Move over, Marie Kondo. A new wave of Instagram stars is making cleaning the latest lifestyle trend. Dubbed 'cleanfluencers', these social media personalities are amassing millions of followers by sharing tips on how to achieve spotless homes. From Mrs Hinch in Essex to the Queen of Clean in the UK, these influencers are turning mundane chores into aspirational content.
Sophie Hinchcliffe, known as Mrs Hinch, has 1.7 million followers on Instagram, where she posts videos of herself disinfecting bins and scrubbing sinks. Her branded vocabulary includes 'hinching' for cleaning and 'hinch haul' for product purchases. Other prominent British cleanfluencers include Lynsey Crombie, the Queen of Clean, with 104,000 followers, and Gemma Bray, the Organised Mum, with 135,000. Across the Atlantic, Melissa Maker has over a million YouTube subscribers for her Clean My Space channel.
Dr Stephanie Baker, a sociology lecturer at the University of London, says the trend is part of a broader self-improvement movement that has evolved with digital media. Kate Joynes-Burgess of PR agency BCW suggests that audiences are tiring of overly curated lifestyle content and are seeking more relatable figures. 'We’re more relatable than a lot of the lifestyle bloggers out there,' says Crombie, who often appears with messy hair and mops in hand.
