Step aside Mrs Hinch, a new type of ‘cleanfluencer’ is in town.
Home proud travellers who spend several hours a day scrubbing their abodes from top to bottom have become inspirations online for thousands of followers copying their cleaning tactics.
Women from these communities in the UK and Ireland have gone viral on TikTok after sharing the methods they use when deep cleaning their abodes – with the extreme levels they go to earning them a legion of fans.
Their unique tips include dismantling their fridges each week to scrub it inside and out before filling it back up with their fresh groceries. The women also use old paint brushes dipped in bleach and fairy liquid to clean the edges of their windows.
Maintaining a meticulously clean residence is an essential part of life for many women in traveller communities, who typically assume traditional roles within the home.
Some are so particular about keeping a perfectly tidy home that they will wrap their furniture in plastic to protect it from lasting damage or staining.
One traveller wife, Chantelle Fury (using the TikTok username chantelle19xoxo), recently showed her 485,500 followers her weekly deep clean.
‘Come and clean with a gypsy wife. So it’s Monday… I wanted to have a real deep clean today, so I started off by doing all my window frames,’ she said.
Footage showed her using a paint brush to remove dirt from inside her window edges before using a Spanish window cleaner to finish off the look.
Cleaning products from the country appear to be a popular choice among traveller women, with several praising them in cleaning TikTok clips.
‘The weather’s been lovely so I opened up all the windows,’ Chantelle said. ‘I do have a steam cleaner but I just couldn’t be bothered to go out and get it from the shed.’
She then wiped down her sofa, TV, kitchen counters and her coffee tables.
Fans were delighted with the footage, with one commenting: ‘Travellers are probably the cleanest people I know and the most house proud.’
A second said: ‘Travellers’ literally have the cleanest, most beautiful homes’.
This was echoed by another user, who said: ‘Travellers’ homes are absolutely immaculate because they take great pride in their homes.
‘So many people put travellers down. It’s just so wrong. Your home is beautiful.’
Others were impressed by Chantelle using a paintbrush to clean her window frames.
One said: ‘Oh a paintbrush is a great idea. I’ve used a toothbrush but it is still hard to get into places.’
Another said: That paintbrush idea is great. I never thought of that. Going to give that a go to clean my windows, thank you.’
Another TikTok from McKenzie, who posts under the username bleachandbubbles, showed a typical traveller cleaning method.
‘You know the deep clean is serious when you bring out the traveller girl method,’ she wrote over her video, which showed her using Fairy washing up liquid and bleach, teamed with water, to wipe down her windows and the sides around them.
Elsewhere, content creator Courtney Burton, who shares clips with the hashtag #gyspygirl and #gyspycleaning on TikTok, revealed the ‘traveller starter cleaning kit’.
She shared how this includes a Vileda bucket, or even better a JOYO one because they are available in a range of colours and are ‘very stylish’.
The must-haves also include a toothbrush or a paintbrush to clean around doors and windows, as well as a cutlery knife to clear the rubber around appliances like fridges.
Courtney added: ‘Spanish cleaning products – smell divine, smell beautiful, make your home smell beautiful. There’s all different kinds of Spanish cleaning products you can get.’
The final essential in the kit was a steamer, with the content creator telling her 8,794 followers: ‘They can just blow away any mess you find.’
It comes after women in the traveller community revealed one of the unlikely secrets to keeping their homes pristine.
Hundreds from across the UK and Ireland have taken to TikTok to reveal how they wrap all their fixtures and soft furnishings – from cushions and to even bathmats – in plastic.
Videos of traveller women demonstrating how to perfectly wrap settees, kitchen tops, tables, rugs, and upholstered headboards have become increasingly common on the social media platform, where their painstaking cleaning rituals have sparked curiosity.
In one video, Natalie – who also sells the plastic on her TikTok shop – showed her followers all the ‘dust collectors’ in her house that she covers to keep it looking neat.
‘Obviously, I’ve got every single pelmet in my home “plastic-ed”; they are dust collectors, so [putting plastic on] them just makes it so much easier to wipe over.
‘My front doormat, as you can see there, is also “plastic-ed”… also my headboard and my island in my kitchen,’ she said.
Traveller women are very particular about cleanliness, with TikTok influencer Charlotte-Ann Maguire calling it ‘the one stereotype that is actually quite true’.
Explaining why so many swear by the cleaning hack, TikTok star Cuzinsuzy told her followers: ‘This plastic just protects the top of tables, you can put it on seats, in your kitchen. We just put it on the furniture so it doesn’t get destroyed.
‘It’s also good if you’ve got children.’
The 33-year-old traveller said she knew of women who kept their rugs wrapped in plastic to keep them completely clean. ‘I even know girls that plastic the front of their fridges,’ she continued.
In one video, she filmed herself putting ‘plastic on my tables’ to keep them looking ‘like new’ and ‘save you a lot of bother in the long run’.
Afterwards, Cuzinsuzy said ‘you can’t really tell the difference’ as she showed off her shiny round table.
Big sofas and kitchen islands, as well as dining tables, are the most common furniture items that travellers will cover in plastic.
