Hi, guys.
Welcome back to my channel and Happy New Year.
Today, I'm going to be cleaning a follower's very messy house for free.
She reached out to me as part of my new series, which I'm calling Hack Your Home, in where
I go into a follower's house and help them clean or organize their space.
And when I met with this lady, I just knew she had to be the first one that I helped.
She's had a very difficult year.
She suffered tragedy and she's a mom to two young children.
So I really wanted to go in, help her clean her entire flat.
It took us about three or four days in total.
So I hope you really enjoy this video and I'm going to tell you more about her story,
give you a little intro, and this is actually part one of the clean.
There was so much to do that I'm also going to be doing a part two very soon.
But anyway, with all that said, let's jump into this video.
Today I'm going to be cleaning a stranger's house for free.
I wanted to do something in the way of giving back for ages on this channel, so I put something
out on Instagram and YouTube saying, "If anyone needs help or assistance cleaning, let me
know."
And I've had so many emails from people that are either going through a really tough time
at the moment, having issues, and I've had lots of photos sent to me, and to be honest,
I want to help every single one of them, but today is the first one.
I'm really excited to get started.
I'm going to tell you more about her story.
She's had a really, really tough year and I think that reflects in her space at the
moment.
I think the space around you can have such an effect on your mental health.
I think the kids are going to love what we're going to do as well.
And I'm just so excited to do this.
Last night I could hardly sleep and when I woke up this morning, I felt like it's Christmas
morning.
Super excited to help someone.
I know you guys are going to love it because it's a very satisfying clean as well.
And I'm going to tell you more about her whole story while we're actually cleaning, so let's
just go and get started.
Oh, and if you do like this new series, definitely give me a thumbs up.
That is such a good indicator to me that you like this kind of content and that I should
make more of it and there's a lot more people that I can help.
Ideally, I'd like to do one house a month, so let's go.
Okay, so first up, I wanted to give you a bit of a tour of the space that we're going
to be dealing with.
Initially with this series I thought, oh, maybe we could help someone clean a room that's
got out of hand or reorganize a space like a garage, say.
But once I met with this lady, I decided no, we absolutely have to help her clean her entire
flat.
Her and the kids really do deserve to have a nice, clean space.
And you can see around the house there are parts of it that are organized and she has
some systems in place, but it's just really built up over the past few months because
of her circumstances.
And for her to reach out for help, it really does take a lot of bravery.
And she's a mum to two young children.
She has a five-year-old and a two-year-old as well.
And in July 2022, her partner passed away very suddenly from a brain aneurysm.
He was only 39 years old and she just found him collapsed in the bedroom.
He just dropped down and she tried to save his life.
She had the ambulance on the phone.
She was trying to revive him.
He actually made it to the hospital and was there for two days.
But then unfortunately, they had to let him go after two days and he died the day before
the five-year-old's birthday, and actually on her last day of school before the summer
break.
So it was a huge shock to everyone involved.
You just don't think.
I mean, that's actually my age at the moment.
I'm 39 years old.
You just don't think something like that could happen out of the blue like that.
And because of this, obviously, she's grieving but also trying to look after her children.
She actually ended up losing her job throughout all of this as well, so she's not working
full-time at the moment, and that in itself has been causing a huge amount of stress on
top of all of this as well.
She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
She's actually now having therapy for it as well, which is positive.
And she said she was going to start CBT as well to help with the anxiety that she's feeling.
She's starting yoga.
She's doing meditation and journaling and she's really trying to help herself as much
as she possibly can.
She's actually started an Instagram page, which I'll link in the description down below,
because she also wants to help and connect with other moms that might be grieving as
well.
Originally when I met with her, I did notice that the kids' room was probably the cleanest
and most organized of all the rooms and she said she really tries to keep it as tidy as
she can.
This is her room, but as you can imagine, she's been so stressed, depressed, grieving,
and a few weeks before we came to do this clean, she also had a spinal disc rupture
of two discs, so she was in visible pain when we were with her.
So all of this together has been very difficult.
So what I've really wanted to do in this clean is just give her a massive boost, help her
get more organized, help her clean her space so she feels like she's got a blank canvas
to hopefully just boost her mood and feel a tiny bit better and also help the kids have
more space to play, et cetera.
So first off, we're starting off in the lounge.
As you can see, the floor was just covered in toys.
And we spoke to her and actually she said that the play gym, or what's that wall called
there, that was up was not necessary anymore.
I think her child is two and a half now, so she says she probably doesn't need it to be
cut off.
And that was actually taking up quite a bit of space, so we decided to take that down
and take it to a charity shop that might want it and then just start picking up the toys.
And while we did that, she was there helping us go through, are these toys still age appropriate?
Do my children play with them?
So we had a really good declutter at the same time and we just went through everything pretty
much.
We decided to get rid of that pink storage as well because it could potentially fall
over.
And she said they didn't actually use it that much, so we decided to take that out and replace
it with some baskets that she had.
We cleaned up the floor.
We had a really good hoover, which you'll see in a minute.
And really, this room took the whole first day, three or four of us just going through
absolutely everything.
But I felt like this was the most important room to start on because this is really where
they live.
This is where they watch TV, eat their meals, sit on the couch and just hang out.
So we wanted to start here so they've got a clean space to sit in and for the kids to
play in, and then we were going to
move
on to the kitchen.
Once we had gone through all of the toys and decided which ones we were going to keep,
which ones we were going to throw and which ones to donate, we decided to clean under
the sofas.
Whenever I do this at my house, I'm always shocked at how bad it is, but this was very
much needed.
It was really messy under there, so we gave it a really good clean.
We swept, we vacuumed, we mopped so that it was a lot cleaner under there, and she did
so well with making decisions on what to keep and throw.
We ended up getting rid of quite a few big toys that the kids no longer play with, like
that little trampoline we decided to get rid of.
And she was really brave because I didn't really think about it so much before the day,
but on the day all of it was just really emotional.
Every object holds memories, every toy, he had a whole book, all these books on his shelf
and she managed to be so strong and actually get rid of quite a few things at a time where
it's probably very difficult to do that.
So super proud of her.
And yeah, as you can see, this is what was under the sofa.
So I'm just going ahead and picking up anything really big that either needs to be kept or
chucked or cleaned and then we're going to go in and clean the rest of
the floor.
Okay, so I'm just
going to finish vacuuming and organizing this room.
You can see to the left of the screen a pile of shoes.
Every time we would stack the shoes up all nicely, the two and a half year old would
come in and just chuck them everywhere.
It was like their favorite game.
So we're going to try and find a better place for the shoes where they're kind of not on
show that he can constantly be chucking around.
You almost forget, now that my kids are older, you forget what it's like when you're kind
of fighting that losing battle of trying to keep things clean.
But everything is actually clean.
It's all been deep cleaned.
We're wiping down all the surfaces, wiping down windowsills that were really dusty, as
you can see here, and just wiping down tables, any sideboards and just really giving everything
a good dust, wiping down the table.
It was really sticky, some of the table and some of the floor as well, but we managed
to do it and so pleased with how it's all turned out.
We actually decided to get rid of the rug as well.
And she's actually ordered a new rug for this space because it was really quite messy.
But this is how it's looking.
They have so much more space for the kids to play.
They have so many lovely toys that I feel like they can now access, which is really
lovely.
We had a shift around, made some more room next to the sofa as well so that she can have
a bit more space for her and for the kids.
And yeah, this is pretty much the lounge all done.
So that was actually the first day.
But in this video I also wanted to show you how we started tackling the bathroom.
This room just really needed a good scrub and some new organizational systems.
So we took all of the products out of this room for her to actually go through and decide
what she wants to keep, what she doesn't mind getting rid of, any products that could actually
be better placed in maybe her bedroom or something like that.
The toilet really needed some attention and on this first day I tried good old fashioned
bleach, but actually it didn't really get rid of the limescale that was in the toilet.
So in the next video you'll see how we actually managed to get all of the limescale out with
soda.
That's what actually did it in the end.
You have to take all the water out, leave it to set for a night and it cleared all of
the limescale.
But anyway, once we'd taken in all of the products out of the room, we just needed to
give it a really good scrub.
So I've got my gloves on, I got all of my products ready and I just went in there with
some sponges and just gave everything as good a scrub as I can.
This sink was quite blocked, so we also tried to unblock that as well.
So she had this handy storage caddy next to the bath, which wasn't in a huge amount of
use, but it had been collecting dust.
So we decided to just stick in the bath itself to give it a really good scrub down and then
it will be usable for a lot of her products.
So we washed that down and it works really well.
It's on wheels and it just fits perfectly next to the bath.
Then we also decided to switch out her bath mat for the kids.
You know the ones so that they don't slip in the bath?
It was really messy.
It was quite old and almost beyond help, so we decided to just buy another one.
And same goes for the shower curtain.
She actually had a spare one already in her cupboard, so we just took down the old one.
Then I went ahead and just gave the bathtub a really good scrub.
Put this down that the kids can have a bath tonight if they want to and really just scrubbed
the rest of the bathroom as well.
That's all it really needed.
It just kind of built up over time, but I don't think it shows that well on the video,
but I felt like this bathroom literally went from being gray to being bright white by the
end of it and it just seemed so much cleaner.
Smelt amazing.
So yeah, just going to carry on cleaning this space.
So we reorganized all of the products.
She had some lovely things like bath bombs, bath salts, rainbow bath bombs for the kids,
so it's really nice that they can now access that all very easily.
And then we tidied it up the floors, we washed down the doors, we washed down the walls.
When the professional cleaners came as well, they spent time on this toilet.
We were scrubbing it in between different products.
This was actually once we had soaked it with a liter of coke, which actually really worked
well to get all of the limescale off of the toilet.
That's in the end what actually got it off, so it's a really good hack if you do have
this problem.
But yeah, we just basically scrubbed for the three days.
And then this is obviously the before.
I just wanted to remind you what it looked like before we tackled it.
And now this is the after.
So much brighter, so much lighter, smelt amazing, ready to use.
We had baskets on the windowsill for toys and sponges and other products.
A bit more organized and just ready for the kids to use.
So, so pleased with how it turned out.
That's kind of everything that I wanted to show you guys in today's video.
Next time in the part two we are going to be tackling the kitchen, the bedrooms and
the hallway, so definitely tune in to see that.
The kitchen just needed some reorganization again, a really good scrub as well and just
general cleaning.
We also reorganized under her sink as well.
And yeah, I'd say it's a very satisfying clean.
But anyway, I hope you really enjoyed this video.
I hope you enjoyed hearing about her story.
I will put some details in the description down below if you do want to nominate yourself
or someone to be part of Hack Your Home.
I have quite a few nominations at the moment.
Hoping I can get through quite a few.
I was thinking maybe I could do one a month in the future, but I'd be interested to hear
from you guys.
And I hope you like this new series.
It feels really good to be helping people.
And I know it's just cleaning to some people, but to me it is such a huge part of your mental
health and wellbeing.
Yeah.
Anyway, thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in my next one.
Bye, guys.