With a baby mattress covered in ominous dark stains, dirty laundry littering the floor and open bin bags spilling across the kitchen, it’s no wonder Nicole Austin has described her home as a ‘biohazard’.
Then again, it doesn’t help that the property is a cramped two-bedroom council house on the outskirts of Brighton, East Sussex, occupied by Nicole, her husband Sam, five children aged between eight months and ten years old, four fish, one hamster and a rabbit.
‘No matter how much I tidy,’ claims Nicole, ‘it will never be clean’. Thankfully, however, this suits the 27-year-old just fine. For in March 2024, the mother of five began posting videos of herself cleaning her home on TikTok. Two years on, Nicole now boasts just shy of 200,000 followers and almost three million likes across the platform.
The videos typically depict Nicole cleaning various parts of her home, often in pyjamas or tracksuit bottoms, looking as though she’s just rolled out of bed. In other words, it’s real life. And with videos regularly gaining around half a million views, Nicole is now making serious money.
‘I won’t tell you how much,’ Nicole said in an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail this week. ‘But in the last six months we’ve made consistent money – more than just the odd thousand here and there. I’ve got an accountant now.’
However, as Nicole’s popularity has grown so, too, have viewers’ concerns about her suitability as a parent – with some even calling social services to express concern about the state of the family home.
Last year fellow content creator Cam Kirkham posted a video criticising the Austins, entitled ‘This UK TikTok family needs to be stopped’. It racked up half a million views, showing just how troubled viewers are about what is quickly becoming one of TikTok’s most hated families. A comment on one of Nicole’s TikTok videos, which is typical of the sort of responses she receives, declared: ‘Do you realise how traumatising it is for kids to live in that mess?’
‘Sadly, I have had death threats,’ confessed Nicole. ‘A lot of it is older men – I don’t know why. They tell me my children would be better off in foster care, and I should go and die. I’ve got pretty good at blocking it out.’
Cleaning videos are nothing new on TikTok. Known as ‘CleanTok’, the most popular creators have cultivated millions of followers with videos of themelves spray-washing driveways, scrubbing toilets and exposing the hidden germ pools in the backs of washing machines.
But while these videos indulge our desire for squeaky-clean perfection, Nicole’s account – ‘The Austins’ – does things a little differently. For the joy of watching the Austins’ videos surely comes from the schadenfreude of watching a struggling family rolling around in a pigsty of their own making. No wonder the channel has been accused of sharing ‘poverty porn’.
So just who is the real Nicole Austin, whose grubby videos from her two-bed council home are so troubling that some viewers now accuse her of neglect?
Nicole says she had a difficult start in life thanks to undiagnosed ADHD, and fell victim to an abusive relationship which left her using illegal drugs as an emotional crutch. It all changed in March 2024, however, when the then 25-year-old began posting to TikTok, sharing her advice for new mothers.
‘I’d always struggled with feeling a little different,’ she explained. ‘I had a late ADHD diagnosis and always struggled through life. One day I realised there must be other parents like me for whom adult life doesn’t come naturally. So I decided to post a video.’
Certainly, her early efforts are far from parenting by the book. Her second post suggested vaccinations ‘should be mandatory’ for children, ‘bar Covid and flu’. She also claimed she would take her children out of school ‘every year’ and pay the subsequent fines in order to treat the family to holidays.
By mid-March 2024, it was clear that Nicole intended to use her TikTok to make money, declaring in one ‘day in the life’ video that ‘if other people can make money off social media, why can’t we?’
By May 2024, Nicole found her niche, sharing videos of her messy house to TikTok, YouTube and Facebook, tagging the clips with the caption: ‘The messiest house’.
However, more recently, Nicole has received thousands of hateful messages from angry viewers who believe the state of her home makes it unfit for human habitation.
‘We have had quite a few reports to social services,’ she admits. ‘I had a phone call today saying they’ve had five reports in the past twenty-four hours… They asked what my struggles are but essentially, we need a bigger house.’
As Nicole begins to make serious money, the hope of moving into her own home seems more attainable. And to expedite the path to home ownership, she has recently set up a list of affiliate links to her TikTok, where users can purchase products and Nicole takes a cut. Currently, she is advertising a set of £10 ceramic serving plates, £5 laundry detergent, £7 tracksuit bottoms, mop refill pads, a Bluetooth speaker and a portable selfie stick amongst hundreds of other cheap items.
Typical commission on TikTok is around five per cent, though more famous stars can charge up to 30 per cent.
‘I think we’ve only had about four purchases so far,’ laughs Nicole, ‘most of our money comes from the platforms themselves.’
Some users have questioned Nicole’s entitlement to benefits as she claims £1,200 of Universal Credit while her husband makes £1,500 a month working in retail. ‘We have no luxuries,’ Nicole previously argued in a TikTok video. ‘We don’t drive, we don’t have cars, and we just about survive.
‘We claim what we can. We’re not fraudulent. We get Universal Credit because our income is not enough.’
She has also been accused of deliberately allowing her home to become messy in order to sustain her content carousel, another thing the mother of five strenuously denies.
‘It’s not the case,’ Nicole said firmly. ‘We fill our kitchen bin every day. I do two loads of washing every day. I don’t think people realise quite how small my house is.’
Of course, for some people, Nicole’s excuses will never be enough. On one point, at least, – a new pet rabbit – Nicole understands. ‘Biscuit, the bunny, was an impulsive buy. I shouldn’t have done that! I went to the gym and came back with a bunny. My husband didn’t talk to me for 24 hours… but we love Biscuit.’
Despite the reams of abuse, Nicole intends to keep making videos to provide a better life for herself and her family. After all, this is a woman with the ‘Midas touch’ to turn her own trash into TikTok treasure.
