Is Your House Too Clean? with Sarah Archer

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Is Your House Too Clean? with Sarah Archer"

You're Wrong About, hosted by Sarah Marshall, delves deep into the cultural obsession with cleanliness in the episode titled "Is Your House Too Clean? with Sarah Archer," released on April 15, 2025. This episode explores the historical and modern facets of our relationship with cleanliness, questioning the fine line between maintaining a hygienic environment and falling into the trap of over-cleaning.

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Introduction: The Obsession with Cleanliness

Sarah Marshall opens the episode by highlighting the pervasive influence of social media on our cleaning habits. She reflects on her ongoing conversations with Sarah Archer about how our homes, cleaning routines, cooking, gender roles, and everyday politics intertwine. Marshall sets the stage for a "thought cruise through the history of cleanliness and the rise of clean talk," posing critical questions: How clean is clean enough? And how clean is too clean?

Sarah Marshall [00:00]: "You're wrong about your house being clean enough already. It probably is."

The Rise of Clean Talk During the Pandemic

The discussion shifts to the phenomenon of "Clean Talk" that surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sarah Archer defines Clean Talk as an over-the-top approach to cleaning, characterized by excessive use of cleaning products and theatrical cleaning demonstrations often seen on platforms like TikTok.

Sarah Archer [03:15]: "Clean Talk is like a Bizarro World version of those weird cooking videos... it's all grotesque."

Marshall and Archer critique the performative aspect of Clean Talk, where the emphasis shifts from effective cleaning to engaging content, often leading to unnecessary wastage of resources.

Sarah Marshall [05:04]: "People in their 30s acting like kids TV hosts in a very varied, slightly unsettling way."

Historical Context: The 1884 Housekeeping Manual

To understand the roots of our current cleaning obsession, Marshall introduces a housekeeping manual from 1884 titled Anna Maria's Housekeeping. The manual, written by Susan Dunning Power in character as Anna Maria, provides a window into the Victorian-era emphasis on cleanliness as a moral virtue, intertwined with classist and racist undertones.

Sarah Marshall [14:21]: "It's aimed at the young housewife... filled with class language and racist against the Irish."

The manual extols the virtues of maintaining a spotless home, associating cleanliness with moral superiority and societal respectability. This historical perspective underscores how deeply ingrained the association between cleanliness and virtue is in our culture.

Germ Theory and Cleaning Practices

The conversation bridges the past and present by connecting the rise of germ theory in the late 19th century with contemporary cleaning habits. Archer explains how the understanding of germs revolutionized home hygiene, leading to more structured and intense cleaning regimens.

Sarah Archer [17:41]: "Modernism grew out of the reaction to tuberculosis... architects designed sanatoriums with flat surfaces to minimize dust accumulation."

Marshall draws parallels between Victorian cleanliness and today's Clean Talk, noting that while our motivations have evolved, the underlying anxiety about cleanliness remains.

Modern Social Media Influence on Cleaning

Social media's role in perpetuating extreme cleaning behaviors is critically examined. Marshall emphasizes that platforms like TikTok amplify over-the-top cleaning routines, often driven by corporate interests aiming to sell more products.

Sarah Marshall [07:12]: "Corporations profit from everyone constantly cleaning at a low to medium simmer."

The hosts discuss the environmental and psychological impacts of this trend, highlighting how it fosters a never-ending cycle of consumption and maintenance that can lead to anxiety and burnout.

The Balance Between Hygiene and Obsession

Marshall and Archer explore the delicate balance between maintaining a hygienic home and falling into obsessive cleaning behaviors. They advocate for a practical approach where cleaning serves personal well-being without becoming a source of stress or societal pressure.

Sarah Marshall [25:20]: "Your house doesn't need to be as sterile as an operating room."

Archer supports this by suggesting that while regular cleaning is essential, excessive sanitization can lead to unnecessary exposure to harmful chemicals and a diminished sense of personal comfort at home.

Classism and Racism in Cleaning Narratives

Delving deeper into the historical manual, the hosts uncover how cleanliness has been weaponized as a tool for class and racial discrimination. The 1884 text not only emphasizes moral virtue but also implicitly denigrates the working class and immigrants, particularly the Irish, associating them with uncleanliness and sanitary failures.

Sarah Marshall [36:00]: "Evergreen anxiety about immigrants as being unclean... diamantine with racism and classism."

This exploration reveals how societal norms around cleanliness have been used to enforce social hierarchies and marginalize certain groups, a theme that unfortunately persists in various forms today.

Cultural Implications: Decluttering vs. Personal Expression

The episode transitions to contemporary practices like decluttering and the Marie Kondo movement, where the focus is on keeping belongings that spark joy. Marshall and Archer critique the notion that decluttering leads to happiness, arguing instead for a personalized approach where one's living space reflects individual needs and preferences rather than societal expectations.

Sarah Marshall [47:56]: "Everything you own is something that has to live somewhere... can you afford this in terms of time?"

Archer adds that showcasing personal collections and meaningful objects can enhance the narrative and personality of a home, contrasting with the impersonal perfection often promoted online.

Poetic Reflection: Jonathan Swift's "The Ladies Dressing Room"

Adding a literary dimension, Marshall shares Jonathan Swift's poem The Ladies Dressing Room to illustrate the intimate and often uncomfortable realities of shared domestic spaces. The poem humorously yet poignantly captures the clash between idealized cleanliness and the messy truth of human existence.

Sarah Archer [56:17]: "When you share a house with someone, you're confronted with their humanity and messiness."

This reflection underscores the inevitability of imperfection and the importance of embracing the natural state of our living environments.

Conclusions: Embracing Humanity and Comfort in Living Spaces

In wrapping up, Marshall and Archer advocate for a shift in perspective—from viewing cleanliness as a moral obligation to seeing it as a personal choice that should enhance rather than impede one's quality of life. They encourage listeners to prioritize their well-being over societal pressures, emphasizing that a comfortable home is one that serves its inhabitants rather than conforming to unrealistic standards.

Sarah Marshall [50:43]: "It's radical to understand that it's all personal and you get to be above the level of hygiene, where your house isn't dangerous to you."

Archer concurs, highlighting the importance of allowing living spaces to reflect genuine personalities and stories rather than sanitized facades.

Sarah Archer [51:19]: "I love going into somebody's house and finding that it's really unusual or just seems very them. That's so much more interesting."

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Key Takeaways:

• Historical Roots: The obsession with cleanliness has deep historical roots intertwined with classism and racism.
• Social Media Influence: Platforms like TikTok amplify extreme cleaning behaviors, often fueled by commercial interests.
• Balance is Crucial: Maintaining hygiene is essential, but over-cleaning can lead to anxiety and environmental harm.
• Personalization Over Perfection: Homes should reflect individual needs and personalities rather than conforming to societal standards.
• Embracing Imperfection: Accepting the natural messiness of life fosters a more authentic and comfortable living environment.

This episode of You're Wrong About offers a comprehensive exploration of the cultural, historical, and psychological dimensions of our cleaning habits, urging listeners to reevaluate their relationship with cleanliness and prioritize personal well-being over societal expectations.

Transcript

[Sarah Marshall]

If anything, we should make more things smell like vaginas. And with that, I will see myself out. Welcome to ya Wrong about. I'm Sarah Marshall and today we have a special spring cleaning episode with our home economics correspondent, Sarah Archer. About this time last year, Sarah came on to talk about the trad wife. And now we're going on a thought cruise through the history of cleanliness and the rise of clean talk. And we are going to be asking the question how clean is clean enough and how clean is too clean. I loved this conversation because it felt like part of a bigger conversation that I'm always having with Sarah Archer about our relationships with our houses and cleaning and cooking and gender and the politics of everyday life. And it just remains completely fascinating to me. So I hope you have a good time listening. And we also, if you are tickled by this episode, have a fun bonus that Sarah Archer was on recently about Peg Bracken and the I Hate to cook books, one of my personal favorites. Our most recent bonus episode, by the way, is our marked bonus on Marilyn Monroe's dress and the time Kim Kardashian wore it. That's a wonderful conversation that I got to have with Caroline O'Donoghue and Eve Lindley. You can find bonus episodes on Apple, plus subscriptions and Patreon. And you can find our newest episode right here, right now. Here you go. Thank you for being here. Welcome to your wrong about the podcast where we ask you, isn't your house clean enough already? It probably is. And what's the historical precedent for all of this cleaning? And when can we stop? And with me today is our home and garden correspondent, Sarah Archer.

[Sarah Archer]

Hello, Sarah Marshall.

[Sarah Marshall]

Hello. How are you doing?

[Sarah Archer]

I am doing okay. How are you doing in these strange times?

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, you know, just. Just toddling into spring.

[Sarah Archer]

I do know.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. And that's part of our topic.

[Sarah Archer]

That is part of our topic. Health, human services. Things of this nature. Yes.

[Sarah Marshall]

Things that we do to distract ourselves when things are weird. So we're talking today about the project of cleaning the house, which I think is one of the most fascinating topics in culture. My opening question, building off of our work about this time last year, talking about the trad wife and I continue to have a lot of questions about home economics. And the one I bring to you today is do you remember the rise of clean talk during the pandemic?

[Sarah Archer]

I do. I have to say I'm not on TikTok though, so I was kind of getting it second and third hand, but.

[Sarah Marshall]

It was still seeping out like light Through a badly framed door.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah, like, like, like somebody who's. Who's used too much cleansing fluid.

[Sarah Marshall]

Well, and so tell me, like, what is cleantalk to you?

[Sarah Archer]

So my understanding of Clean Talk is that it was like the genre next door to the phenomenon of people sort of making fruit loops from scratch like that kind of. That there's a little bit of a sense of. There's a deliberate absurdity to it. And that there's a kind of, you know, posing a question how best to clean this thing? And then the solution is always like, will you dump an entire canister of barkeeper's friend on it? And then you dump an entire thing of palm olive dish soap on it and then you do some weird theatrical scrubbing and it's all. And then it was kind of like clean puppet theater or clean interpretive dance or something.

[Sarah Marshall]

Potemkin countertops. Exactly.

[Sarah Archer]

Like, it was kind of. It was not in the genre of say your Martha Stewart's or your other home gurus of kind of telling you exactly the right amount of cleanser to use and the exact right brush and the exact right tool not to use too much.

[Sarah Marshall]

And like the smallest amount that you can reasonably get away with as well. Which is a very nice piece of information have.

[Sarah Archer]

Which is smart and thrifty. Exactly. So that this is more. It's almost like the sort of cleaning product, like Bizarro World version of those weird cooking videos where people were putting all the ingredients in a single casserole or something and it was just some grotesque. And there's probably a name for that. Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I feel like that has gone down or else I'm just personally seeing less of it. But we had a lot of like wasting food theatrics for a while, which I just hate.

[Sarah Archer]

I hate wasting food.

[Sarah Marshall]

That was huge.

[Sarah Archer]

It's so sad. Why do you want to waste food?

[Sarah Marshall]

You know, the like countertop nachos or you know that lady who made like a million of these and one of them was like countertop spaghetti. And it's also a lot of transparent rage bait to drive engagement.

[Sarah Archer]

I think that's the main impetus.

[Sarah Marshall]

And this kind of thing was often sort of like people in their 30s sort of acting like kids TV hosts in a very varied, slightly unsettling way. And in this case it was like a grown up woman pretending to be mixing cocktails inside of her toilet bowl. Which brings us over nicely to the world of CleanTalk, where you first fill your toilet with ice and then you put all your product on it so that like, theoretically, the ice melts and it can coat the inside of the bowl. But isn't that what foam was invented for? That's the story. I think it's just because it's a really striking visual to fill a toilet with ice. Like, do you ever really need to fill your toilet with ice? I'm not an expert, but no. You don't ever?

[Sarah Archer]

I don't think so. You don't? No.

[Sarah Marshall]

I am a grown up woman who has sort of learned in adulthood truly how to clean. And I've learned a lot of it from social media where, you know, I am watching for enjoyment, but where I learn in an incidental kind of way how to do the occasional thing while I'm searching for dopamine. Like a truffle pig in the forest.

[Sarah Archer]

You're sniffing it out, just kind of snarling around. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And occasionally accidentally, you'll learn something. And I think we're living in a time of greater than usual obsession with like cleaning and organizing and decorating in our houses and what they say about us and who we are because of them and what we consume and how we consume it. And social media is playing a big role in all of this. One of the things that I have come to believe, basically, which is unfortunate because I didn't want it to be true, is that the secret to cleaning and housework, broadly, is that you have to just constantly be doing a little bit of it. And if you're constantly doing a little bit of it, then it doesn't pile up that much. And if each person living in a household is constantly doing a little bit of it, then theoretically it stays a little bit for everyone rather than turning to a lot of bit for one person. Who is the mom, who is Santa.

[Sarah Archer]

Exactly. And which is also a good business model if you're the kind of person who sells cleaning products.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yes.

[Sarah Archer]

To have everybody at it constantly at like a, like a low to medium simmer.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I guess what I'm trying to figure out and what I believe is maybe like the secret to some kind of happiness is like how much little bit do you always have to be doing? Because I think in theory it's like not that much. Right. You have to wash dishes and those do pile up. If you do anything ambitious like you have to clean surfaces, you have to sweep. But we're also, I think, in this sort of clean talk social media world being shown a model of existing where, you know, also the people doing the most outrageous things rise to the top.

[Sarah Archer]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

Because they drive engagement. And I think A lot of people are worried, possibly, well, kind of not believing it, but also maybe kind of believing it, that everyone is deep cleaning every day.

[Sarah Archer]

Yes.

[Sarah Marshall]

And so the question that I brought to you or one of them, because I have mixed feelings about this whole phenomenon, right. Because like, I like to watch it. I am one of the millions of people who clearly enjoys watching it. And I think there's a lot of great people on it. There's Vanessa Amaro, who taught me how to roll a towel that's improved my life dramatically. And it doesn't cost anything. Yeah, you roll it like it's like the way they do in spas. And then you look at your towels and you're like, look at those towels.

[Sarah Archer]

And then it's like a little spa day in your bathroom.

[Sarah Marshall]

Exactly. And that's the light side of clean talk of the force. Right? Because it's like it doesn't cost anything, it's a skill. And that's in, you know, as we always come back to, who will win the Martha crown in the Game of Thrones, the one who teaches skills.

[Sarah Archer]

And Martha, in fact, is the person who taught, not me personally, but taught the community of which I am a member how to fold a fitted sheet. And that, that is one of the things that I'm actually extraordinarily good at.

[Sarah Marshall]

I gotta get on that. I do not know how to fold a fitted sheet yet. And I guess, like looking at clean talk, right, because there's like, there's, you know, it's a false sided die. And a big side of the die is a terrible metaphor. But one of the sides of the die is very corporation driven. And part of my feeling is like this is clearly driven to some extent by sort of the corporatization of everything and how, you know, if you are an influencer and you sell people Amazon gadgets and products, then you are obviously incentivized to teach them how to use the products faster so they can buy more of them and they can buy more different ones. And we can have this sort of cleaning arms race where no one's house is giant or clean enough. But also you look at it and you're like, corporations can, they're very insidious and they can certainly drive culture to an extent. But if something isn't going to take off, it isn't going to take off. And like, it's interesting that so many people, myself included, just want to watch people clean.

[Sarah Archer]

Isn't it fascinating?

[Sarah Marshall]

It's a little bit too much cleaning. And I have to think that Maybe it's connected to the fact that we might be a little freaked out, but to learn about that, maybe we'd have to go back in time.

[Sarah Archer]

We probably would. I have taken to enjoying power washing videos. Do you watch power washing videos on often? Every now and then. Those are very satisfying.

[Sarah Marshall]

Those are great. Yeah. Like, here are a couple of matrices. Things are happening on right where there's like, a big contingent of people who are like, oh, my God, there are too many microplastics. I've got a sandwich bag full of microplastics in my brain. Probably. I have to avoid all plastics and also sleep with my retainer in somehow.

[Sarah Archer]

That darned Invisalign.

[Sarah Marshall]

I don't have a retainer. I have teeth like David Mitchell, but everyone else does. And then there's, like, in a way that feels sort of like, again, like some sort of weird balance to it. People who are evidently like microplastics maxing, you know, because again, if you're gonna, like, clean and organize to a certain extent, then, like, everything is going in an acrylic container. You have to be able to see your milk. You have to put it in an acrylic thing and write milk on it or not. Just trust yourself to remember it's milk. I'm not against frigscaping, but you just. You gotta stay on top of expiration dates or else you're gonna be confused. And, you know, there's that, and then there's also this obsession with cleanliness and cleaning and disinfecting everything and putting bleach on everything and exposing yourself to a lot of caustic chemicals that probably it would be nice to, like, limit your exposure to because, you know, paired with, you know, us also living in a time, you know, of kind of realizing how many people don't believe in basic germ theory. Like, it was way more than I thought it would be. But something I also wonder about is sort of whether around this time of the dawning of germ theory, of sort of this being something we were just beginning to figure out, or to understand the scientific basis behind. And also seeing people accepting or rejecting, whether that is similar to what we're going through today, where we know that there are dangerous things coming into the house and, like, the kitchen where we prepare food and the bed where we sleep and all these other places, and the toilet where we put ice, famously. But we don't know exactly how they're getting in or where they're coming from. And that makes us feel like we have to just go over the top with absolutely everything maybe.

[Sarah Archer]

Right. Which kind of gets to the natural. What is it? The naturalist fallacy? I think that this idea that anything that's chemical in air quotes is dangerous and bad and anything that's natural in air quotes is good for you, but kind of not understanding that it's sort of, you're applying kind of a human binary to the natural world that doesn't make any sense. And that the way in which our bodies interact with chemicals of all kinds is, is impossible to police. It's impossible to trace every interaction. And it's impossible to say, for instance, when, you know, you read an article about the fact that there's, let's say, certain kind of cancers are on the rise among younger people. And then you're, you know, kind of consuming, you know, TikTok content about people using 10 times the amount of cleanser that they're supposed to for a given, you know, a toilet, ice bath. And think like, who knows, who knows why these things are happening? Maybe it's the oil industry, maybe it's microplastics, maybe it's any of the above.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. And the idea of sort of fixating on what we feel like we can control exactly when things are out of control feels like part of this too.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah. And that's, that's why the fixation on the home.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Well, why don't we unwind by cracking open an 1884 vintage of housekeeping manual.

[Sarah Archer]

Well, that sounds like a little slice of heaven.

[Sarah Marshall]

Doesn't that sound like a little good clean fun?

[Sarah Archer]

It does.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay, so this is a housekeeping manual written, aimed as, I think historically most housekeeping manuals are at like the young housewife starting off young ladies and you know, implicitly aimed at the middle to upper middle class white woman basically, or the upwardly mobile working class white woman. But there's a lot of fascinating class language in this and also very racist against the Irish. So let's, let's get into that.

[Sarah Archer]

Not surprising.

[Sarah Marshall]

So this is chapter eight, To Clean and Keep Clean.

[Sarah Archer]

And what is this book? What is the title of the book?

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, this is called Anna Maria's Housekeeping and it's the character of Anna Maria telling you how to keep your house clean. It was written by some other lady.

[Sarah Archer]

Wow. I don't think I've ever seen this before. That's amazing.

[Sarah Marshall]

This is by an author named Susan Dunning Power who's writing in character as Anna Maria.

[Sarah Archer]

Wow.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay. Chapter eight, To Clean and Keep Clean. The neighbors who remember her speak of my grandmother as A pattern housekeeper of the old style. With 11 children, a large circle of acquaintances to entertain, and a fastidious husband. She managed to do and direct everything for house and family in the nicest manner without losing her serenity. Better not lose that. Or being other than delicately neat in her dress. And the Yankee phrase dirt wouldn't stick to her. Therefore, I have always had great respect for one of her favorite maxims handed down. That one keep clean was worth a great many make cleans again. I think that's true. And it's also the most annoying advice that anyone could possibly give you.

[Sarah Archer]

You know what it reminds me of? It's very like how to write your dissertation in ten minutes a day. Like it's that you should. It's like, don't do it all the night before. Do it, you know, in little pieces every single day. Like a discipline, which is so irritating.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And you're like, you know, if I hadn't waited until the night before, I wouldn't be reading this book, would I? Here we go. Still, one must make clean before she can keep clean. And Irish Katie has not left the kitchen in the glorious we were talking about last time. I don't envy you the house cleaning. But if bringing purity, order and safety into the dark corners of the world is a heavenly mission, yours is one. And where should such purity and safety begin, if not in one's own home? You have read of Ms. Octavia Hill, the English lady who rented tenement houses in the worst part of London and had them cleaned, taking part, I believe, in the scrubbing and whitewashing with her own hands to give the wretched poor a glimpse of that cleanliness which is next to godliness. It was one of the finest missions of the century. And I have thought some homes where education and taste had place needed a similar visitation. She's saying rich people have gross houses, too. One would think the pictures would leave the walls, the books come down from the shelves. The tidies and knick knacks get up and shake off the dust. And homes kept with the negligent half order which is all people seem to attempt now, their time being too much taken up with Kensington work, Tennyson clubs and socials to see that their houses are pleasantly or wholes. They let the poisonous dust gather under the beds and in corners, allow contagion to breed in vile damp places left by slops. And food becomes tainted in their closets. Their very garments gather musty odors while they are taken up with finer things, as they suppose. As if one Read poetry with a face unwashed. There is more sincere refinement in the clean, bare floors, spotless pantries, and sweet, airy bedrooms of plain homes where pictures and books are luxuries than in fine houses, houses where everything is attended to save the cardinal virtues of health and neatness.

[Sarah Archer]

Wow. Holy mackerel. So this is fascinating because it's actually. When was it published? Did you say?

[Sarah Marshall]

1884?

[Sarah Archer]

1884. Okay. Would you like to guess, just for fun, the year that physician and scientist Robert Koch discovered the tubercule bacillus.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, 1884 to. Ah, nice. Oh, my God. Anna Maria is on top of it.

[Sarah Archer]

Totally on top of it. And this is kind of like gets into this super interesting connection to European modernism because a lot of it grew out of the reaction to tuberculosis that there was this kind of big push to all of that. What you were talking about, sort of, you know, sunlight, space, big windows, you know, kind of no dark corners. There were a lot of sanatoriums built, and architects like Le Corbusier and Peter Behrens and Bruno Todd, one of the big, like, really influential early modernists, Alvar Aalto, designed sanatoriums in Europe. The chicness of flat surfaces, this was another big thing. Like, instead of like in the Victorian era, you wanted to show your abundance and kind of cultivation by having lots of stuff and upholstery and fringe and lot of carved wood.

[Sarah Marshall]

Feels like a real knickknack era. Yeah. And like hair art made by young lesbians. Totally look into it.

[Sarah Archer]

I. I certainly will. A lot of time and energy and persons to keep all that stuff clean to dust every little nook and cranny. So one stylish solution to that is to have a lot of flat surfaces and to have lots of planes, geometric. So one of the reasons why I.

[Sarah Marshall]

Feel like I effed up in a classic Victorian way, actually, because I'm looking around my house and it's like a lot of velve and sort of like high nap.

[Sarah Archer]

You had a lot of.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, a lot of. A lot of knickknacks.

[Sarah Archer]

Well, you're very 19th century, and that's what happens. That's, you know.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yes, but everything is covered in cat hair. That's the thing. I mean, tell me about it. If I had like a gross beige house, I could wipe everything clean. But I just love surfaces that attract cat hair. So what am I to do?

[Sarah Archer]

People. And I think people still sort of find it chilly. You know, it's not cozy, it's not homey. It's not, you know, this sort of sanatorium chic, a little museum. It's a museum. It's clinical. And it was meant to be because this was really kind of like in an era when people were, you know, between that and the flu pandemic. I mean it was a very, it was a terrifying like bacterial era. Right. If you, you know. But the 1880s to around World War I. And that was really what modernism grew out of, at least in a technical sense. So of course the fact that it was also utopian, you know, designed to be sort of accessible to the common person. That's what brutalism is all about. You know, everybody could afford concrete. It was also really, you know, kind of people were spooked by germs. And so I, one of the things that I find really interesting about like maga aesthetics, which is not, not an interesting topic. I hate the fact that I, that I have to be interested, but it's.

[Sarah Marshall]

Like forced itself to become interesting. I think over time.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah, it has forced itself on us. It's not minimalist, it's really maximalist. There's a lot going on. It's kind of like chock a block and there's something kind of Victorian about it.

[Sarah Marshall]

Or perhaps even rococo. Perhaps even, let's go crazy, let's say.

[Sarah Archer]

It might even be Ro.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, you look at Mar a Lago, it certain an attempt at rococo.

[Sarah Archer]

Absolutely. It's, it's Rococo revival and it's also kind of.

[Sarah Marshall]

But then there's the parts where they like ran out of money and they, yeah, there's gaps and it's kind of.

[Sarah Archer]

That like South Florida, like sort of like Fantasia of like Spanish architecture that was happening, like the red tile and all that stuff. But I, I, I mean you look at Mar a Lago and it's got to be a germ factory, right? Because it's like all of these upholstered surfaces, you know, there's a lot of.

[Sarah Marshall]

Antiques, to name my favorite subreddit. Impossible to clean or is it horrible to clean?

[Sarah Archer]

Yes. And so all of which is to say as a long winded way of saying that aesthetics and cleanliness have a long history together. They go, they have gone, they have been in tension and gone together for many, many, many years.

[Sarah Marshall]

It also strikes me the early days of our most recent pandemic were interesting because there was a period when we all believed and I think that, you know, the data was kind of supporting this, but we also were just, I think maybe trying to control what we could that it was spreading through surfaces. Right. And we all were like, cleaning the mail and stuff.

[Sarah Archer]

Yes, cleaning. Mail and cleaning. I remember doing this. I remember going to get a bunch of canned goods and like, Lysoling with like, wipes.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Sarah Archer]

Like, all the cans. It. Very earnestly. I thought this was a great idea. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, and that is. And the thing is, like, it's. It's nice to kind of look back and laugh about it now, but like, that is what you do when you don't know as much as you would really like to, you know, and think.

[Sarah Archer]

About what we're seeing now with a sort of make America healthy Again movement, which is not something that I think is good, but I think given the vagaries of what you were mentioning before, microplastics, etc. All of these kind of mysterious things that are, you know, seeping into our world unbidden. We don't know what the effects are.

[Sarah Marshall]

There's been a lot of seeping the last years or so.

[Sarah Archer]

You know, we're exposed to a lot of stuff.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, you know, and also kind of roughly this time period, right, the late 70s, we had all the news around Love Canal, where basically, like, absolutely toxic waste was seeping into the groundwater underneath an elementary school and a residential neighborhood. And only area moms dared to fight back. And, you know, that's the kind of. The birth of the Superfund site is around that time. So it's. Yeah, in the 80s, we had kind of done 70s and 80s, we. We're seeing the effects of having done all the damage that we did with these, like, marvelous inventions that we came up with, you know, during and after World War II.

[Sarah Archer]

Dow Chemical. Right. Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And I mean, and that's. And that to me is part of the picture too, Right. Because we have like, one of the clean talk people who I. Who I delight in following, who is very over the top, like, has these, you know, huge racks of like, cleaning supplies just like in her bedroom.

[Sarah Archer]

Wow.

[Sarah Marshall]

Just, you know, I think just because she likes them or because it's, you know, it's free advertising for your TikTok shop if you do that. If you also sell cleaning supplies, which a lot of people do. But like, I, you know, I've seen people comment like, I, I don't know if you should be sleeping with all those cleaning supplies in your room. And like, I think it's probably fine if they're in their containers. But like, but also there's, you know.

[Sarah Archer]

You don't want to be like, Inhaling that stuff. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

But there's a level of daily cleaning, especially in an enclosed space, where if we're following the guidelines of sort of what marketing wants us to believe versus what, the sort of minimum that we need to actually get something done, then it feels like we're at risk of inevitably, like, some amount of overkill.

[Sarah Archer]

It does. It does, I think. And sort of lack of ventilation and, you know, kind of using more product than necessary and kind of, you know, it's. Also, your home doesn't need to be, let's say, as sterile as, like, an operating room. Right. It doesn't. You know what I mean?

[Sarah Marshall]

Hopefully. I mean, until we have to start doing surgery in our houses. Well, but only part of the house. Only like, you know, a big bathroom or something.

[Sarah Archer]

So it's like, if you're gonna kind of like, do a counter wipe down, it doesn't have. You don't have to sort of take out the big guns every time you need to wipe off your countertop. It's like you don't want to be sort of. You know, I've definitely had experiences when I was cleaning and kind of didn't open a window and maybe using something that was kind of on the stronger side and. And kind of feeling it that, you know, that. That feeling sort of like you breathe in and it's like if you're cleaning with bleach or something, it doesn't feel.

[Sarah Marshall]

No, I am not at all comfortable with using bleach. Like, I should use more of it because, like, I don't really cook meat very much. And part of the reason is because I don't feel secure that I know how to properly disinfect things, and I don't have a whole other cutting board for it, and I don't feel like buying another cutting board. And I've been in a detente, you know, but. Right. It feels like. Like we have pretty much the information we need, I think, to know how to keep our houses from getting us sick at this point, which we didn't always.

[Sarah Archer]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

And what we know, basically, is like, you know, clean your bathroom, wash your hands. Like oral fecal is a vector for infection, one of the big ones. And not that people didn't have a sense of that before we had germ theory. They just didn't know exactly why. Properly disinfect your kitchen and stuff that you handle and prepare raw meat on or with or just, you know, avoiding mold, keeping things like dry and, you know, like, it's not hugely overwhelming. I think it's Basically about like places where you eat and go to the bathroom are kind of the main focus, you know, Pretty much, yeah. But I feel like when we look at sort of the. The culture of clean talk, like, or the cleaning culture, that you can sort of see some people exhibiting or at least enjoying a viewership of, it feels like there's a contradiction. But I think there isn't as much of a contradiction as I think there is when I get closer to it. Because part of me wants to be like, well, some people don't believe in germs, and some people believe in germs so much that they're sanitizing everything all day long. So that's different. But really, I think there's a lot that more kind of superstition at play in over cleaning. Right. Because, you know, past a certain point, it can't really get any cleaner. It doesn't need to be deep cleaned again. You're just doing it because you feel like it or because you're under contract or you're compelled.

[Sarah Archer]

Yes.

[Sarah Marshall]

And if you're compelled and it's something that you're aware is a compulsion but that you're managing and that's not negatively affecting your life, then I don't know, that's. That's probably fine.

[Sarah Archer]

I mean, if you're using relatively mild products, then it's probably fine.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's maybe the main thing. Yeah, let's. If we're gonna pour too much of something all over everywhere, then let's use some Dr. Bronner's.

[Sarah Archer]

Exactly. Mrs. Meyers.

[Sarah Marshall]

I've never seen someone theatrically pour a whole thing of Dr. Bronner's on something, and I would love to see that happen. And then a dramatic reading of the label.

[Sarah Archer]

It's time. It's high time.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, but, yeah, that it's like there's a certain minimum amount of just like hygienic cleanliness, that it's not that hard to reach. I mean, cleaning is always hard, but that you don't have to spend most of the day, every day cleaning in order to definitely not as like, yeah, that. That even Irish Katie can manage. I'm so sorry. And then on top of that, it feels like we're actually kind of getting back into what to my understanding was what people basically believed, at least in the United States and sor. Of English speaking cultures before we sort of accepted germ theory for a while, which is the miasma theory of disease, which is just that, like, bad smells are. It's vibes. It's a vibe It's a feeling. Yeah. Can you talk about that?

[Sarah Archer]

Right. So my understanding, although this. The early modern period is not my speciality, but let's say, just in general, my understanding is that there was an early sense, like the word quarantine comes from the Italian word for 40, meaning 40 days. Like you separate a patient for 40 days. And they learned that, I think, from physicians from the Islamic world. Like, they. They kind of like germ theory in its very earliest. That nobody knew what a germ was, but there was a.

[Sarah Marshall]

An observation, all their ideas and then took credit.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah, exactly. And so this kind of seeped into as. Since things are seeping Renaissance Italy. And there was a kind of like, general understanding that not what we would consider scientific, that you would sort of need to isolate a patient who had something that's appeared to be communicable, what the vector of contagion was that, you know, maybe didn't know. And this idea that it was like a fog or a smell or a kind of bad odor that would descend on an area, you know, and then everyone would get the sweating sickness or something.

[Sarah Marshall]

And weirdly, it happens a lot in poorer neighborhoods, oddly enough.

[Sarah Archer]

And I'm thinking back to those, like, sort of those wild plague masks with, like, the beaks that are kind of like during the great plague. But there was this belief that you could sort of protect yourself from the miasma by wearing this get up and.

[Sarah Marshall]

You would put something nice smelling in it, right? Yes.

[Sarah Archer]

Like something like fragrant, like a posy, a sort of floral or something sweet that would kind of disinfect. And so they were. In a strange way, they were kind of. It was a stab at something real. Like, they got that there was something in the air. They just didn't know what it was. And I think that what this speaks to is this sort of generalized awareness and understandable fear of, you know, chemicals in the groundwater, superfund sites, microplastics, et cetera, that we cannot control. There is just absolutely no way. And frankly, if we had all the resources and money and time and manpower in the world, probably still couldn't control.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. Because it's already out there, to be honest. Like, there have been a lot of barrels of nuclear waste hidden in a lot of parks, to quote the Simpsons.

[Sarah Archer]

In a strange way, I can see where putting your faith in something that sort of can't really be disproven because it's so innocuous, like, you know, rather than kind of like the reality, which is probably there is there. There probably isn't a way to detoxify all the stuff that's floating around. And you know, that is may or may not be harmful and that it's, you know, it's beyond your control. So kind of you sort of putting your faith in something that's a little bit superstitious. I can see where you can't measure the results. It's, there's, there is, there are no results. So, so why not, you know, kind of say, oh, I'm going to kind of like ritually do this thing. And it's, you know, it helps.

[Sarah Marshall]

And then I think the answer to that is into the like, how clean does your house need to be? Question is like as clean as you need it to be. Right. Because it's for you. You're the one who lives.

[Sarah Archer]

It's yours.

[Sarah Marshall]

And you, you know, you deserve to be able to feel comfortable with people coming over. But like, there's in Peg Bracken's I hate to housekeep book. One of the things she talks about in that book is that no one has ever said, oh, I love so and so. She has such a perfectly kept house. I just love that about her.

[Sarah Archer]

Exactly.

[Sarah Marshall]

And if your house is a little bit ratty, it'll make the neighbors feel better and it'll make your friends feel better. And as long as it's not unhygienic, then I think that's basically true. You know, 100.

[Sarah Archer]

I think that. Yeah. I have never in my entire life gone over to someone's house and thought, you know, like, well, have you seen the top of the refrigerator? Because I just went in there. I mean, nobody cares. And it's even. I'm pretty fastidious about stuff like this and I don't care.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Sarah Archer]

It's just I think that there are things like when people are coming over, I'll do. I have kind of like a, like a 10 to 15 minute supermarket sweep that I'll do to just kind of hit like a few surfaces and areas and kind of tidy up. But I think honestly, like, if you want to make somebody feel welcome, like flowers or something to eat, it's like that's really you, you want somebody to sort of feel like you're, you're happy to have them in your house and that like, if they're not going to take a magnifying glass to your, like baseboards or upholstery or something to say, like, well, there's cat hair. Of course there's, there's going to be cat hair. Like, that's just. There's cat hair. But I think there is a kind of anxious response which I have had to kind of unlearn over the years to be like, well, there can't be any dust. There can't. Because then what will people think? You know, and that the fact is that most people don't think anything about it because everything.

[Sarah Marshall]

They're gonna think you're Irish, which is true.

[Sarah Archer]

Which is accurate, and they're gonna be right.

[Sarah Marshall]

This also makes me think of just speaking of, speaking of anti Irish sentiment, that famously Typhoid Mary's full name was Mary Mallon. And it does seem interesting that she, you know, she became poster child, and this is a phrase we still use today, whether we know the story or not, for the idea of knowingly spreading a disease. Right. Or I don't know if you have to do it knowingly. I think we use that term just, you know, in a. In a more general way.

[Sarah Archer]

I think that's kind of fast and loose. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

But I think it's, you know, it certainly is. She's not. She certainly has not endured as a sympathetic figure. And to be honest, I don't think she really was because she apparently, like, threatened with a piece of kitchenware the first guy who came to tell her that he thought she had typhoid. Really?

[Sarah Archer]

Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, my gosh.

[Sarah Marshall]

You gotta. You gotta do what you gotta do. She's a working woman. You gotta defend yourself. And. But she had been apparent, I think, spreading typhoid for like six or seven years in these different households she works in.

[Sarah Archer]

And she was just asymptomatic herself, like she was.

[Sarah Marshall]

And she was asymptomatic. And she also apparent, apparently believed for her entire life, at least according to her, that she never. She never believed that she had typhoid. And at a certain point, there was, you know, enough evidence that, like, she really probably needed to accept that she didn't. But, I mean, there's. Yeah, there's some interesting complexity to that. You know, this was a case of somebody who for many years was working and remaining undetected and just kind of leaving typhoid in her wake. And actually, I think only when she got to a more wealthy community where there hadn't been typhoid in a while and where there was more of a sense of, oh, we're going to look really bad if there's typhoid unchecked.

[Sarah Archer]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

That people kind of brought out the big guns and figured out what was going on because she would always just kind of move on to the next.

[Sarah Archer]

Job, she just kind of go to the next house and, you know, spread.

[Sarah Marshall]

A little typhoid and make her famous peach ice cream dessert, which is ice cream with frozen peaches with a little typhoid on top, which, apart from that.

[Sarah Archer]

Last part, actually sounds incredible.

[Sarah Marshall]

I know, it sounds great. Yeah, we should all have that. But, like, she was not the only person spreading typhoid, you know, but it was just like. It was an interesting story. It was an interesting case study. And it was also coming in through an Irish kitchen servant or through an Irish cook specifically.

[Sarah Archer]

And so that speaks to this kind of like, evergreen anxiety about sort of immigrants as being unclean, which goes back as far as, you know.

[Sarah Marshall]

I mean, people have had immigrants to be racist about probably.

[Sarah Archer]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Let me read you a little bit more of Anna Maria's housekeeping again, because there's just. I mean, part of this is actually somewhat useful information, but also is just the language of it is really just kind of fascinating.

[Sarah Archer]

Her writing style is incredible. Yeah, like, blown away.

[Sarah Marshall]

Okay. House dust is minute particles of soil from the street, sprouted by the feet or sifted through door and window casings. Fine ashes from the fire mixed with minute scales of skin from our bodies and fluff from clothing and carpets. These particles, nearly invisible themselves, collect in such amount that they will soon show in an unswept room in the locks of lint which gather under tables, along walls and undisturbed places. This waste goes on day and night. Grinding of dust from roads, wear of clothes and carpets, fine dust flying from fires and atoms from human bodies. It irritates the lungs to breathe ever so little damp begins to ferment in it, poisoning the air. And the only safe way to dispose of it is to sweep it up and burn it escalated. Don't throw sweepings about the yards or vaults, but burn them instantly, or if that is not convenient, keep them in a barrel to burn the first chance. The grime on the paint left by Katie's careless washing is the sediment of dust in the water and dust settled in the steam of cooking, which, if not often aired and washed, leaves the dingy look of frowzy kitchens. You don't want a frowzy kitchen. Begin to wash doors and baseboards and you will see the annoyance dust harbors in the moldings of doors and windows run the dust lice which gnaw books, paint and wood and are ready to fall into food. Smeary paint invites that ugly moth which delights in nothing so much as a greasy spot in a warm room in which will lay its eggs. Next, in the dining room carpets. In that dusty corner behind the wood box, a venturous ant has made her nest. And some July morning you will be surprised by her emigrant family in the storeroom. Especially if spilt sugar and meal are left to tempt them there under the sink and dampness and greets water beetles and roaches increase like Worf rats. All these and more in swarms, I have found in the melancholy process of clearing after a kitchen girl who could not be at the trouble of keeping things entirely clean. These insects thrive on refuse and they cannot be regarded as safe or agreeable things in a kitchen, running over food and leaving corners offensive with their traces.

[Sarah Archer]

Wow.

[Sarah Marshall]

Because, like, I guess, basically true, but like, boy, was that a scary way to say that. And also, really, again, like, something like, I couldn't raise the ants and immigrants. Yeah.

[Sarah Archer]

Well, listening to that made me think that in this, this time period when she's writing, there's the kind of like, dirt and grime of just being a human being on planet Earth that has. That is eternal. Right?

[Sarah Marshall]

And there's like the dirt and grime of the Shire, right?

[Sarah Archer]

And then there's the mysterious seepage of, like, industrial byproducts, which is something that doesn't begin until at the earliest, the first industrial revolution, which probably, if.

[Sarah Marshall]

If you're worried about that being d. You probably also shouldn't be burning it in a barrel.

[Sarah Archer]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

But again, she tried, you know, by.

[Sarah Archer]

The 1880s, it's, you know, we're in industrialization, so there's. Yeah, and there's, you know, there's. There is not a good handle on either one. So I can actually see. I'm not going to say that I can sympathize with her character as like the sort of insect immigrant analogies, like, not super great. But I do understand that sense that you're under siege, that, like, things are, you know, something's in the walls. It's kind of, you know, because it's. It takes so much effort and time to mitigate any of that. And nothing is automated. Everything is, Is hard to do. Yeah, it's. It's fascinating.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And I think it is like the, the sense of infestation by a new kind of dirt is true and real. But then it's has today mixing with a sense of anxiety and racism aimed at other human beings and classism, crucially, because all of a sudden the clean house becomes a sign of virtue. And anyone who can't keep their house clean Must be a bad person and un American as opposed to having no.

[Sarah Archer]

Time and needs to be visited by a social worker.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, and let me also read to you just a little bit here about, from this insane book about the tools that you're going to use, because here we are in a time of anxiety, racistly describing cleaning a kitchen and cleaning, you know, everything, because we don't know where the threat is coming from and yet it doesn't cost that much. So I'll read you what we're supposed to do. Okay. Have everything eatable, covered closely and put away tables and sink cleared, plenty of hot water, two pails, an old broom and a clean new one, Two scrubbing brushes, a a stumpy whisk broom for cleaning windows, a stout nut picker or sharp skewer of hard wood to get the dirt out of cracks. Plenty of cloths for wiping glass and paint. Old flannel or merino underwear makes soft mop cloths which wring easily. You must have good tools to work with and a well set mop in large cloths will do the cleaning in half the time of poor ones. If you haven't old cloths enough, it pays to buy a yard or two of coarse toweling for floor cloths and six penny unbleached cotton for wiping paint. For your cleaning outfit you will want a bath brick which will cost 5 cents a peck of clean sand, 10 cents a cake of mineral soap, 8 cents a pound of Whiting 5 a pound of washing soda 5 a can of solid lye or potash 10 a quart of cheap ammonia 25 mop 50 broom 25, two whisky bisque's, 10 flannel 25, 2 yards of toweling, 22 yards of cotton 13 and all four 16, say 5 dollars. To allow for difference in prices you would pay this for the poorest servant one fortnight or for a charwoman half a day each week in two months who would not do your work nearly as well and who would waste twice the supplies you will want in the time. So again, great advice. Paired with the idea that you're doing this to prove that you're better than working class women, I guess that you would hire.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah, there's virtue in doing it yourself.

[Sarah Marshall]

Because you've got skills, because you're proving and also again, this kind of sense of moral superiority of like I can clean better than someone whose job it is to clean and I don't even make a living doing it, but I'm still better at it and I'm better than Everything. And the ants are immigrating into my kitchen.

[Sarah Archer]

You stopped the wave of immigration to the kitchen. Well, also, what's super interesting is that it's kind of classifying. It's denigrating the profession of cleaning and valorizing cleaning as a kind of calling.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right.

[Sarah Archer]

So you're not being. Because you're Right. You're not paid to clean your own house. You're kind of doing that because it's. It's good for your. The health of your family. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And kind of enforcing this idea of a holy bond between the woman and the home, which is also interesting because this is really. We have all this new dangerous dirt, or, you know, some of it is. I mean, there's like soot everywhere. If you're living in a city, you know, I mean.

[Sarah Archer]

Right.

[Sarah Marshall]

Things are grimy and you're breathing in a lot of really dangerous stuff. You have during this period when industrialization is making homes dirtier. Also kind of because of that technology, the first women who can be expected to keep a home all by themselves. Which wasn't really, you know.

[Sarah Archer]

Exactly. Which wasn't possible before.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. Because either you had, you know, you were just kind of getting by and you were doing what you could and taking care of your own house and your own stuff, or you were rich and you had a house that other people could take care of. And now this sort of era of the servantless virtue signaling housewife, or the housewife who has a cleaning lady but who's not good enough and who she always complains about, which certainly is a type that has endured and who she says veiled racist things about also. Okay, I'm just looking up how much $5 in 1884 is today.

[Sarah Archer]

Are you on the inflation calculator?

[Sarah Marshall]

So about $160. But that's like for. That's for the rest of your life, you know, it's pretty good. He's also advocating for using steam heat to loosen stuff up, which again, is like, you know, exactly what we're doing now. So it feels like looking at our Victorian forebears, you know, things have kinked and things have stayed the same. And the thing that stayed the same is that expressing the lack of control you feel about the world on your home by trying to control it, I think is something that people do. But it used to cost less, and there are now so many more ways for us to over consume products while doing it. And one of the things that this all made me think about, and that this is, of course, inevitably related to, is we're sort of fixated on the performance of hygiene, perhaps more than actual hygiene. And that also seems linked to the fact that we're being very, at least, and there's a lot of social media culture that is pushing us to be very over the top about how much we consume. And then all of the storage space that we need to house it and organize it and reconfigure it and put it in clear containers and organize it by color and all that. And I think home organizing is honestly one of the most important things that a person can do, but only if they do it to the level of their own happiness. Because anything more than that, it's a recipe for misery, is unnecessary. It's not for you if, when it stops being for you, there's no point to it or when it stops being for the people who live in the house. And this is, I think, a big driving idea behind everyone's big Marie Kondo phase, which I still haven't read that book, but I feel like I probably absorbed it through seepage and to everybody else's stuff. Stuff, Right. But this basic idea that doesn't have to be minimalism, I think, so much as just having your objects serve you, that everything you bring into your home takes up a finite amount of space and energy that you have. And so you have to make sure that the things you have are things that you really like, because everything you own is something that has to live somewhere. You have to clean it, you have to pick it up and clean under it, you have to move it around, you have to find a place for it to go. And part of the aesthetic I think that we're seeing with over the top cleaning and also big open plan houses is getting a big house and then needing to get a lot of stuff to put in it so that it feels complete, and then needing greater systems of organization in order to make it all seem cohesive as an aesthetic. And so really, I think the big question is, is your house serving you and is your stuff serving you, or are you serving your stuff? And also in the question of do you need all this? Isn't this overconsumption? I think the answer we've come up with culturally partly is like, well, it's fine if people can afford it, which like a. You know, there's a lot of questions surrounding what affording anything means when the dollar is so destabilized and when the economy is so erratic. But also, I think like even taking that out, you could also ask whenever you want to get something new or thinking about, you know, just bringing a new, like a new gadget or a new. A new gadget or a new gizmo aplenty into your life. Like, can I afford this in terms of time? You know, Right. Because the stuff you own costs time. And the cleaning technology that you own and the things that you decide you have to clean in order to be, you know, maybe not necessarily happy, but keeping up with everybody else no matter what it costs time.

[Sarah Archer]

Your characterization of Marie Kondo seems right on to me because I remember watching her show and kind of reading up on her, and I think I wrote something about her when the show was on Netflix. And she's kind of actually not anti maximalism per se. Her philosophy essentially is like, she doesn't care if, like, if what you really want is to have your, like, collection of like 800 China dolls on display in your living room. That's what makes you happy. And like, the way to make room for that is to sort of de accession some other stuff then, like, make it. Make that work. Like, make it work for you. And it isn't necessarily what somebody else would want, and it's not necessarily, you know, it doesn't necessarily look decluttered, per se, but that's. It's about kind of exactly what you're saying, essentially making your house work for you because you're the one who lives there.

[Sarah Marshall]

Which is a great idea to keep in mind, you know, that I accidentally learned without having to read a whole book. But you know that, like, because as you were saying, like, it feels like everybody is looking into each other's houses now. There's more of a sense of, like, the home as performance. And yeah, it's nice to sort of come back back into the reality that, like, it has to be for you because it's not anybody else's and you're paying for the stupid thing, right?

[Sarah Archer]

You're. And you have to be there all the time. And, like, chances are you have to work there. I'm actually working right now on a piece that's tentatively called In Defense of the China Cabinet because there's this kind of, like, I think that we've culturally, we've fallen out of love with the idea of the vitrine that people are kind of, you know, it seems very old school because we have so much. There's such a push toward kind of clutter solutions and kind of organizational solutions for your house, your garage, whatever, that I think we forget to celebrate the objects that are meaningful to us sometimes. It's like things that you want on display, that you want to look at every day, that somebody made for you or that you collected somewhere, that collecting. There's nothing wrong with collecting stuff, and it's cool to have stuff on display, but, you know, let's sort of find smart ways to display that stuff. Wrap. That doesn't feel like it's a problem to solve.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Sarah Archer]

You know what I mean? Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

And I think it's just. It's one of those things where, like, cleaning and eating are, like, are two things that basically everybody has to do or they should be doing. And so they inevitably become expressions of sort of how people feel about the world. And then you'll see people. You know, this is another big use for social media. People telling you with absolute certainty something that you must be doing in your house or else you will die very soon, you know, or that you must be doing, or else you're gross, and nobody wants to be gross. Yeah. I think that what maybe feels a little bit radical at this moment is the idea that it's all personal and you get to, you know, above the level of hygiene, where, you know, your house isn't dangerous to you, you know, and if it doesn't make you uncomfortable, then, like, it just doesn't matter what you do.

[Sarah Archer]

I love going into somebody's house and finding that it's really unusual or just seems very them. You know what I mean? That's so much more interesting than going into a house that's sort of, like, perfectly, immaculately clean, that looks like it was scrubbed with an intimate slice and has no personality and no stuff and no mementos and no souvenirs from travel and, you know, just. I like going into a house that sort of has. That's full of stories, and if you. If you declutter the bejesus out of it, then you're missing all of that. That. That narrative. And, you know, it's a way to learn about a person.

[Sarah Marshall]

Right. And also, it's like decluttering isn't something that you do once and be done with. You just kind of have to be thinking about whether the stuff you have is still stuff that you like kind of as you go. And, yeah, the two things I've learned that I find so annoying to be true, but I really think they are, is that you just kind of always have to be cleaning stuff a little bit, and then you'll never have to be cleaning stuff a lot, or you will sometimes, but not that much much. And B, that if everything has a place where it typically goes Then you can find it a lot easier. Which is why I have seven different measuring tapes, because they all went to different places, and every time I needed one, I had to buy a new one. And then last year, I cleaned my whole house and I found them all, and I have seven, so.

[Sarah Archer]

Well, maybe seven is the perfect number of measuring tapes.

[Sarah Marshall]

It probably is.

[Sarah Archer]

Like, one for every room. Like, you can just have, like, a.

[Sarah Marshall]

Me and my six roommates someday. We all have to measure things simultaneously. A certain amount of ritual is helpful in terms of just however much it is helpful to implement into your life. But the answer, I guess, is just that people know individually how much they do or don't need and what does or doesn't work for them. And I think it's just that so much of capitalism is being driven now or of consumer capitalism is being driven now by telling us new categories of things, things that we're not doing enough at in order to be happy. And maybe that's why we're not happy, because we're not sleeping with all these appliances on our heads, you know?

[Sarah Archer]

Exactly. Right. I mean, they're always looking for a new problem to solve.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. But also, if you, like me, thought that acrylic fridge bins would make you happy, it's okay. And also, they did kind of make me happy because it's easier to get stuff from the back. Yeah. I'm right in the middle on fridge organizing. Like, I think that you can take it too far, but you still use them. No, I do.

[Sarah Archer]

Oh, that's. I'm very impressed by that.

[Sarah Marshall]

That's. The back of the fridge is a problem area. Right.

[Sarah Archer]

It's a no man's land. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

Another thing that occurs to me is that I have never seen a Clean talk video sponsored by Barkeeper's Friend. And I'm not saying that means they haven't done it. I'm not saying their hands are, like, you know, perfectly clean. But Barkeeper's Friend is the perfect product because you buy one thing of it. I have, like, the thing of Barkeeper's Friend I have will be like a third full when I'm dead.

[Sarah Archer]

Because you don't need it. I mean, it's not like Windex. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

You don't use that much of it. You don't need very much of it. It doesn't look cool when you use it. It's not an interesting color. It doesn't smell that good. It doesn't show up well on video. All it does is what it says. It's supposed to do.

[Sarah Archer]

And it does. Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

So I guess also, like, it's. It's a truth, unfortunately, that, like, a really good product is not going to be marketable in this way because it's something that lasts forever and that you don't need to buy that many of.

[Sarah Archer]

Right. That it's not inherently disposable.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah.

[Sarah Marshall]

So the stuff you really need, you're maybe not going to be encountering in the most spectacular visual way. And that's okay, too. And also it's okay that we want to watch toilets filled with ice. You know, I'm not going to tell anyone not to. After we finish this conversation, I'm going to go watch. Watch six or seven of those, but okay. So, Ms. Sarah Achara, I threw you a curveball because I sent you a poem by Jonathan Swift that I told you I wanted you to read in this episode. And I hope that it makes a little bit more sense now why I asked you to read it.

[Sarah Archer]

Okay, so this is called, and I don't know what year it's from, but this is called the Ladies Dressing room.

[Sarah Marshall]

By Jonathan Swift, 1732.

[Sarah Archer]

Ooh, wow.

[Sarah Marshall]

It's about Strefon and Celia. Not enough Strefons running around.

[Sarah Archer]

Five hours and who can do it less in by haughty Celia, spent in dressing the goddess from her chamber, issues arrayed in lace, brocades and tissues. Strephon, who found the room was void and Betty, otherwise employed, stole in and took a strict survey of all the litter as it lay whereof to make the matter clear. An inventory follows here, and first a dirty smock appeared beneath the armpits, well besmeared Strephon, the rogue displayed it wide and turned it round on every side. On such a point few words are best, and Strephon bids us guess the rest, but swears how damnably the men lie in calling Celia sweet and cleanly. Is that meant to be Clenlai? Is it. Is it meant to rhyme with men?

[Sarah Marshall]

LI I think that pronunciations have shifted during the flight.

[Sarah Archer]

Pronunciations?

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah.

[Sarah Archer]

In calling Celia sweet and cleanly. Now listen, while he next produces the various combs for various uses, filled up with dirt, so closely fixed no brush could force a way betwixt a paste of composition, rare sweat, dandruff powder, lead and hair, a forehead cloth with oil upon it to smooth the wrinkles on her front. Here, alum flower to stop the steams exhaled from sour unsavory streams hard by a filthy basin stands fouled with the scouring of her Hands. The basin takes whatever comes. The scrapings of her teeth and gums, a nasty compound of all hues. For here she spits and here she spews. But, oh, it turned poor strong Strefon's bowels when he beheld and smelled the towels begummed be matted and beslimed with dirt, with sweat and earwax grimed. Why, Strefan, will you tell the rest? And must you needs describe the chest. That careless wench, no creature warned her to move it out from yonder corner. All the time before, as from within Pandora's box. When Epimetheus opened the locks, a sudden universal crew of human evils upward flew. He still was comforted to find that hope at last remained behind. So Strephon, lifting up the lid to view what in the chest was hid. The vapors flew from out the vent. But Strephon, cautious, never meant the bottom of the pan to grope and foul his hands in search of hope. Oh, never may such vile machine be once in Celia's chamber seen. Oh, may she better learn to keep those secrets of the hoary deep, the petticoats, the gown perfume, which waft a stink round every room. Thus finishing his grand survey, disgusted, Strephon stole away repeating in his amorous fits, When Celia in her glory shows, if Strephon would but stop his nose, who now so impiously blasphemes her ointments, daubs and paints and creams, her washes, slops at every clout with which he makes so foul a routine, he soon would learn to think like me and bless his ravaged sight to see such order from confusion sprung, such gaudy tulips raised from dung.

[Sarah Marshall]

And.

[Sarah Archer]

Wow. I mean, we. Thinking about that for a long time.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, Celia, Celia, Celia. Shits is shits.

[Sarah Archer]

Does she ever. And don't we all?

[Sarah Marshall]

And I mean, yeah, it's a me.

[Sarah Archer]

Your.

[Sarah Marshall]

Your thoughts.

[Sarah Archer]

It. When you're intimate with somebody and you're attracted to them and want to be as close to them as you possibly can, that they're also still a human being. That who does things that are like. You don't want to be all up in. And that. That. That you. You need to kind of navigate those boundaries in. In whatever way you can. And it's kind of that the edifice of this. Of an idealized person kind of falls away when you share a house with them or a room with them. It's. You know. And everything is up close and personal.

[Sarah Marshall]

When you shit in the same box, which probably is what marriage meant in the 1700s. Or maybe they had separate boxes, I.

[Sarah Archer]

Don'T know, different chamber pots or different.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, I don't know. Right.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah. That you're confronted with somebody's humanity and you never kind of quite see them the same way again. But if it's, you know, that's what you want.

[Sarah Marshall]

Part of, I think what the sort of cleanliness theater that we're walking people go through with kind of, you know, whether we're actually doing it or doing it sincerely or just watching it as a spectator sport, that so much of what women are doing online lately is basically like obsessively cleaning ourselves and the spaces we live in so that not a single flake of skin can exist as evidence that we were there even on our own skin. We have to take that off too. And just the idea that, like, I don't know, to be a person is to be gross. It's fine. You can be gross.

[Sarah Archer]

It's. Yeah, I mean, it's. You can't get away from that. And I think to be kind of continually gross is to be alive.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah, that's true. To survive is to just keep finding new ways to be gross. And also it's like as you age, like you're. But like, not only. Right, like, not only does your appearance change, but also like, you know, it just keeps doing new weird shit. You get hairs in new places, like throughout your life, not just in puberty. I'm getting. Getting chin hairs now. I don't know why.

[Sarah Archer]

Welcome. It's good to have you here.

[Sarah Marshall]

And what if the wind comes up and blows them in again? And it is only the beginning. I know.

[Sarah Archer]

Yes, you have. So you have such a long adventure awaiting you. It's also kind of. I think there's like a generative AI slop aesthetic now that now I have the word slop on the brain because of the poem. But it's also AI sloth that is exceedingly smooth. And the idea of kind of computer generated or synthetic, you know, is an entity that doesn't have like gross hairs or gross skin cells or whatever it is that we're. We're constantly shedding in our. Our domestic spaces and all around the world and kind of wanting to be free of that. That messiness. All the stuff that we, like birth and death, all the stuff that we kind of push to one side and don't focus on things that used to be much more common to see in real life that nowadays are much less so.

[Sarah Marshall]

Yeah. And this idea of sort of women's work being partly concealing the grossness that just is required by existing and having babies and taking care of babies and raising beautiful cats as well.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah, exactly. Raising beautiful cats, Exactly. Yeah. If you want, you want a real depressing deep dive, go into the history of advertising for products to make women less odiferous.

[Sarah Marshall]

Oh, yes. The vaginal odor industry is.

[Sarah Archer]

Yeah, it's just. It's so. I wish they would just leave everybody alone.

[Sarah Marshall]

I. I mean, who decided that vagina wasn't a perfectly nice smell is what I would like to know.

[Sarah Archer]

It's perfectly pleasant and people need to just. Yeah, just let, let us live.

[Sarah Marshall]

If anything, we should make more things smell like vaginas. And with that, I will see myself out. It was great to have you here. And that was our episode. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for journeying into the future with us. Thank you to Sarah Archer for being such a delightful guest. As always, Sarah Archer has written books that you should check out, including the Mid Century Kitchen, Mid Century Christmas, and Cat Land. The Soft Power of Cat Culture in Japan. You can visit Sarah Archer's website at sarah-archer.com and you can find her on Instagram. Arcsh. Thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing. Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing. We will see you in two weeks.

[Sarah Archer]

Sat.