by SONALI KOLHATKAR
My favorite chair is surrounded by piles of art supplies. There is yarn stacked high in baskets that I once aspired to organize. Metal boxes of paint and brushes are squashed next to jewelry supplies that are threatening to fall off the edge of a too-full shelf. I want so badly… to want to clean. But then I invariably set aside such desires and settle in to knit for the night.
This is not what the mini Marie Kondo inside my brain wants. But it’s what the giant beating hub of the artist inside my heart wants—perhaps inspired by the likes of Yayoi Kusama’s organized chaos. And, it’s what all women, indeed all people, ought to want as we aspire for a just world.
Cleaning is women’s work. This is not an assertion. It’s an observation. In spite of the rise of the stay-at-home dad—a trend that began in the mid-2010s—women still do most of the housework. According to a 2020 Gallup poll, women are “much more likely than their husbands to care for children on a daily basis, shop for groceries and wash dishes.”
Indeed, there has been relentless messaging pushing us to maintain clean homes. We may be appalled by the overt sexism of vintage advertising, but even modern commercials for cleaning products are often gendered.
Even when stripped of gender, today’s messaging about maintaining cleanliness pushes us to wage a losing battle against germs and clutter. At the doctor’s office, bathroom walls sport signs reminding us of just how many millions of fecal bacteria gather on the undersides of our shoes. News stories breathlessly report scientific findings of how disgustingly bacteria-ridden everything is, from door knobs to the lemon slices that restaurants serve on water glasses.
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