Kim Woodburn, a native of Hampshire, England, first discovered the joy of cleaning as a child while watching her fastidiously neat grandmother soak the family clothes and scrub the family house from top to bottom. Her grandmother, who cleaned schools for a living, considered cleanliness the most important of human traits. After moving to Liverpool, Kim took her first live-in cleaning job; she has also been a social worker, a beautician and a catalog model. Kim founded her own handmade knitware company, which led to her television debut in 1983, modeling her fashions on "Pebble Mill at One." After the stint in retail, she managed the household for several prominent families in England and the United States.