Lucy cleans up with spot on television
WHEN Lucy Challenger started a new Instagram account two years ago, little did she know it would change her life.
Sharing cleaning tips and tricks to thousands of followers across the world, Lucy, from Abertillery, simply wanted to share her love of cleaning and organisation with as many people as possible.
“When I first started my Instagram account... I was like, ‘Will people even like what I’m posting and will people really want to see it?’” said Lucy, 30, now better known to her thousands of followers as “Peachy Clean”, or Peachy for short.
“Nobody calls me Lucy any more,” she laughed.
“Even my mam is like, ‘All right, Peach?’”
One day last summer, while sitting in a beer garden in the Brecon Beacons, she remembers opening an email on her phone that would go on to change everything. Channel 4 had found her Instagram – and they loved it.
“They could have chosen anyone on Instagram. I just can’t get my head around it that they picked me,” said Lucy.
A few months later, she made her first trip to London to begin filming on a new show – How to Save a Grand in 24 Hours.
The show, which features Lucy, fellow experts Gary Usher and Eve Humphreys, and presenter Anna Richardson, features different people looking to save money and sort out their homes with the help of a team of experts.
The filming experience was quite surreal to begin with, explained Lucy, especially due to the fact that she had to keep it a secret for so many months.
“I couldn’t tell anybody until December,”
she said.
“It was painful, I was dying to just scream it from the rooftops
Filming for the first time was also a nerve-racking experience.
Last week, Lucy sat at home in Abertillery with her partner Tom and dog Nelly nervously waiting for it to start. “I was really emotional,” she said. The response from other people has been really overwhelming, with messages of support pouring in from friends, family and even strangers.
“It was amazing, I feel like I had loads of local support,” she said. “I said to my mam before it started, one thing I really wanted was for people to think that it’s just like as if I was there in the room.”
This support means the world to her, especially as one of the things that Lucy is proudest of is representing her home in the Valleys for the rest of the world to see.
“They put me as being from Cardiff,” Lucy laughed, talking about her credits on the show. “I would’ve loved it if they’d put me as being from Abertillery.”
The most important thing for her is that everything in the show is positive, and is done with the intention of changing people’s lives for the better.
“I could never go into someone’s house and be judgy. Everything that I’ve done in everybody’s house, the cleaning and the organising and things we’ve spoken about, I’ve done it in my own house,” said Lucy.
You can see Lucy work her magic in How to Save a Grand in 24 Hours on Channel 4’s catch-up service All 4.