YouTube might not be the first place you’d expect someone to turn for a bit of motherly guidance, but one woman has created a channel specifically for people who may not have a mum or mother figure around to teach them everyday life skills.

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Robyn created “Mom, How Do I?” to offer practical advice on the ordinary things that can become surprisingly difficult when nobody has ever shown you how to do them.

From laundry and cooking to cleaning, sewing and personal care, the idea is to provide the sort of guidance many people receive while growing up at home.

And Robyn has plenty of experience to draw upon.

She grew up as the eldest of 12 children, meaning she started helping her own mother with “mom things” from an early age.

She later became a mother herself and has six children, with her eldest being 26 at the time the channel was launched, Pop Sugar reports.

The inspiration for the project came after Robyn saw another YouTube channel built around a similar concept.

Rob Kenney’s “Dad, how do I?” became popular for providing useful advice and demonstrations for people who might not have a dad around to teach them.

After seeing the concept, Robyn realised there was room for a motherly equivalent.

In the introductory video for “Mom, How Do I?”, she explained exactly what she wanted the channel to offer.

“I wanted to see a how-to channel for how to do mom-type things, things that everyone — no matter your gender — would need to know: how to do laundry, cooking, cleaning, sewing, self-help care, mental health care,” she said.

The channel isn’t aimed exclusively at one gender, nor is it limited to people of a particular age.

Instead, its lessons revolve around useful everyday tasks that someone might ordinarily ask a parent to explain.

Robyn’s early videos covered subjects including making a doctor’s appointment, doing laundry, making a bed, folding fitted sheets and braiding hair.

Other topics included dealing with a headache, applying makeup, shaving, alongside the cooking, cleaning and general household advice at the centre of the channel.

They are tasks that can seem completely routine once you know how to do them.

For somebody who has never been taught, however, even something as apparently straightforward as arranging a doctor’s appointment can feel unfamiliar.

That gap is what “Mom, How Do I?” attempts to fill.

The response showed just how valuable something so simple could be.

Within only four days, the channel had reportedly accumulated almost 10,000 subscribers. After a week, that figure had climbed beyond 20,000.

Now, Robyn has amassed more than 228,000 subscribers.

But the subscriber numbers only tell part of the story.

The comments underneath Robyn’s videos quickly became filled with people explaining why having someone calmly walk them through these everyday tasks meant so much.

For some viewers, the channel was more than a collection of tutorials.

One person wrote: “My mom’s not in my life anymore so this means a lot to me, thank you for doing what you do!”

Another shared an even more personal reason for finding comfort in Robyn’s videos.

“My mum died when I was 11 so this is super nice to watch,” they wrote. “[E]ven though my dads extremely supportive it’s just nice having a mother explain these things. Definitely a comfort I’ve missed.”

That reaction captures why the concept has resonated.

A tutorial on folding a fitted sheet can be found in countless places online.

The difference with “Mom, How Do I?” is the way those practical lessons are presented through the familiar framework of asking a parent for help.

For viewers who don’t have that option in their own lives, the videos can provide something beyond the answer to a practical question.

Robyn had never run a YouTube channel before, but viewers quickly began treating it exactly as intended, sending in the sorts of questions they might otherwise have taken to a parent.

People wanted to know how to iron shirts and how much fabric softener they should use.

Thank goodness there are people like Robyn and Rob in the world to make sure every child has the guidance they may need.

Featured image credit: YouTube/Mom, How Do I? (screenshots)