LUCY CLEANS UP WITH SPOT ON TV
WHEN Lucy Challenger started a new Instagram account two years ago, little did she know that it would go on to change her life forever.
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.
Beginning the account back in 2019, two years later there are now more than 12,000 “Peaches” – Lucy’s affectionate name for her followers.
“Nobody calls me Lucy any more,” she laughed.
“Even my mam is like, ‘All right, Peach?’”
What Lucy didn’t realise when she started her account was that, just two years later, she would go on to appear in millions of living rooms across the UK, sharing her life hacks on the television.
“It’s bizarre!” laughed Lucy, looking back at it now.
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 brand 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
“It was really weird, because one weekend I’d be going to London and staying in a hotel on my own and filming and I was just like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening!’” she said.
Filming for the first time was also a nerve-racking experience, with Lucy having had no prior experience on TV.
“I was thinking, ‘ Oh my God, I’ve never been on telly before, what am I going to be like? Am I going to be nervous? Am I going to be able to say my words tidy?’ All of these things were going through my mind.”
Fast forward a few months to December and she was able to let the cat out of the bag to her friends, family and followers. And then, finally, after months of waiting, last Monday, Lucy sat at home in Abertillery with her partner Tom and dog Nelly nervously waiting for it to start. It was an exciting, albeit bizarre, experience, she explained.
“I was watching it and I thought, ‘I can’t get my head around this. How am I on the telly?’” she said. “I was really emotional.”
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.”
Although unable to celebrate with friends and family due to coronavirus restrictions, Lucy said the support from everyone has still been overwhelming. 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.
“In the Valleys, we just go around our little town and then having to go to places like London is like, oh my god. It’s honestly like a different world,” said Lucy.
“You know what, I think Abertillery is a bit of a lucky charm at the minute.”
Currently, in addition to Lucy, the Blaenau Gwent town is also home to MMA superstars Jack Shore and Jack Marshman.
“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.”
As is the case with so many people from the Valleys, a sense of pride in being clean and well presented were part and parcel of Lucy’s upbringing.
“You know what, my mam and dad are both like it,” she said.
“And my nan was amazing at getting stains out of clothes. So I picked up a lot of my tips from my mam, my dad and my nan really. But you know, I didn’t really feel like I had a massive interest in cleaning and organising until I had my own place.”
She added: “Saying that mind, I show the reality and my house is definitely not always perfect. I show the mess and I show what I’ve done to sort it out.”
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 tomorrow on Channel 4.