The Psychology Behind Our Obsession With Extreme Cleaning Videos

Victoria Gordon walks into homes that most people would find unbearable. Towers of unwashed dishes. Clothes piled to the ceiling. Toilets that haven't functioned in months. At 44, she has made a career of the work that others won't touch—hoarder clearances, crime scene cleanups, the jobs that require both a strong stomach and a steady hand. What surprised her, once she started filming these transformations and posting them online, was how many people wanted to watch.

Cleaning videos have become a phenomenon. In 2023, the platform TikTok and the consumer goods company Unilever recognized the trend's scale by creating a dedicated community space called CleanTok. The numbers were staggering: 78 billion views accumulated on the platform, a figure that transformed what had once been a mundane household task into one of the most-watched genres on social media. Before the internet age, television programs like Britain's Biggest Hoarders and Hoarder SOS had drawn audiences, but nothing quite like this. The appetite seemed endless.

Why do millions of people choose to spend their time watching strangers clean? Dr. Wasim Ahmed, a marketing researcher at the University of Hull, points to something primal in the appeal. People crave control in their lives, and these videos deliver it in compressed form. A filthy room appears on screen. Chaos is visible, tangible, overwhelming. Then comes the process—the methodical work—and finally, resolution. Within a minute or less, the impossible becomes possible. The mess vanishes. The space transforms. "It's quite satisfying seeing a clear problem and a clear ending in just under a minute," Ahmed explains. The videos create tension and then release it, a cycle that feels deeply reassuring to watch.

Gordon herself understands the appeal through her own observations. People are curious, she says. They want to peek into lives that are radically different from their own, to witness the shocking before-and-after that makes the transformation feel real and earned. "We like to have a little delve into other people's lives," she notes. Ann Russell, another cleaner who has built a following of three million people on TikTok, articulates something else: the satisfaction of cleaning someone else's home versus your own. When you're working on a stranger's space, you can finish. You can step back and see completion. Your own home, by contrast, is never truly done. Someone always drops something. The work is endless and often thankless. But on camera, in those videos, the work has a beginning, middle, and end.

The algorithms that govern social media platforms actively amplify this content. Ahmed's research into virality reveals how the systems work: they measure how long users linger on a video before scrolling past. A shocking crime scene, a room so filthy it seems impossible to clean—these hold attention. The algorithm interprets that attention as a signal of quality and begins serving similar content to more users. The worse the before, the more the algorithm promotes it. Engagement multiplies through comments and shares, as people gather in the comments section to react, compare, and relate to what they're seeing.

But Gordon has a purpose beyond entertainment. She is acutely aware that many of the homes she documents belong to people living with hoarding disorder, a mental health condition in which someone accumulates possessions and struggles to discard them, even when doing so would improve their safety and wellbeing. The stigma surrounding hoarding is profound. People assume laziness. They judge without understanding. Gordon sees the damage this causes: people suffering in silence, afraid to seek help because they fear being labeled or shamed. "There's a lot of stigma behind it and a lot of misunderstanding," she says. She is careful about what she posts, always seeking permission, and she refuses to film certain cleanups altogether.

What has emerged from her work is unexpected. Messages arrive regularly from followers who recognize themselves in the homes Gordon has cleaned. They write to say thank you, that seeing footage of a space similar to their own made them feel less alone. Some have found the courage to hire help or reach out for support because they realized they weren't the only ones living this way. The videos, in this sense, have become a form of quiet advocacy. By showing the reality of hoarding disorder without judgment, by treating it as what it is—a mental health issue, not a moral failing—Gordon is helping people understand that they are not isolated in their struggle. The more these stories are told, the less shame surrounds them. And the less shame, the more likely someone will reach out for the help they need.