“I think I fill all the boxes: I am
a very Mexican-looking brunette Latina who works as a housekeeper
for wealthy people in Texas: yes, I have seen many things,” Vanesa Amaro says in one of her videos.
She is the “cleaning queen” on social media, with more than 5.8 million followers on her Spanish-language TikTok account alone.
But she does more than upload addictive videos on how to have a shiny home: post after post she breaks down barriers and stigmas.
This is recognized by his own followers.
“Girl, you fit all the stereotypes… and you are someone to look up to:
you took a tough job and made a business out of it;
something inspiring
, ”shoots Kimberley Washington in a comment.
It has been a long road for Amaro, according to her own account, since a woman gave her the first opportunity, without references or experience, to clean a house eight years ago.
Her husband, Alex, later started working with her (after training him intensively for a week, she says).
Years later, the pandemic hit, and Amaro stood up to it by sharing videos with hacks so useful and easy to follow that they went viral—from how to make homemade deodorant to having smooth sheets without ironing, or taking care of those things you didn't know you had. to clean, but they are "well sows".
In a matter of months, she went from five followers to millions.
The Mexican, based in Austin, thus started from the teachings of her mother and grandmother and achieved, with the help of social networks, a revolutionary popularity.
"The Vanesa of eight years ago, seven years ago, would not even imagine that the Vanesa of now would be where she is, that she would not feel ashamed of being a
housekeeper
," Amaro said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo.
And his message to her would be: "Don't be afraid."
"I thought that being a housekeeper was the worst thing that could have happened to me in my life. How wrong I was!"
Amaro is now a spokesperson for Clorox, has her own line of sponges with Scrub Daddy, and is still cleaning houses, but for free: to help families, like one in Kentucky who lost two of her children in a matter of months.
But also, she uses her platform as an
influencer
to open up a frank conversation about the ups and downs of work, being Latina, and life;
She tells then that she sometimes suffers, like many, of sadness and discouragement, or
experiences difficult situations of discrimination.
And she also talks, without hesitation, about how much to charge, when to stand up and say enough.
The young woman has not only built a cleaning empire, but has also become an inspiration and reference.
She has been honest about what it was like to start cleaning houses.
"I felt ashamed at my job, I hid it and I didn't say it," she says, but now she "would tell Vanessa back then that everything is going to be okay."
"I thought that being a
housekeeper
was the worst thing that could have happened to me in my life. How wrong I was! It was the best thing that could have happened to me," she remarks.
Amaro moments on TikTok: celebrating with her husband the purchase of a house;
launching her own product line;
and cleaning dishes while she remembers her mom's advice.
Vanesa Amaro TikTok
Their stories reflect what so many Hispanic women who do housework go through.
One of her most popular videos, with more than 18 million views, is a story that answers a question from a follower: “
Have you ever met a
Karen
?
”.
Karen is a name that became the symbol in the US of those white women who demand too much and in a bad way, abusing their privilege, usually from stereotyped racism.
“I would tell people, put your grain of sand, you never know what a beautiful pearl it will become”
"Here, Latinas in the United States are still seen as looking down, as if you are less. And that is not the reality," she explained to Noticias Telemundo.
"Not because I clean your toilet, your bathroom, your house, does it mean that I am worth less as a person, because
your value as a person does not come from what you do, but from who you are inside," she remarked.
The day a blouse was thrown in her face
"I used to clean the apartment for an older lady, let's call her Ruth," says Amaro's soft voice in the video.
“When she hired me, she told me that no one had cleaned her apartment for more than five years and the refrigerator for more than seven years,” he clarifies.
She decided to charge him a very affordable price for the entire home, with the cost of the refrigerator separate.
But after 10 hours of hard work, it was time for payment and the lady did not pay that extra.
"When I mentioned it to her," says Amaro, "she turned around, looked at me and laughed."
After a few minutes, the lady went to her room.
She “she took out a used blouse, threw it in my face and said: 'There's your pay, now go.'
I left there with a lump in my throat and crying, but I never came back,” says the young woman.
"I also cleaned houses for a while, I was humiliated by so many," replies a user.
"I worked doing domestic cleaning and every abusive touched me," adds another.
That was the first story that Amaro shared about a
Karen
, and then more came, like the one about the mother-in-law of a client who called the police accusing her of being a thief.
Amaro explained to Noticias Telemundo that his motivation in sharing these stories is to combat this discrimination.
"If there are people who are seeing me and who hire women, men, who do the cleaning of their house, who don't treat them like that," he explains, "what I want is to instill in people how they should treat them."
From her profile, she has fun challenging prejudices towards housekeepers and shows all her facets, especially her charming elegance —in makeup, dresses and more— for those who claim that she is “scruffy” for dedicating herself to housework.
Addictive cleaning classes
Do you need to keep the bathtub clean?
Keep a brush handy, suggests Amaro.
There are more tips: how to wash hats, the kitchen faucet, moldy showers or hidden areas of the refrigerator.
All of that in videos of them mopping, vacuuming, and dusting that are impossible to stop watching.
“Many of us were not taught to clean as children.
We were not taught what products to use, how to use them, what products to avoid in the store, and how to have a cleaning schedule that works for our kind of life”, explains the young woman.
And that is one of the reasons that led her to create her profiles: "I am super grateful because both my mother and my grandmother taught me all this."
Her 94-year-old grandmother is "her best friend," she tells Noticias Telemundo, and supports her one hundred percent, as does her mother and her entire family.
"They are super proud of me, of the success this has had. They watch my videos, they support me when I recommend things, they even buy them. And my dad is the worst: he goes around bragging to everyone that his daughter is and his daughter the other".
She is also realistic about the effort involved in her work and the task: dealing with personal discouragement, having time, and confesses: "I don't feel like cleaning all the time, either."
"I make cleaning videos, but that doesn't mean my house is always clean," he also acknowledges.
Then she recommends how to do when you only have five minutes to go home.
Amaro shares cleaning tips and the ups and downs of being Latina, her life, and her work.
Amaro started with videos in English, but everyone asked him in Spanish, he tells Noticias Telemundo.
When he did, his account "blew up."
“Usually my videos in Spanish have better views, more comments;
I have more support on the Hispanic side,” he relates.
At the same time, his videos promote the products of his line and the companies they work for, in a strange balance that allows him to make a profit, giving his work an unexpected turn.
His recommendation to those who see his story is to start, to try that project or undertaking that they have in mind.
"I would tell people put your grain of sand, you never know what a beautiful pearl she is going to become," she remarks.
Cry and cry in the car
Amaro also brings to the table the ups and downs of the profession.
"I think a lot of us
have bought into this false reality that many famous people present that work is something to enjoy,"
he says.
“This could not be further from the truth because although it is true that I enjoyed cleaning houses, I also
went through many humiliations, clients who were racist.
More often than you think, I went to my car and cried and cried my heart out.
So many times I thought about giving up
, and the truth is that you can't and I couldn't because there was no more.
When you have to get up at 5 or 6 in the morning to clean three houses, you don't always do it with a smile, he tells Noticias Telemundo, but you do it the same: "It's what allows you to keep food in your family's house , which allows you to have a roof and a home".
Without hesitation, he also shares how to calculate how much to charge and what questions he asks his clients, and the mistakes he made when he started.
“I will share this with my mom” says more than one user.
Sometimes she doesn't post for a while.
She then tells that she has been in difficult personal situations or at family parties, or perhaps in a low mood, like when a 10-year-old boy she had met cleaning houses in solidarity died.
"I'm not going to lie, sometimes I have to take
breaks
, I have to take a break and not clean houses for very heavy cases for a few weeks because I also have to monitor my mental health," he told Noticias Telemundo.
Clean as a gesture of love
Amaro and her husband work with two nonprofit foundations in Austin, Texas, helping families with terminally ill children.
And they're watching out for people who are going through a tough time, like the case of Whitney Frost, a Kentucky mom of two boys, Harrison and Riley Ann, with infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy (INAD), an inherited neurological disorder.
Whitney lost Harrison in January and Riley Ann in July.
Whitney has shared her family's experience on her Instagram profile helping and inspiring many.
And the story reached Amaro.
"She told me that obviously she hasn't had the energy to clean her house since she has been very depressed," he recounts in a video.
The influencer then traveled with her husband from Texas to Kentucky to help her clean the room where the children slept and the bathroom adapted for them, among other tasks.
"It was a scrub: I ended up with foot pain, back pain, and my husband, the same," she said.
"My goal was clear: I wanted to give Whitney a fresh, clean start."
Amaro told Noticias Telemundo that when her business began to give her income on social networks, they wanted with her husband to leave the job opportunities of cleaning houses to other people, and do cleaning only in solidarity.
"Primarily we clean houses for free for people who have children with terminal illnesses. Why? Because those dads, those moms live it up in hospitals. What time is there to clean houses, then?", he explains.
"And they have medical bills, which are very high. They don't have the money to hire someone to clean their houses," she adds.
They also help elderly and disabled people.
On TikTok, when asked by a follower about why she cleans houses for free, she responds with a video of just nine seconds in which Rocío Dúrcal is heard singing: "It comes from the heart."
