and bathrooms.

4. People think dusting involves a can of polish and a yellow cloth, but damp dusting (where you wet and wring out a cloth) is great for surfaces and good when you have pets or children with allergies.

For more info go to theorganisedmum.blog, or find her on Instagram @the_organised_mum