The sofa is brand new, sumptuous and oh-so strokable. It has a buttery velvet finish, which lends itself beautifully to vacuuming stripes into the fabric, if that’s your thing (and it is most definitely Roo Day’s thing).

It’s cream, though. Cream! Who buys a cream velvet sofa just a few weeks away from giving birth? Perched on this lovely sofa with Roo and her massive bump, I’m nervous for her, and for this sofa. If her waters break now, all is doomed. And when the baby arrives…

‘I know, everyone has said that,’ says the 30-year-old cleaning influencer who appears to be after the original ‘cleanfluencer’ Mrs Hinch’s (gleaming) crown.

‘Everyone says, “get a dark sofa you can wipe clean,” but I’d rather have a sofa that I’m going to want to sit on.’

She could argue that, in a world where everything is ‘content’, there is a huge career opportunity here. What better test for a cleaning influencer than having the ultimate mess machine – a leaky newborn. ‘What I can promise is that I’ll be really honest about the mess. I know how difficult things are going to get with grubby fingers, sick, God knows what else.’

If you are addicted to cleaning videos on social media channels such as Instagram and TikTok, you will have heard of Roo Day. She is one of an army of cleanfluencers (she prefers the term ‘content creator’) who can’t seem to scrub their shower screen without filming the process for all the world to see. Before you write that off as frivolous, consider that more than two million of us follow her ‘socials’, where she posts daily.

Her little mini-films are notable for making you feel a bit giddy. While some cleanfluencers film in a dreamy, sensual style (think Nigella making a chocolate cake, but much less messy), Roo’s cleaning mostly happens at speed, against a timer. And while many of her ilk claim to adore cleaning, and get a deep satisfaction from it, Roo is more everywoman in her approach.

Roo says of her baby’s imminent arrival: ‘What I can promise is that I’ll be really honest about the mess’

Her trademark voiceovers – a bit sweary; with much talk of ‘cleaning the s*** out of this place’ – are super-fast too. Particularly on Whizz Around Wednesdays, when she cleans her entire house in an hour.

Her hair will be as silky smooth as her floors by the end of the process too, because she tends to do hers while wearing a hair masque, ‘which gets to work as I scrub’. Now Roo has written a book, Getting S*** Done, revealing the tricks of her trade. It’s standing upright on the windowsill above the sink when I arrive in her spotless kitchen in Hertfordshire, displayed like an ornament, the gold-embossed lettering glinting in the sunshine. ‘I studied journalism so writing a book is like the dream come true,’ she says.

As a journalist from the previous generation, part of me wants to give her a shake. As I’m removing my shoes to walk on her pristine carpets, I’m having very unclean thoughts. A young woman with her training and talent could have been exposing corruption and bringing down governments. A book about how to get into the crevices, in the more literal sense? Really, Roo?

But, well, she does have a lovely home and it’s undeniable that she – and the army of cleanfluencers battling it out for sponsorship deals and endorsements – is on to something.

Because what do I do after I spend a day with her? I go home and shriek about what a hovel we live in. I tell my husband to get off the sofa – ours suddenly seems a particularly manky shade of grey – so I can vacuum some lines into it. When our handheld cleaner isn’t up to the task, I order a new one on Amazon.

The CleanTok community on TikTok boasts an astonishing 150 billion views globally. On Instagram, there are 11 million posts under the hashtag #cleaning. It is both a cultural phenomenon and seriously big business (that’s a lot of new vacuums).

Why is this content so addictive? Dr Ceri Bradshaw, a psychologist at Swansea University, has said cleaning clips are ‘soothing to the brain’, offering instant examples of someone ‘fixing something that needs to be fixed’.

Roo says that, like it or loathe it, ‘everyone has to clean. Whatever your age, background, whatever type of house you live in, you have to do it.’

She confesses that she’s been up since 5am preparing for my arrival. And that actually she isn’t a naturally neat type. Her mother – mindful of the teenage years when Roo would collect mugs under her bed ‘with lifeforms growing in them’ – is more shocked than anyone that she grew up to be a cleaning guru.

‘It wasn’t the sort of house where you had to keep your bedroom clean. It was actually quite cluttered – I think that’s where my minimalism comes from.’

Her parents divorced when she was young; her dad was a plasterer and her busy mum ran a gymnastics club. The secret to Roo’s career trajectory? She reckons it’s that she wasn’t raised by neat freaks and (my jaw drops) doesn’t actually like to clean. ‘I’m naturally can’t-be-a**ed, so my approach is more, “let’s just get this s*** done”. ’ I tell her that my generation grew up with the idea that if we studied hard enough, we could get good jobs and afford cleaners. She recalls times when her mother did, indeed, have a cleaner, but points out that you still have to run a home, which is a ‘messy old business’.

Very few of her friends do have cleaners, interestingly.

Read More

How to transform your home WITHOUT planning permission – as expert reveals clever loophole

‘I think people are really taking pride in cleaning their own homes. I think social media has helped because it’s almost made it cool to look after your space.’

Of course Roo is not the first to capitalise on this. Mrs Hinch arrived on the social media scene in 2018, smelling of Zoflora and brandishing a soon-to-be-sold-out Minky sponge.

She is still the undisputed queen of the genre, with multiple bestselling books and her own range of products. Last year she made £4.4 million.

Roo is cut from a different J-cloth. You are more likely to find her speed-cleaning in her pyjamas than in an apron. She hates even the idea of a pinny. And Marigolds? They can get in the (beautifully scented) bin.

‘I will wear gloves if I’m using bleach, or if I’m doing a big clean, but I tend not to do that.

‘The whole Marigolds thing is a bit old-fashioned.

‘My thing is more about habit-stacking, doing little things as I go along rather than turning the big clean into an event.’

For the uninitiated, ‘habit-stacking’ means building small, positive habits into your existing routine. ‘I used to spend three full hours on a Saturday cleaning my flat, but who has the time for that? Now I’m all about the hacks and getting it done quickly.’ Some of the ‘hacks’ in her book might seem a bit basic – use the time the kettle is boiling to wipe down the kitchen counters – but, as she points out, ‘no one tells you this stuff’.

So how did she become the one to tell us? Around 2022 she was working for MTV, providing celebrity news for social media, ‘so I was used to editing and creating content’.

At the time she had bought her first home – a flat in Hertfordshire – with her partner Mark, a bathroom designer. They were ‘addicted’ to home improvements and wanted to show their quirky flat (very pink; very fun) off to full advantage. ‘So I just started to post some stuff on TikTok. There was no intention to go viral. It was completely organic. It’s that thing of wanting to show off something you are proud of.’

Some of her early posts – which did go viral – featured her vacuuming stripes into a teal sofa which became almost as famous as she did. She gets out the vacuum cleaner and demonstrates, debating whether to have the ‘stripe’ running down the side of the seat cushions too. She didn’t invent the art – ‘I just saw it on TikTok’ – but it has become part of her shtick, much in the way that Mrs Hinch became known for cushion chopping (if you know, you know).

Roo does have a lovely home and it’s undeniable that she – and the army of cleanfluencers battling it out for sponsorship deals and endorsements – is on to something

‘I read the other day that vacuum lines are tacky,’ she admits. ‘But I don’t care. Look how uniform that is. You can immediately tell that sofa is freshly vacuumed. It’s that thing of, “if nobody notices it, has it really happened?” ’ So carpet and sofa lines are a way of saying, ‘look, everyone, I have been bloody cleaning all day?’ ‘Exactly that. You need to get your well-dones in after sweating your t**s off and cleaning,’ she says, in very typically Roo Day-speak.

She laughs about not letting Mark sit on said sofa. ‘If he tries to, I’ll say, “what are you doing? That’s for guests to see. After everyone has seen it, then we can sit on it.” ’ Madness, yes, but everyone is at it, even vacuuming themselves out of rooms to achieve neat lines on the carpet. Cordless vacuums are best, apparently, because a cord can mess up the pattern.

The cleaning giant Shark (yes, Roo is an ambassador) even has a section on its website about line-creating tips. To begin with, posting cleaning ‘content’ was just a hobby (‘I was just making videos of things I’d be doing anyway’), but as her followers began to build, so did the realisation she could make a bona fide career out of it.

She acquired a manager. ‘I mean there wasn’t a big plan –

I didn’t look that far ahead – but I realised that people seemed to like what I was offering.’ That included lifestyle tips too. Spending a day with Roo came to mean not just cleaning with her, but finding out what she’d had for breakfast, how she was coping with a hangover.

She started to live pretty much with the video recorder on her phone always running.

There is an extraordinary post on her social media of her doing her positive pregnancy test, after two years of trying. She didn’t actually post it until well into the pregnancy but the fact that she made it shows just how second nature it had become.

Isn’t it all a little Truman Show? ‘Well it can be. I do find that I’m lying in bed at 2am, answering comments. As I’m going along, with everyday life, I will be thinking of the voiceover commentary I will do. At the same time life is really good so I’m happy to share it.’

Earlier this year, she and Mark moved into their first house – a swish conversion of an old stable block. She fell in love with the expansive window in the master bedroom, with its view of fields. ‘I’ll be honest, I thought, “that will look amazing on my socials” and “think of the content”.’

And very lucrative content, clearly. Although she won’t talk figures (‘I don’t think that’s appropriate,’ says her manager), this is a £650,000 house and Mark drives a Tesla.

The question now, as she prepares to become a mum (the baby is due next month and the nursery is almost Insta-ready) is whether she can continue to deliver her life hacks while coping with a newborn.

‘I have no idea,’ she says, candidly. ‘I don’t think I want to move into mumsy content. I still want the cleaning to be the pillar but I do have to decide how much I want the baby to be part of it. Do I do that without showing their face, for example? I think I’ll need to work that out as I go along.’

Her baby’s face may not be on show. His or her vomit may well be, though – ‘the ultimate test for my Shark Stain Striker’, she says, ever on-brand.

Never mind her cleaning career, will this lovely sofa survive what is to come?

‘Come back and ask me in a year,’ she says.

FACT BOX TITLE

Like most people, my default setting is lazy, messy and disorganised. I can’t help the way I’m wired, but I have found ways to combat it, by working out what jobs I absolutely have to do – and then making them fun.

The one-hour clean isn’t about having a spotless house, but doing enough in a power hour, once a week, to feel you aren’t drowning. Here’s how…

DO THE GROUNDWORK

In your daily life, build the habit of cleaning little and often, so that you’re not starting your weekly one-hour clean with carpets that

haven’t been vacuumed for six months.

I clean the shower while I’m in it, for example, keeping a dishwashing wand in there for the purpose. I have a ‘window vac’ too – a handheld electric squeegee that sucks the water off a shower screen.

After taking off my make-up each night, I use my facewipe to go over the sink, so it always feels clean.

I vacuum while waiting for my messy fake tan to dry and clean the oven while my oily hair mask is soaking in. It’s all about multi-tasking.

MAKE IT A RACE

When you’re ready to do your weekly one-hour clean, my first rule is that you must set a timer, or put on a washing load, knowing that when it finishes, you will complete your cleaning too.

The beauty of the one-hour timer is that it turns chores into a high-stakes race against time. You’ll find yourself cleaning with the speed of a thousand Roomba robot vacuums. I like to start by making the bed, a job I hate but that has to be done. It transforms the look of a room.

Then really go at the most visible mess hammer and tongs, armed with binbags – pretend you’ve got someone coming round when the timer pings.

Next it’s the basics – emptying the dishwasher, getting a new load on, wiping down all the surfaces and the sink, and doing a quick mop.

As for the fridge, its OK just to wipe down the parts you can get to – the key here is speed.

SAVE SHOULD-DOS FOR LATER

To keep your sanity intact and work out what to prioritise, make lists of your daily essential tasks (such as loading the dishwasher) as well as weekly and monthly ‘big tasks’ – the ‘should-dos’ that you can’t accomplish in an hour.

I’ve got deep cleaning the loo and vacuuming the sofa (yes, with stripes) on my weekly list; deep-cleaning the fridge and washing my make-up brushes are monthly. Deep-cleaning appliances goes on my three-monthly(ish) list.

SKIP THE TASKS YOU HATE

It’s OK to hurl stuff into your ‘cupboard of doom’. You can give it a proper sort out when you have time and energy. And if there’s a task you loathe, delegate it. I hate pairing socks. I never do it – my partner Mark knows that’s his job.

And to make life even easier, I’ve trained myself to become a minimalist. The key is to have less stuff, as then it’s so much easier to keep things tidy.

SHUN FANCY GADGETS

You don’t need much to keep your house clean. One multi-purpose cleaner is all you really need, although I also keep cream cleaner, white vinegar and disinfectant on hand.

I use microfibre cloths, dusters, scrubbing sponges and a dish wand. And I love my hand-held vacuum.

Dusting? A slightly damp cloth will suffice, but I’ve also been known to use a sock, which slips over your hand easily and gets into that yucky corner in the bathroom that guests can see when they are on the toilet.

• Adapted from Getting Sh*t Done by Roo Day (£16.99, Ebury Press). © Roo Day 2025. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 17/05/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.