‘Hot Mess Express’ transforms lives — one Swiffer at a time

Featured photo: The women of Hot Mess Express take time out of their weekends to clean strangers’ homes, for free. Since the organization started in 2021, Hot Mess Express has grown to more than 100 affiliates across the country. (photo by Carolyn de Berry)

This story was co-published with the Assembly. Learn more at theassemblync.com.

When Katie Hill first moved her family from Georgia to Winston-Salem in 2019, she didn’t bring much with her—some clothes, kids’ toys, the basics. She was moving in with her sister, so she didn’t see the point in bringing more. 

When her sister’s family moved out the following year, Hill decided to start with some homey touches. At first it was a little trinket she found at Goodwill. But soon it turned into anything that caught her eye. Now five years, four kids, four dogs, and two cats later, her home had become overwhelmed with stuff.

The situation was so bad that some parts of the house started to fill her with dread. Over the years her walk-in closet, once a sanctuary with a window to take some time for herself, became a dumping ground.

But where Hill saw a hopeless situation, the mothers of Hot Mess Express saw a mission.

The organization started in August 2021 when local mother and TikTok influencer Jen Hamilton saw another woman’s online post about struggling to maintain her home and asking for some help. Hamilton heeded the call, taking to TikTok to float the idea of women organizing to clean each others’ homes for free.

During that first “mission,” about eight women from around the Triad helped clean the woman’s house from top to bottom. They organized her space, filled her fridge, even cooked dinner in a Crockpot. For the mother, the transformation was life-changing. For the women involved, it was both a serotonin boost and a way to give back.

“The mom was struggling with the state of her home,” said Brittinie Tran, the organization’s president and board chair. Tran also helped clean that very first house. “She was asking for affordable cleaners. She needed help and a village. So eight of us came together for that first mission.”

The group, which now counts more than 1,600 members nationally and 109 in the Triad, is entirely volunteer. During their weekend missions, anywhere from 10 to 15 women show up to strangers’ homes armed with cleaning supplies. The organization covers some supplies through donations and an Amazon wishlist, but volunteers often bring their own. 

The group became a nonprofit in 2023, funded by affiliates’ membership dues which are $60 per year. Anyone can apply to start an affiliate, which results in a four-week onboarding process complete with training workshops and financial management training. 

By 2025, Hot Mess Express had 33 affiliates around the U.S., including local groups in Florida, Texas, and California. Last month, they onboarded another 80 new affiliates; this month, they’re shooting for another 300. There’s even talk of expanding to Canada. 

To keep the organization sustainable long-term, Tran said that they are looking at getting a few full-time positions on payroll by raising funds. But for the recipients, the work of cleaning homes will always be free, she said.

“I feel very, very strongly that we all go through periods of our lives when we just need a little bit of help,” Tran said. “It’s normal. We’re not lazy. We’re not bad parents because we got behind on stuff. But we’ve been programmed to not ask for help.”

Calling in backup

A big hurdle, Tran said, is the shame many women feel when things in their home get out of control.

“Women typically find their value in the state of their homes,” Tran said. “We’re trying to break that idea. Just because you’ve fallen behind on your home doesn’t mean you’ve fallen behind on life.”

Recent Pew Research Center and Gallup polls found despite earning as much as their male partners, heterosexual women were still spending roughly double the time on household chores and childcare than their male partners. 

That’s why Hot Mess Express was founded by and is largely aimed at helping women, particularly moms.

Volunteer Kayla Henderson understands the pressure personally. She’s been with the organization since 2021, but she was first a recipient of its services — the second in the Triad.

“Moms get stuck in the care role for other people and tend to forget about themselves,” Henderson said. “And it’s like the saying, you have to fill your cup before you can fill other people’s cups. And when a mom just starts doing mom stuff, she kind of loses her identity and gets lost in the day-to-day things.”

In her case, the stuff piled up around her home and had become a physical manifestation of her cluttered life, her mind, her marriage. Getting the house cleaned was a first step toward a fresh start. She got divorced, moved to a new home, and has been able to implement organizational techniques she’s learned from other women in the group.

“Joining has helped me be able to say, ‘It’s okay that some things can be cluttered and you will get to it; don’t beat yourself up for it,’” Henderson said. 

‘You’re not alone’

Hot Mess Express has now helped more than 30 other women in the Triad, and there are about 70 homes on the wait list currently. Anyone can nominate themselves or someone else for a cleaning. 

Once someone is on the list, the group sets up a walk-through of the home and conducts an interview with the nominee to discuss their priorities.

Sometimes they help clean single-bedroom apartments. Other times, they take on larger homes. 

“A lot of women we help have gotten themselves into a mental block,” Tran says. “They don’t know who to ask because they’re afraid of judgment. They may have ADHD, postpartum depression, anxiety. We don’t come with any judgment.” 

Some volunteers will bring pictures of their own messy houses to validate their experience.

For Katie Hill, the issue wasn’t just that there were so many people and pets living in one house. She and her sister had been taking shifts caring for their mother, who has had chronic health problems since the sisters were in middle school and now deals with liver and kidney ailments.

“When I started taking care of my mom, it went from 30 hours a week to, I think 78 now,” Hill said.

When she got home, she didn’t have the energy to do deep cleaning. She would try to tidy up or spot clean, but a few hours later it would just become messy again.

She had reached out to a few cleaners for quotes but found it would cost about $700 to clean even a fraction of the home at that point. Her sister had told her about Hot Mess Express a few years ago. After going back and forth, Hill decided to nominate herself.

“I thought, ‘The worst they could say is ‘no,’” Hill said.

Cleaning up, building community

When the cleaning team arrived at Hill’s house last Saturday morning, it was difficult even to navigate the space.

Piles of clothes covered the large couches in the living room while accumulated clutter sat on a geometric blue coffee table.

The dining table was hidden beneath plastic water bottles, snacks, kids’ toys, and pet food bowls. Boxes of unopened Velveeta, Campbell’s soup cans, and travel mugs cluttered the kitchen counters.

Upstairs, piles of clothes and toys filled the kids’ bedrooms. Hill’s walk-in closet was stuffed to the brim with items she meant to donate. 

The group of about 10 women wearing purple latex gloves and armed with Windex, Clorox spray, garbage bags, vacuums, and Swiffers entered the home undeterred. While they’re all members of the Triad group, at least one had driven in from Charlotte to help. Some have volunteered for years. For others, it was their first mission. They quickly set to work.

A few started downstairs in the living room, kitchen, and laundry room while the others set out to tidy the kids’ bedrooms and Hill’s walk-in closet.

They started by moving piles of clothes, toys, furniture, and decorations outside, then sorted through to see what could be donated and what needed to go in the trash. Over the next few hours, the pile destined for the landfill slowly grew.

At one point, a handful of the women teamed up to haul the items to be donated into a trailer that volunteer Jena Johnson, herself a recipient of their services last year, brought along. 

For Johnson, the focus had been her basement. A foster parent to close to a dozen children, she and her wife had taken on caring for a young woman with special needs who had aged out of foster care. Johnson and her wife intended to convert their cluttered basement, which they had been using as storage, into a bedroom. 

“Hot Mess Express came in, and they totally organized everything,” Johnson said. 

They cleared out the basement, hosted a yard sale, and got it ready for a contractor to come renovate the space. None of that would have been possible without Hot Mess Express, Johnson said as she swept dead leaves off Hill’s patio. 

Soon the team carried out a heavy wooden mirror, two coffee tables, and lamps into the trailer. Removing the clutter took about three hours, and most missions last about five. But the volunteers said they go by fast. 

After a quick lunch break outside, the group started the process of deep cleaning. The sound of vacuums sucking up rocks and dirt meshed with Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club,” which played from a volunteer’s phone in the kitchen. In an upstairs bathroom, two volunteers got on their hands and knees to scrape what looked like hardened purple wax off the floor. First-time volunteer Whitney Snow got to work scrubbing the walls buttressing the stairs, and eventually the steps themselves.

Snow, a mom of three, said she found out about the group on Facebook. 

“I just love the serving piece of it, you know?” Snow said. “Being able to serve people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to. I just think there’s something personally rewarding in that.”

While her kids are older now, Snow said she remembers being a young mother and feeling overwhelmed with the responsibilities of working and taking care of a family, pets, and a house. 

“Moms have a unique understanding of what they do,” she said.

For volunteers like Kellyann Pacheco, the group has been a way to find community.

“I joined because I wanted to find friends,” said Pacheco, who has been volunteering since 2021. “I wanted to do something with my time with people who have the same mentality as me.”

For Beth Cox, the organization allows her to use her skills. “I don’t have a lot of money, so time is what I have to give,” said Cox, who started volunteering six months ago.

Raneesha Collins, who has volunteered since 2021 and also serves on the group’s board, echoed the sentiment.

“My mom always volunteered a lot, and I saw her do it, so I wanted to give back in my own way for my kids to see me doing it,” said Collins, who worked to clear the pantry and organize the kitchen. “It was to be more community-minded.”

By 3:30 in the afternoon, their work was done. The pantry had been reorganized, bedding laundered —even the microwave had been wiped down. 

‘I don’t know them, but I love them’

When Hill returned to the house with her kids and four dogs in tow, the volunteers waited anxiously at the threshold to see her reaction.

At first she walked in slowly, setting her eyes on the openness of the living room.

“There’s so much space,” she said.

Her elementary school-aged son, who popped onto the newly bare couch, said, “You can see the windows now!”

Upstairs, the kids marveled at the emptiness of their rooms, the organization of their books, and the cleanliness of the space in front of the TV. 

In her bedroom, Hill took in the way her electronics cables had been organized into clear plastic bins and the lightbulbs in her bathroom had been switched out. 

But the crowning achievement was the transformation of her closet into a fresh, new sitting space. Inside, a black dish chair ordered by Hill’s sister sat in the back corner next to a side table with her record player and a candle. Her clothes had been neatly hung, her shoes organized on a new shoe rack. 

As soon as the door opened, she broke down. Tears streamed down her face as she looked around at the transformed space.

“Oh my god,” she whispered softly.

The women gathered around to present her with a care basket complete with a blanket, candle, snacks, and information about other resources in the area.

It’s part of the group’s ongoing mission to ensure that their work carries on into the future. Soon, they’ll be providing online videos with tips on how to keep things clean. On their Facebook groups, which anyone can join, members post inspirational photos and ideas for cleaning like a recent “Throw Out Thursday” in which moms were encouraged to document their decluttering process.

Recipients are also encouraged to volunteer for future missions. “We’re trying to grow a village,” Tran said. 

After volunteers left, Hill reflected on the transformation. 

“I didn’t really have expectations when they started, but if I did, they have done more than enough to exceed,” she said a bit tearfully. “They’ve done a wonderfully fantastic job. I don’t know them, but I love them.”

She planned on lighting a candle in her new sanctuary room and relaxing—because for once, there was nothing she needed to do.

“It doesn’t feel like my house anymore,” she said, “but in a good way.”