Meet Ann Russell, the 'TikTok Auntie' who shares her cleaning tips with 1.8m followers

She downloaded TikTok to ‘stalk a teenage niece’. Now, she’s about to publish her first book. From deodorant stains to washing up, Ann Russell shares her cleaning hacks with Denise O’Donoghue

TikTok star Ann Russell says despite her high following on the platform, in her mind she is talking one-on-one through the camera to the person who needs her most.

When I’m not tackling everyday problems in the ‘Life Hacks’ column every week in the Irish Examiner, one of the perks of my job is chatting to some very well-known people, but it was an upcoming Zoom call with a self-professed ‘very middle-class English old bag’ that had my friends and family in a tizzy. 

“You’re going to talk to Ann Russell?” my boyfriend Greg asked excitedly. “She’s actually a celebrity!” 

“I know her,” my 12-year-old niece Chloe said. “She’s the nice lady on TikTok.”

Ann may not be a household name for those without a TikTok account but to her 1.8m followers she is a familiar face and voice guiding them through any and all cleaning conundrums.

When we meet, Ann is exactly as she presents herself on TikTok: no-nonsense, down to earth and judgment-free. Behind her lounges her dog Holly, who occasionally rushes off to bark at passers-by (“No, it’s not the Amazon man,” she scolds at one point).

It is, honestly, a relief to see the much-loved pet relaxing on the sofa, as it is yet another indication that while Ann is the queen of cleaning tips, she is far from a neat freak. That has often come across in her relaxed, realistic videos where she offers advice to those who watch her videos on the app, soon earning her the ‘TikTok Auntie’ nickname. 

She says her own aim in life is to spend as little time as possible cleaning so she can spend more time doing the things she enjoys.

“I’m naturally slightly slapdash and I’ve got better things to do,” she confesses. “I would rather read a good book or play with the dog or do the garden than I would housework. 

I know that a lot of people feel really bad that they don’t know how to do this stuff. 

"Nobody taught them, they don’t know and then they see these perfect images [on social media] and I just think that’s not right. People should understand that.”

She is keen to provide a judgment-free platform, saying people often feel ashamed about the cleanliness of their homes.

“I try very hard not to be judgmental. I know that cleaning can give some people a huge amount of pleasure and I also know that historically cleaning or the idea of ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ has been used as a stick to beat people without power. I’m not terribly keen on going down that route. 

Author and TikTok star Ann Russell

"I also know that an awful lot of people are confronted with these perfections of people organising their laundry tablets and have perfect mirrored furniture. It makes them feel inadequate. It makes them feel small. And they shouldn’t because it’s not for everyone. It’s not for everybody. Nor should it be. We’re all different. It’s what makes the world very interesting.”

Ann downloaded TikTok a few years ago to “stalk a teenage niece” but 1.8m followers later she is on the brink of publishing her first book of cleaning tips, How To Clean Everything: A practical, down to earth guide for anyone who doesn’t know where to start. And it is exactly that bewildered person out on their own for the first time that Ann wants to help, explaining how she found herself in that position at a young age but in a terrible situation.

“A lot of things I did know because I watched my grandmother do them. There were other things I didn’t know,” she recalls.

“I remember being 17 in my first flat trying to do the washing up. At the time you had a little water heater that was mounted on the wall and heated by gas and ten pence coins. If my husband wanted a bath he went downstairs and put 50p in, it was expensive.

“I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get the washing up clean because I was using cold water. I didn’t understand that I needed to use really hot water and washing up liquid to make my washing up clean. It never even entered my head that the temperature of the water would make a difference.

“Nobody told me and I don’t even remember at what point I learned that or worked that out but I do remember finding it really difficult. These glasses were sticky and greasy and I didn’t know what to do. That won’t have changed. Not at all. Maybe somebody needs to wash up: hot water and rubber gloves.”

Ann says despite her high following on the platform, in her mind she is talking one-on-one through the camera to the person who needs her most. 

“I figure there’s always two of us. There’s me and the person who’s in my phone and that will do me. People ask me questions, I answer them.”

With a background as a cleaner — “just something I fell into”, she adds — Ann has almost 20 years of experience to draw on for most pressing questions, which she says come in waves.

“Somebody will ask me how to do something, and I will answer it, and then within the next three or four weeks, probably 15 people will ask me that same question. Then it will go away.”

Questions that pop up time and time again, according to Ann, include: “How do I clean deodorant from under my shirt or t-shirt arms? How do I wash a rug? It will vary. I’ve tried to answer them and I put them in playlists.

“It struck me that there is so much harm being done by people who feel enormous amounts of shame by the fact that they don’t know how to do things. They are overwhelmed by things that they don’t understand. They don’t have the money.”

The current cost of living crisis we are experiencing is something that hits home for Ann too, and she hopes to help people to learn to clean on a budget by going back to basics and ignoring cleaning trends.

“When I wrote the book, this cost of living crisis that we are now in hadn’t started yet. But for a lot of my adult life, I’ve been on the bones of my ass. I haven’t had any money and I felt it very keenly.

You’re aware that you can’t afford things and it makes you feel very small. And when you’re getting things put in front of you that you can’t afford — this idea that you need this, you need these things, you need that to have a functional home — I just think that’s wicked.

Our grandmothers kept a clean house without 101 different sprays. 

"It was a pair of old underpants and a jar of washing soda and the house is clean and they were fine. They didn’t feel particularly shameful about it. I just thought maybe I’ll put that down on paper and maybe if it helps somebody and stops them feeling like crap, then that will be good.”

Naturally, our talk of the struggles people are facing soon turns to politics. Ann is unashamedly vocal online about her political leaning and opinion, which she says are guided by the toughest experiences of her life.

“I have always been quite political, and quite left-wing circumstantially — my grandmother was frightfully Tory — because the way my life turned, that was the political position that I was going to naturally align to, towards that theory of social justice.

“I do try and make sure that people understand my biases are there, I’m not going to pretend anything.”

With a family of teachers and her experience as a mother of four, however, she says she naturally started answering more and more non-cleaning questions on TikTok.

Ann Russell says her own aim in life is to spend as little time as possible cleaning so she can spend more time doing the things she enjoys.

“Passing on information and explaining things is something that I have always done. People are asking me questions and because I am slightly older than them, I try to answer them to the best of my abilities. Some people don’t like my answers. That’s fine, they don’t have to.

“I’m very lucky I don’t get many truly nasty trolls. I’ll just answer as best I can and give the answers that I would give my own children who have grown up to be a happy bunch of lefties. Turning the world to the left, one child at a time,” she laughs.

After mentioning trolls, Ann shares her theories on how social media can become a better platform for debates and discussions, and they centre on how having real names and faces to the fore on TikTok seems to keep toxic accounts at bay.

“There are enough people on there who say, ‘this is what I look like, this is my real name and this is my life’. If people don’t hide behind something, they’re not emboldened to be divisive for the sake of it. They wouldn’t do it if their real name and face was there.”

How To Clean Everything by Ann Russell

The only thing currently stressing Ann is not the opinion of internet strangers, but the anxiety of How To Clean Everything launching next month.

“I confess I am now having cheese dreams. I have visions of it being remaindered in WHSmith’s, piles of my book. I’m trying so hard not to think about it.

“I am vaguely hoping that mothers who are sending their children away to uni might think it’s a useful thing to tuck in their case to possibly preserve some of the enormous deposit they paid on the university. And I do get a lot of questions from kids at uni who have got this flat and just don’t know how to clean it.”

Ann says writing How To Clean Everything felt “like extracting my own appendix with a corkscrew” but as soon as she stopped writing she remembered more tips and advice she wished she’d included.

“I wrote it and I sent it off to them. They said ‘yep, that will do’ and every single night since then I’ve remembered something I forgot to put in, including while I was recording the audiobook. I had a very hard time, I was reading my own words from a screen in front of me and I had such a hard time not going back and adding extra bits in that I just remembered while I was reading.”

Well, if anyone has enough advice to fill a sequel it’s Ann (if she can stomach a second dose of those cheese dreams). And ultimately, she just hopes to make her readers’ and viewers’ lives simpler and happier, one tip at a time.

“If it helps one person, it’s worth it,” she says with a smile.

• How To Clean Everything by Ann Russell is available from September 1

LESS IS MORE: ANN RUSSELL’S BUDGET AND CLIMATE-FRIENDLY ADVICE ON KEEPING A COMFORTABLE HOME

“The trick is you don’t need much: An old t-shirt, a bag of washing soda and a pair of rubber gloves will get you a very, very long way. If you do a little bit every morning and every evening, and don’t let it overwhelm you. And don’t worry about other people’s standards. It’s your home, you need to feel safe and comfortable in your home. It doesn’t really matter whether that’s an immaculate pile of perfection, or whether it’s a complete mess as long as it’s your home, your rules. That’s it. It’s simple. You don’t need a lot of stuff. You don’t need a lot of time.

“But you just need to feel relaxed and happy and in control. After that, you set the rules — not your mother-in-law or your mother. (Definitely not your mother.)

“We have an issue with the environment. Climate change is real thing coming to bite us. We’re sold a lot of greenwashed things, the idea that you must spend money to be green — you don’t need to at all. An old t shirt, an old pair of pants, a jar of soda pistols and a pair of rubber gloves will get you a very long way.

“Those are quite cheap, sustainable options. You don’t need money. You can save a lot of money and you can be green. You can flout your green credentials.

“Maybe if your mother or your mother-in-law says ‘don’t do this’, ‘you don’t do that’, you can say ‘yes, but I believe in saving the environment and these are my old t-shirts that I have recycled as towels and I’m not buying that anymore’.

“You don’t have to spend money to be green.

“You can actually be very green, without any money at all. That’s not a bad thing.”