“Clean-fluencers” like Mrs Hinch are making millions demonstrating their highly evolved cleaning skills on Instagram. Sam Johnson-Schlee wonders at their appeal
Sophie Hinchcliffe set up an Instagram account to document her approach to cleaning in March 2018, and her account reached one million followers by October the same year. Scrolling through the images that she has taken of her home you’d be forgiven for assuming they were all taken in black and white. The engineered wood floors, the walls, the furnishings, the throws, the crockery, everything is grey. It is disconcerting, unreal – like a home viewed in a silvery mirror, a plush grey dreamscape.
On 26 March 2018, Mrs Hinch posted her first picture of the sofa. Grey floor, a deep pile shaggy rug, a grey cube footstool, a grey velvet chesterfield-style sofa, a silver-framed mirror reflecting back a grey wall and a chandelier, a curtain gathered with a tie with a long silvery tassel. [house and tree emoji] #greyhome #greyinterior #cosy #interior123 #homesweethome #stairway #homeso- fig #interiordesign #silver #f4f #interiorfollowtrain #interiors #living room #livingroomdecor. #follow4follow #interiordesign #antiquesilver ##dfs #furniture #crushedvelvet #kyliecurtains #woodflooring #whisperrug #greyhome #cosy #countryliving #essex #maldon #radiatorcover #fromhousetohome #cushions #mydfs #homeinterioruk.
The house is presented as a site of utter composure, her velvet sofa displays no trace of having ever been sat on, not a mote of dust, the cushions stacked, the rug fluffed. The whole image is tilted towards the left so that the sofa appears to be at risk of sliding out of frame on the smooth floor. This is a polished jewel of an interior. The wildly askew camera angle means that the earnest intent of the photographer is laid bare: behind the camera is a person trying to squeeze in everything that she is proud of. This traceless interior calls to me! I want to climb on the furniture, I want to roll in the pile of the carpet and try to squeeze out all the air from the sofa cushions. But the genius of Mrs Hinch’s account is not in the photographs, but in the dozens of archived videos of the cleaning it takes to maintain the traceless interior, which are filed under the heading “Hinching”.
Let me tell you, I hate to clean, but these videos! They are adventure tales starring a hand in a rubber glove: the pair chase dirt and grime around the house in double quick time. Her videos cut between shots more quickly than a reality TV show, and are interspersed with ecstatic moments like when she suddenly reverses time so that the sponge leaps from the bath of its own accord! With each beat the annotation of the video changes, she tells us the name of the cleaning product she is using, she offers an affirmation. At the sight of her newly tidied make-up drawers she exclaims, “I hinched myself happy!”
On one hand there is something about Mrs Hinch’s Instagram that feels regressive: The Happy Housewife etc… But on the other hand she is earning millions of pounds for her determined battle against matter out of place.
It is as if Mrs Hinch wants to erase every trace of human life from the interior. In one sense she zeroes in on the abjection of the trace. Every mark left by life reminds us painfully of our icky embodiment. A nail clipping down the back of the sofa. A pubic hair in the shower, coiled and waiting. Cleaning like this is an attempt to eliminate death from the home, to stop time passing and hold everything in a permanent state of just right. Right! Time for a quick Dusthunt! You will need … One empty handheld hoover. And you need to … HOOVER EVERYTHING!
A hand lifts the vacuum cleaner like a weapon and moves towards the sofa. To the soundtrack of M People’s Moving On Up, the powerful vacuum whines as Mrs Hinch, in voiceover, tells us, “I love finding things in the sofas.” And then, to cap it all off, she tips out some of the vacuum’s contents onto a piece of kitchen roll to admire her work.
The secret of Mrs Hinch is not that she hates the traces that are left behind by life, but that she loves them. In her approach to cleaning this furious labour is cast as an act of almost ecstatic pleasure, she is not disgusted by dirt but she seems to cherish it. On one hand there is something about Mrs Hinch’s Instagram that feels regressive: the happy housewife etc … But on the other hand she is earning millions of pounds for her determined battle against matter out of place. Perhaps the popularity of the cleanfluencer is not because they show the world how to enjoy cleaning but because they are adequately paid for it. Every one of Mrs Hinch’s followers wants a clean house, but they are also dreaming of wages for housework.
From Living Rooms, by Sam Johnson-Schlee (Peninsula Press) out now.www.peninsulapress.co.uk