Will rituals of spring cleaning survive the coronavirus pandemic?
Spring 2021 is shaping up to be markedly different than last year, and the prospect of opening our homes to vaccinated visitors means that the old voices telling us its time to clean may be hard to silence. Yet maybe it is time instead to reconsider the social meanings of cleaning. History shows us that spring cleaning has served to maintain systems of class-, race- and gender-based power under the guise of morality and tradition. Technology has not eradicated domestic labor, but perhaps made more of it with more trappings to purchase to do it right. After a year in which most of us amended or abandoned traditions and rituals, perhaps the slate is now cleaner than ever to redefine our relationship to spring cleaning.