A super cleaner who travels the world transforming the dirtiest homes for FREE has revealed why she will never charge a penny.
Auri Kananen, 30, from Finland, the self-proclaimed “queen of cleaning,” said she wants to show that “cleaning can be fun” and that no mess is “impossible” to tackle.
The cleaner has more than 15 million followers on her social media platforms combined, where she goes by the handle @aurikatariina.
Emptying a refrigerator that's unopened in three years and tackling a sink so rotten it's growing mushrooms are among the stomach-churning challenges she faces.
She said: 'I give people a new life. I don't care if they don't keep it clean afterwards, but for a little while I can remind them what it feels like to have a clean house.”
Auri Kananen, 30, from Finland, has a job, which means she's not afraid to get her hands dirty
Auri started cleaning professionally in 2011, at the age of 16, and no longer charges her clients.
She worked for 10 years at her family cleaning company, where she learned the trade using specialist products and techniques.
A year before she quit, in August 2020, she started creating cleaning content on Facebook, YouTube and TikTok — and followers started asking her to clean their homes.
She wanted to help as much as possible and therefore started cleaning 'messy houses' for free and earned her money through sponsorship.
Auri refuses to charge clients to help people who struggle with mental health or mobility and find it difficult to clean up the mess themselves.
The cleaner explained: 'I have been in the cleaning industry all my life, I absolutely love it and I refuse to charge my clients.'
In a very shocking videowith the caption 'Cleaning grandma's house for free', the super cleaner tackled a bathroom that was full of rubbish and dirt.
She explained, “This grandma hasn't showered or cooked in three years. My followers and I cleaned her house for two days.
The self-proclaimed 'Queen of Cleaning' travels around Finland and the world completely free of charge to deep clean homes – usually to help people who struggle with mental health or mobility and find it difficult to clean up the mess themselves
In another TikTok, captioned “Rat Mansion Miracle,” the 30-year-old got to work on a kitchen that no one has been in for three years, allowing rodents to wreak havoc (before and after photo)
In the photo: a refrigerator in one of the buildings before it was cleaned by Auri
'I loved it, there was so much dirt, grime, mold and cobwebs – but the saddest thing is that the grandmother died the next day and she never saw her house clean.'
Despite only starting creating content three years ago, she regularly receives huge numbers of views, being seen by as many as 36.6 million people.
In another TikTok, captioned “Rat Mansion Miracle,” the 30-year-old got to work on a kitchen that no one has been in for three years, allowing rodents to wreak havoc.
She told viewers: 'A female couple has lived here for ten years, they haven't been in their kitchen for three years, the rats have eaten the insulation from the ceiling.'
The sink was full of rat droppings, which she threw away before using oven cleaner to scrape off the dirt.
The refrigerator had also been closed for three years and was full of moldy and rotting food, which the cleaner removed one by one.
Commenters were shocked, writing: 'I honestly don't think I could eat out of that kitchen no matter how much cleaning was done' and 'Even after a thorough cleaning the house must stink to high heaven'.
Another wrote: 'It looks lovely but I feel like there are some levels of contamination that won't go away if you clean it regularly.'
She recently overhauled one of her dirtiest homes yet: a moss-covered toilet and a sink filled with sewage.
From emptying a refrigerator that hasn't been opened in three years to scrubbing a sink where mushrooms grow, no task is too big for Auri
For another recent project, the super cleaner spent two days 'extremely cleaning' a one-bedroom apartment, where the toilet had not seen bleach in six years and was full of sewage.
However, as usual, she managed to completely transform the apartment.
She recently moved into one of her dirtiest homes yet, with a moss-covered toilet seat and a sink filled with sewage.
Despite piles of pizza boxes and dirty dishes covering the bedroom and living room – the bathroom was the 'worst' – with mushrooms growing in the walls.
Armed with a scraper, toilet brush and oven cleaner, she managed to get rid of the grime in just two days, transforming the apartment from 'garbage' to 'beautiful'.
The cleaning queen from Tampere, Finland, said: 'The walls were thick with dust and there were mushrooms growing in the walls – the toilet bowl was also dirty.
'I absolutely loved it – the sink was filled with s**t. The owners needed me to clean because they wanted to sell their apartment. After I finished it, it was completely empty.”
Auri earned an estimated £433,000 from her cleaning business in 2022, despite not charging her clients anything.
Her sponsors, including German brand Sini Cleaning, help increase her income and also allow her to fly to clients abroad.
She said: “I always clean my clients' houses for free – I make my money through YouTube and sponsors,” she added. 'I really enjoy that I get to do what I'm passionate about every day.'