The Unbearable Romance Of Dirty Dishes
Why is savoring the act of cleaning a measure of my motherhood?
This is a photo of the cleaning products under my kitchen sink.
The cleaning products under my kitchen sink are used to remove hot dog grease from plates, to disinfect bathroom tiles after a middle-of-the-night vomit spree. They’re used to wipe away peanut butter smears, to scour burnt cheese from lasagna pans, and to eradicate the scent of dog pee.
This photo of the cleaning products under my sink is representative of the act of cleaning. It’s a utilitarian photo of a utilitarian, everyday act. It has nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with function.
But there’s a corner of the mamasphere that wants me to believe that cleaning can be something else. It can be slowing down. It can be living intentionally. It can be savoring the little moments.
This corner of the mamasphere is intent on convincing me that cleaning should be romantic.
A clothing brand called Little Women Atelier crystalized my disconnected thoughts about aspirational cleaning content when they assured me with this post that “the sweetest way to romanticize your daily chores is by wearing our Meg pinafore 🧹🧺.” I love Little Women as much as the next gal, but I have absolutely no desire to “romanticize my daily chores.” The phrase “romanticize my daily chores” lights me up with a potent combination of rage and nausea.
While part of my reaction stems from my allergy to precious sanctimony, romantic cleaning content is more than just eye-roll inducing. It’s an argument for a type of motherhood that relies on everyone’s favorite trad starter pack of gender essentialism and decontextualized privilege.
In this reel, Morgan (@livingratefully) enjoys a blissful night of child bathing and promises that we too might fill our lives with wonder if only we reframe our perspectives. Bath time isn’t just a necessary part of human hygiene and childcare - it’s a chance for transcendence.
Morgan writes: “Much of our daily tasks could be seen as menial and mundane, but when we intentionally free ourselves from distractions and slow down enough to be FULLY present, then the humblest of tasks become breathtakingly beautiful and savored.”
Oh, and in addition to gaining insight about how best to fill your life with “breathtaking beauty” by way of tear-free shampoos, you can also get a discount on nontoxic (obviously) bath products courtesy of Bend Soap Company. Because this is straightforward spon-con wrapped up in the rhetoric of self-help.
This type of messaging strikes me as particularly noxious because it’s not all wrong, right? Most of us would likely benefit from an increased level of presence, a slower pace of life, and freedom from distractions. But what posts like this fail to acknowledge is that not all mothers have the luxury of choice - to slow down, to focus solely on the way their baby’s hair swirls in the lather of herbal shampoo. Because many mothers are also directing their other children to stop splashing a sibling. They’re also periodically jumping up from the bath to check work emails from their computer propped up by the sink. They’re hollering downstairs for their teenager to boil some water for pasta. Some mothers are not home for bath time at all.
But romantic cleaning content doesn’t want to engage with a worldview that doesn’t prioritize a woman’s place within the home. Much of this is straightforward trad propaganda peppered with evangelical Christianity.
Momfluencer Angela Pourchot urges godly mothers to be cognizant of the type of example they’re setting for their children. Will your children view motherhood and wifehood as aspirational (as they should)? Or will your shitty attitude about a toddler-urine sprinkled toilet seat sour them on the whole enterprise?
Do they see us lovingly making a lunch for our husband before he heads out the door for work (with a kiss to go with it ;) or do they see us exasperated & nagging him for how he forgot to take the trash out again? Do they hear us singing while we work or hear us grumbling and heavy sighing?
Do our children view the never-ending labor of housekeeping as a serious undertaking that is likely to be (at times!) exhausting, frustrating, and worthy of a systems-based approach, or do they view it as a Good Mother’s provenance, a symbol of her worth and her value?
Conservative romantic cleaning content is always aesthetically aspirational. Nicole (@littlehouseofgirls) shares this creamy photo (I want that throw pillow!) as a way to show that cleaning is synonymous with a clear visual point of view. Cleaning should not result merely in a functional outcomes but an enviably lovely interior that can be neatly posted to Instagram.
Nicole writes:
Mondays aren’t scary when your job is the best job on earth. Even though Mother’s Day is over, it’s never truly over when you’re raising your babies. I’m so thankful for all the little clothes to wash and toys to pick up. One day my house will be quiet, and my time will be my own again, and that’s a sad thought. This is what I was born to do 🩷
Would this message be as resonant if paired with a photo of Carter’s onesies emblazoned with Bluey characters? Or if paired with a plastic tupperware bin of neon racing cars? Would Nicole’s followers want to bury their feelings of fatigue, their creeping seeds of resentment towards their non-domestically engaged partners, or their longing for more autonomy beneath a blanket of gendered proscriptions if it wasn’t all so pretty?
In addition to romantic cleaning content being paired with a very specific interior aesthetic (soft, neutral, farmhouse, Joanna Gaines approved), romantic cleaning can only be romantic if you’re cleaning the right kind of messes. Lauren Wylde (@ourquaintandcozy) reminds us that one can only find cleaning meditative and joyful if it’s done by hand (modern conveniences are not romantic) and if the chicken skins clogging the sink drain are from free-range chickens roasted at home with herbs from the garden rather then from a grocery store rotisserie chicken. “All these dishes…the ones that never end…they represent all the nourishing meals I’ve cooked from scratch and well fed bellies.”
It’s not particularly surprising that trad momfluencers would push a version of cleaning that contributes to an aspirational rendering of self-sacrificial motherhood, but even secular accounts (and brands) exploit the imagistic power of femininity and romantic cleaning.
In this ad for The Laundress, a woman’s delicately tapered nails gently massage a cornflower-blue garment in an enamel bowl that her great grandmother might’ve made sourdough in. The caption reads:
Hand washing is the gentlest way to clean and maintain your most precious garments, especially delicate fabrics tagged "hand wash only" and "dry clean." That's because you'll avoid the agitation of washing machines and the chemicals in dry cleaning. Read on in stories and our bio for our quick tips for hand washing.
Again, modern conveniences are painted as somehow inferior (less intentional??), less slow. Chemicals are vilified (fun fact - water is a chemical compound!). And the luxury of time is portrayed as a viable option available for all, untethered to privilege of any kind. Words like “gentle” and “precious” underscore the moral superiority of this kind of cleaning.
This Laundress ad isn’t entirely dissimilar (albeit a touch less poetic) from this reel, in which a momfluencer washes a pair of “herringbone trousers” which have “gathered stories of picnics on damp earth beneath flowering boughs.” Never have grass stains held so much untapped potential for creativity, imagination, and creative fulfillment!
One of my favorite kinds of romantic cleaning content is the kind that fetishizes the appearance of moral goodness (glass containers) that’s only made possible through increased consumption. In this reel, McKinli Hatch removes her old (ugly) cleaning supplies from their shelf before unboxing brand new containers in which she decants the laundry pods and Downy fabric softener. She hashtags #Amazonhome but is conjuring a minimalist chateau in Provence.
There’s nothing wrong with creating a pretty laundry room as a hobby! And there’s nothing wrong with decanting stuff into pretty bottles if that’s your thing. But content like this leans on the assumed goodness of a certain aesthetic without bothering to critique the carbon footprint of the overnight Amazon order of the new glass fish bowl or the assumption that all mothers should be worried about the appearance of their fucking laundry detergent bottles. It urges followers to think about care work and cleaning as something one might display, when in truth, the work of mothering and the work of cleaning is intrinsically private.
To celebrate the publication of her second brilliant book, Essential Labor, I interviewed
for The Cut, and she had this to say about the highly personal nature of care work (which includes laundry! which includes fractions help! which includes reminding kids to say “thank you!” which includes knowing how they like their backs rubbed at bedtime!)In terms of capitalist patriarchal society, the joy and the value of care work and mothering can’t be measured. It can’t be repackaged. It can’t be quantified. And so there’s no way of validating it. So it’s the work of internally knowing that it matters. Because you can’t be looking for external validation. I feel sad as I’m saying this, but you’re just not going to get it, right?
Romantic cleaning content wants us to view care work as an exercise in proving one’s excellence as a mother. As a certain kind of mother. A mother who has the privilege of time to hand-wash hand-knit baby sweaters made with hand-dyed yarn using only hand-crafted soap. A mother who has the privilege to prioritize bespoke laundry paraphernalia rather than worry about whether or not she can afford to provide her child with a warm sweater for the winter, regardless of whether it’s hand-knit or not. A mother who adheres to highly specific, feminine aesthetics. A mother who views her role as a mother solely as a labor of love, something she was born to do, something she’s unendingly grateful to do.
Romantic cleaning is not about the community of care workers who make most of our lives possible. It’s not about sanitation workers waking up at 3AM to start their shifts. It’s not about professional cleaners dusting another mother’s immaculate Shaker cabinets and then going home to clean her own cabinets. It’s not about the childcare workers who figure out a baby’s nap schedule before passing on that information to the baby’s parents. Romantic cleaning content CERTAINLY isn’t about fathers since romantic cleaning content can only be romantic if it’s tied to a romanticized ideal of gender and a romanticized ideal of motherhood.
In an essay from 2017,
challenged the prevailing assumption, communicated through romantic cleaning content and a host of other mediums, that all moments and aspects of motherhood should be (or can be) profound. It’s long but it so perfectly encapsulates my objection to upholding motherhood and/or care work as pursuits that are only worth doing if they’re done beautifully.Motherhood is a not a cloak of moral superiority any more than possessing a penis or going to war. It’s an understandable urge to try and make every moment teem with meaning, but sometimes, your kid pukes, you catch it, and the moment is everything and nothing. Sometimes you just sit and stare at your baby, because what the hell else can you do? Just as much as motherhood has always been part of art, not all moments of motherhood rise to the level of great significance, aesthetic or otherwise. The everyday realities of motherhood are not all about noticing or experiencing. They are not always elemental. Sometimes they are just what they are — a lot of hard shit that you scrub out of your carpet because someone pooped on the floor (again). To assert that motherhood is in and of itself significance, is kitschy in its denials of shit. And any rendering of motherhood that doesn’t grapple with shit cannot be fully honest.
Everything and nothing.
To provide loved ones with food is everything. It gives them pleasure, it sustains their lives. It is nothing. It is a plate of leftovers that no one wants and no one really eats. To maintain a home is everything. It provides safety, comfort, a place to rest. It is nothing. It is graham cracker crumbs that feel icky under one’s bare feet. It is a vacuum bag that needs to be emptied. It is a pair of bloody underwear soaking in the sink. To mother is everything. It is to provide love, support, validation. It is to fill out permission slips on time. It is to change a pair of sheets in the middle of the night. It is a Netflix subscription.
This newsletter is called In Pursuit of Clean Countertops (in part) because it’s a nod to my earnest desire for beauty. I LOVE pretty glass bottles. I love Shaker cabinetry. But it’s also a nod to my understanding of this type of beauty as being something mothers in particular are encouraged to pursue as a way to prove their maternal value. As good capitalists. As good [feminine] women. And too often, the pursuit of beauty is undertaken not for ourselves, but for some sort of external gaze. Maybe it’s a deadbeat husband who wishes you were his trad wife. Maybe it’s your mother coming over for dinner tonight and expecting ironed napkins. Maybe it’s Instagram.
writes about the forces of oppression shaping the beauty industry, and she consistently points out that aesthetic ideals are never apolitical. In this piece, DeFino argues that participating in the beauty industry is compulsory for marginalized genders, specifically to “tasks that are so integrated into public-facing femininity and presentability that they may seem inconsequential or even natural, but are indeed effortful and expensive performances of beauty.” She points to leg shaving, eyebrow shaping, tooth whitening, “professional” makeup, and weight maintenance as examples of compulsory (and gendered) beauty tasks.Romantic cleaning content claims to celebrate the inner feeling of satisfaction and peace one can derive from cleaning and caretaking, when in fact, over and over again, the romantic cleaning tasks upheld through such content are ones that emphasize “public-facing femininity and presentability,” tasks that “may seem inconsequential or even natural, but are indeed effortful and expensive performances of beauty.” Again, if you’re like me, and enjoy combing Etsy for quirkily shaped milk glass bud vases, that is your prerogative! If you want to make your own dish soap, go forth and suds up! But to argue that all care work should be savored as romantic modes of fulfillment not only assumes all mothers WANT such modes of fulfillment, it also transforms essential labor into an outward performance of inner divine purpose rather than labor that should be respected, which, in capitalism, means to be paid for. It reshapes the private, personal acts of mothering and homemaking into an aspirational aesthetic you might adhere to and display, obscuring the universal truth that mothering and homemaking are cyclical and ongoing experiments in individual becoming.
And now - JUST FOR FUNSIES, here’s my favorite cleaning trick that would make all the romantic cleaning girlies explode with horror.