Bea Elton, the cleaner behind the online platform CleanWithBea, has built an unusual career clearing homes that have fallen into extreme dirt and disrepair, often linked to mental health struggles. Her work has attracted more than six million followers across YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, drawn to watching cluttered, decaying homes turned back into liveable spaces.

Bea Elton started cleaning to get her deposit back and ended up building a six-million-strong following.

Elton’s path into this line of work began almost by accident. In 2023, after she was made redundant, she and her boyfriend, Harry, were renting a mold-covered flat in London.

Wanting to move out but worried her landlord might withhold their deposit, she began cleaning obsessively and filming the process. Those early videos gained attention online, and people soon started asking her for help with their own overwhelming cleaning problems.

Around 18 months ago, Harry joined her full-time, and together they began taking on more extreme cases — homes where residents had stopped clearing rubbish altogether, sometimes for years. Many of these cases involve a combination of financial hardship, mobility problems, old age, or mental health conditions.

Elton, who studied classics at university and previously worked in social media, is careful to describe herself simply as a cleaner rather than an influencer, even though her polished videos have made her a well-known figure in this online content genre.

Her cleans involve years of buried rubbish, biohazards, and insect infestations.

The homes Elton and Harry take on can be extraordinarily difficult to work in. In one case, during a visit to a property in the Midlands, the team found floors buried under years of takeaway packaging, pizza boxes, and household rubbish, along with a dead bird that had gone unnoticed for a long time.

Bathrooms and bedrooms were similarly affected, with the resident’s bed often the only clear space left in the home — something Elton says is a common pattern, since people tend to retreat to the one area they can keep clean.

Other cases she has worked on include a home where a broken toilet led a resident to use her bathtub for sewage disposal over several years, and another where an elderly woman with lung disease developed a severe spider infestation after losing the physical ability to keep up with cleaning.

In some homes, biohazard specialists are called in to deal with issues such as animal waste, while maggots and other insects are sometimes found in the debris.

Cleans typically take between three days and two weeks, though building trust with a homeowner beforehand can take months. Elton says she receives an average of 160 applications a month but can only take on a small number, partly due to the time each case demands.

Elton says shame and overwhelm, not laziness, cause homes to fall into disrepair.

 

Elton has become known for the empathy she brings to her work, which she attributes partly to her own history of mental health struggles beginning at age 11.

She explains that people who fall into these situations are often not lazy or careless, but overwhelmed to the point where they no longer know where to begin, or too ashamed to ask for help. Shame and fear of judgment, she says, are often what keep people isolated as their homes deteriorate further.

She has also spoken about the wider circumstances behind individual cases — bereavement, trauma, and the loss of a support network are recurring themes among the people she helps. In several cases, family members or neighbors were unaware of how bad conditions had become until a crisis, such as a fall or an accident, brought the situation to light.

Elton’s support goes beyond cleaning, including paying off debts and arranging ongoing care.

Elton’s work extends beyond scrubbing and clearing rubbish. She often liaises with local authorities, support workers and therapists on behalf of the people she helps, and in some cases has paid off residents’ debts, replaced furniture, or covered accommodation costs during a clean.

She has said she does not consider herself a mental health professional, but tries to make sure ongoing support is in place so that people do not fall back into the same situation.

She has also become involved in wider campaigning, including on renters’ rights and animal welfare issues that she has encountered through her cleaning work.

Elton says the majority of her cleans lead to what she calls a lasting reset for the people involved, though she is careful to note that a single clean cannot solve problems that built up over years. For her, the work has also become personally meaningful, describing a sense of purpose in helping people start again.