Talking about Cleaning

When I began this project with the simple desire to have conversations about cleaning, I could not have predicted how stimulating those talks would be. Stories about cleaning opened out onto all sorts of vistas: family dramas (and comedies), accounts of ingrained tradition, class positioning, existential struggle, philosophies of life, and historical musings. I left each interview feeling enlarged by a perspective outside my own. It was invigorating to encounter different orientations toward the labor of life. Several times, I went home with a resolve to be more like the person I had interviewed, to emulate their energy, kindness, humor, or wisdom.

After the first few interviews, I began to think that I should gather these stories into a book, along with making the film. The stories people were sharing were rich and elaborate, and yet the film could only contain a couple of paragraphs of text for each person. I immediately thought of one of my favorite books: Working: People Talk About What They Do All Do and How They Feel About What They Do, by Studs Terkel. I wanted to do for cleaning what Studs Terkel had done for working.

When I read Working, I felt incredibly stimulated by other people's accounts of their working lives. Halfway through the book, I felt compelled to make a list of all the jobs I had ever had in my life (29 jobs in 28 years, it turns out, including several summer jobs, like "shoe salesperson," that I had almost forgotten.) Working made me want to reflect more deeply on my own daily routine of work. I sort of wanted to be interviewed myself, to have an interlocutor draw out my thoughts on the topic. But I was alone with my book; there was nobody around to ask me questions or listen to my answers.

I hope that the stories gathered here will stimulate you to reflect on your own practices and mental orientation toward cleaning. If they do, please enlarge the breadth of this discussion by sharing your stories and images on this site.