The first day of spring is approaching fast – March 20, 2022 – and time to think about spring cleaning. Or should that read ‘hinching’?

Sophie Hinchliffe is an internet sensation, an Instagram influencer – ‘cleanfluencer’ - known as Mrs Hinch. Her cleaning books and memoir have been included on the Sunday Times Bestseller List. Publications to date include Hinch Yourself Happy: All The Best Cleaning Tips To Shine Your Sink And Soothe Your Soul Cleaning; Mrs Hinch: The Little Book of Lists, which is “filled with brand new lists to get you organised well beyond your cleaning cupboard, as well as all your favourite Hinch lists!”; its sequel, Mrs Hinch: Life in Lists: The Little Book of Lists 2; and ‘This Is Me’, her autobiography.

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Pretty, sassy and full of good ideas, her Instagram account has 4.3 million followers. Her home in Maldon looks immaculate despite having two adorable young children and a dog called Henry, who she claims loves fox poo, but frankly looks far too clean and perfect for that to be true, as well as three llamas (Roy, Rodney and Raymond).

So in my chaotic, still in process of reform cottage, with just one large smelly dog and dust everywhere, I somewhat grudgingly admit to needing a Hinch tip or two! I am trying hard from the outset not to compare myself with this amazing woman who, according to the videos on her Instagram account, manages to put things up on walls without ripping her perfectly manicured nails.

In Hinch Yourself Happy, Sophie Hinchliffe takes readers, step-by-step, through cleaning and decluttering trunks, managing paper overload and even addresses the garage.  I feel like I should dislike her intensely for being so perfect

However, Mrs Hinch won my heart when she admitted that her cupboard under the stairs just seems to fill up – one day looking tidy and the next day looking like a shocker.  Even she, periodically, has to pull the whole lot out and start again.  She may look perfectly made up and groomed as she wanders through her perfectly clutter free house, but she’s also, very clearly, human too!

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She starts with a pile and whizzes through it deciding what’s junk and what’s to keep. It’s the best way to do it, so I’m still onside, and feel less guilty about the ‘gets worse before it gets better’ that comes with this type of clear up, known in my home as ‘the nuclear option’.

Will she lose me again when we get into the garage? No! Here she suggests that we have to rethink the garage as an extension of home and keep it welcoming. I thought I was the only one who put pictures up in the garage and tried to make it homely, but it’s one of her many tips, along with adding storage drawers. She wants us to hang bikes on the wall and put away papers as we go along in an A4 box with a plastic wallet for receipts.  Every six months, she and husband Jamie have a shred-fest with any papers no longer needed.

This, I sense, is way more than fluffy pouting at a camera lens to get great pictures on ‘Insta’. This is genuinely useful advice!

She declutters, something we write about regularly on this blog.  She cleans. She tidies. She stores things away. And she declutters some more.

Most of us won’t do it while looking like Mrs Hinch, or in as immaculately tidy homes as Mrs Hinch, but it’s good to know that the decluttering, clearing, cleaning, storing that we so often talk about has finally been made sexy as well as practical. Four million followers can’t be wrong!

Thank you, Mrs Hinch, for simultaneously reassuring me that our well-researched storage tips are genuinely useful, and for adding a layer of fabulously useful cleaning tips, just in time for a major spring clean!

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For all your storage needs to help with your decluttering, easyStorage is easy to contact and easy to work with: easyStorage.com or call 0333 241 3137 where one of our team will be delighted to help you.

At easyStorage, we have plenty of further decluttering advice including tips on: Making Decluttering Easy, Ideas to Declutter at Home and What Happens After Decluttering.