The narcotic pleasures of #cleantok
In the lowest depths of my pandemic torpor, one of the few things that would lift my spirits was watching organizing videos on TikTok. In 2020, while my kids were doing distance learning, I occasionally closed my bedroom door to muffle the sounds of at-home third grade and pre-K and submerged into the tidy, satisfying world of another mom cleaning and then restocking her spotless refrigerator with a colorful array of fruits, vegetables and adorable mini pepperoni.
While there are many #cleantok creators and fans (that hashtag has around 30 billion views as of this writing), my favorite is @midwesternmama29, who has 3.7 million followers. Her name is Monica Brady, and when we recently video chatted, I learned that she’s a 28-year-old mom of three girls, living in rural Michigan. Brady told me that she had no experience as a content creator or an influencer (though she hates that term — she calls herself a “feral influencer”) before she started posting cleaning and organizing TikToks in the fall of 2020.