To find the trend for cleaning on social media equally horrifying and fascinating?

[Rabbitjam]

Apologies if it has been brought up before.

I'm finding myself scrolling through instagram looking at hinchers and zoflora addicts. All these identical grey and silver houses. Everything bleached within an inch of its life. Some women (they are predominantly women) spray their beds with dettol every day. Furniture sprayed with zoflora and fabric conditioner (which apparently can make it less flame retardant). I don't live like this, my house is clean and fairly tidy but hardly on that scale. I simply don't have the time for a start.

I can't imagine the impact on their health breathing in all those cleaning products, but also on their mental health- it seems obsessive for some, taking over every aspect of their lives.
It also irks my feminism.

Of course though it is instagram so not necessarily "real life".

What are your thoughts on this?

My thoughts are that women (and men) who feel the need to bleach/zoflora/Dettol everything have OCD and are inviting low immune systems into their lives, despite their thinking the opposite.

I remember watching a documentary where a woman cleaned her bath so manically that it scored Zero on one of those dirt counters - and she was thrilled.

Yeah, bonkers.

I just love looking at these kind of blogs!! But really I should do more cleaning myself and less time looking at other people’s clean polished homes!! My new favourite is cleaning with mario !!

I think it's odd and carrying on like that with all those cleaners would be shocking for your lung health but I suspect it's more of a spectator sport.

I find it upsetting from an environmental point of view - plus, what an awful waste of women's lives.

I am a slattern, though.

YABU - it is purely horrifying! Who sprays DETTOL on their BED????

It must be very triggering for people who have cleaning/hygiene OCD. (Even more so than MN with all the hand-wringing about loo brushes etc.) There was a girl in my year at school with this and then I later had a uni flatmate who also had it, so I tend to think of it as common.

And as a popular standard it must be burdensome for full-time working parents who can't afford cleaners.

It doesn't seem as fun as programmes like How Clean Is Your House used to. Maybe that's me getting old. But they obviously really needed to clean!

I agree with everything you say op and the environmental damage makes me mad as hell!

You're not alone. I have OCD that manifests itself in cleaning but even I don't get it, I do however find myself marvelling that people are social media stars because they clean! I couldn't be doing with all those chemicals. Bleach goes down the toilet and only down the toilet in my house. Bicarb/vinegar/lemon egg for everything else.

ETC* not egg. I don't think egg cleans well.

Someone I work with bleaches everything to within an inch of its life.

For instance, instead of using a bit of elbow grease to remove tea stains from cups, she’ll stick the lot into a bowl of diluted bleach and then rinse. Cups stink of bleach.

I wouldn’t want to use too many products of this nature in my home as my Ds has asthma and I’m sure it wouldn’t do him any favours.

I do love looking at photos of immaculate homes however, would love my cluttered areas to be no more and I do imagine that an extremely tidy home leads to a more stress free life but ditch the bleach and zoflora.

And yet many people say it helps their mental health.
I find if I don't like something, I avoid spending time looking at it on Instagram. Could that work for you? 😉

Thing is you have to do it over and over. If they were using their time to do something creative they'd have a knitted jumper/ self written book/ flower garden to show. But then would they do that, or just slump in front of tele.

I agree, there's also an account that has done her garden over with fake plants etc, everything is plastic!

I look at at How Clean is Your House on TV with horror, I think a lot of the people featured on that clearly had mental health issues.

I know someone who has been to the home of a popular Insta cleaner, she said it reeked of chemicals and if she’d been pregnant she wouldn’t have gone in.

However, I would just get off Instagram!

It's very weird and I think most of them are quite mentally unwell.

Although they would think I am equally weird as I use Instagram for looking a pictures of knitting projects.

It’s the latest consumer fad... with a mental health angle. Here’s a problem, and here is how it can be solved by buying stuff.

Justifying hoarding by making people feel it’s okay to have a “collection”. Does one really need to collect Zoflora and wax melts? The mental health part is how it reels you in. Irony is, that buying loads of stuff only makes it worse in the long run.

There was a post on FB yesterday of a woman collecting Harpic! Asking what ones she was missing. I know I shouldn't look at these groups as it's insane but it's the old car crash theory isn't it

I have a lot of free time on my hands at the minute and pay way more attention to it than I should. It’s proper car crash viewing. The “narnias” of those who can ill afford them .

Sadly there are also many accounts of burns, a&e visits, respiratory illnesses and even pets dying from those mixing chemicals and using too much Zoflora.

I'm in the zoflora group and it does make my eyes roll. A little while back the craze was to soak a panty liner in zoflo and stick it to the radiator

Some people have waaaay too much time on their hands..I have a life and it doesn't involve cleaning the house more than I have to to not die of some sort of poisoning. And yes, if you cant deal with pet hair don't come and visit, lol - I will probably be out with the dog anyway...

I dunno if it’s just the people I know but I think a lot of it is all for Facebook/insta because they post on Facebook every day they’re cleaning/pics of a clean coffee table/pics of all their cleaning stuff but when you go round it’s not actually clean. Some of them have dirtier houses than I do!

I hate cleaning but I do it, our house is lived in, old and beautiful. It doesn’t need scrubbing every 5 mins and I own 2 sprays, one for grease, one for cleaning. Cba to fill my cupboards with shite

I clean as I see fit and not how some YouTuber cleans.

Or instagrammed!

Autocorrect!

They're just the opposite end of the scale to hoarders.

Both are mental health issues. I'm glad to be somewhere happily in the middle... I clean when I need to, and my days off work are spent walking the dogs in the fresh air with my camera or reading a book, not breathing in toxic cleaning chemicals.