'I spent years in the traveller community - the cleaning hacks stayed with me'

979     0
Danielle Mason has 20 years of experience as a cleaning pro (Image: Danielle Mason)
Danielle Mason has 20 years of experience as a cleaning pro (Image: Danielle Mason)

A good housekeeping expert with decades of experience has opened up about her career and some of the best tricks she's learned along the way. Danielle Mason, or @missmasoncleaning as she's known to her Instagram followers, is no stranger to our screens.

A model-turned-presenter, the pro regularly shares cleaning hacks with fans. But she learned her skills the hard way, long before the rise of 'cleanfluencers', or cleaning influencers. From her time spent working for Travelodge as a teenager, to her years as part of the traveller community, Danielle, who also runs a cleaning business, has no shortage of varied sources.

'I spent years in the traveller community - the cleaning hacks stayed with me' rridzziqddidqrinvDanielle is a good housekeeping expert (Danielle Mason)
'I spent years in the traveller community - the cleaning hacks stayed with me'Who shares her tips with her followers (Danielle Mason)

Thankfully, she shared some of her favourite advice with the Mirror, plus the common mistakes she sometimes spots. First up, Danielle discussed two habits she's kept from when she was married to someone from the traveller community and she would spend a significant portion of her day cleaning. "Your house had to be like a show home by 12 o'clock in case anyone came around," Danielle claimed. "As soon as I'd get up I would be cleaning. It would literally be head-to-bottom cleaning of the chalet or the house."

The pro added: "Obviously, you know that you should take your shoes off before going into people's houses and that you should not wash your hands in kitchen sinks, but in the traveller community that was a big thing. So when me and my partner split up I took those sorts of things with me. Although I already knew about them, they were just ingrained so it's sort of like second nature."

So it won't come as any surprise to learn wearing your shoes indoors is high up on Danielle's list of no-nos. "It cringes me out," she confessed. "It never used to but now I know about the amount of germs that shoes pick up. If you think about it, if you're walking out in London for instance, there's urine everywhere, rats and God knows what else, and then you're coming home and you're walking through your carpet, and your kids have got their heads on the carpet."

Cleaning guru shares why you shouldn't make your bed first thing in the morningCleaning guru shares why you shouldn't make your bed first thing in the morning

Talking of floors, Danielle warned against chucking your dirty water down the kitchen sink. "One of my big cleaning icks is people that wash their floor and then tip the dirty floor water down the kitchen sink when they're peeling potatoes or washing their cups and saucers in it," she revealed.

Elsewhere in the kitchen, you're best to avoid bleach when cleaning your silverware. It's a mistake Danielle learned the hard way years ago, but one she still sees some people recommend to this day. So if you think bleach will leave your knives and forks shining, it sounds like you should think again. "It actually ruins the metal," the pro explained.

Thankfully, Danielle also shared a selection of her favourite tips, some of which will be familiar to fans. For instance, she spoke of the great response she received after revealing how she leaves glass sparkling and smear-free in a TikTok post. "I found that the one people love the most - I don't know why because it's the simplest - was Fairy liquid. I love Fairy liquid. Rather than using glass cleaner on mirrors and glass tables, it was fairy liquid with a wet microfibre cloth and a dry microfibre cloth, and people were going mad for it," said Danielle. "My mum taught me that lot when I was a kid. You never get a smear with it."

Revealing another Fairy liquid tip, she said she loves to mix a bucket of warm Fairy liquid with baking soda when tackling carpet stains. "Baking soda is amazing. It is such a good product and it gets bad smells out as well. Rather than covering up bad smells, it actually absorbs it," she explained.

Danielle also sang the praise of storage boxes, sharing an additional tip. "I'm not a decluttering expert, but I find myself doing it when I go to people's houses," she acknowledged. "It's always good to get containers and put things inside. For instance, I had so many wires on the floor the other day, charges, cables, chargers for the kids' motorbike-quadbike thing, and I was just like it looks so messy. So I just went to Home Bargains and bought some plastic storage drawers." They're easy to label too, as Danielle pointed out. As for organising your clothes, the fashionista has another tip up her sleeve. "Colour coordinate," she advised. "It's so much easier. You can find what you need."

Talking of ease, the busy mum-of-two thinks the best approach to housekeeping is getting your chores done "bit by bit" to prevent everything from building up, and she stressed that her house doesn't always look perfect, either. "Whatever I clean, the kids then go over it. I wouldn't say that I am really on top of my cleaning at home because I am just like any other busy house mum," said Danielle.

Thankfully, she knows all the tricks to help speed up the process, and she plans to keep on sharing her advice with fans.

Amber O'Connor

Print page

Comments:

comments powered by Disqus