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Paige’s channel and watch her wrestle with hers.įor weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. And if you want to feel better about the sorry state of your kitchen, you can turn to Ms. “It’s nice to know that you’re not alone,” Ms. On YouTube, she discovered other women eagerly looking for someone to commiserate with about a filthy oven, or a living room overrun with toddler toys. “A lot of the things you are doing are pretty monotonous.” Being a stay-at-home parent is “super rewarding, but it is also a pretty difficult job,” she said. She soon found a following and a community of other moms looking for affirmation and companionship. The cleaning marathons - where she aimed the camera at her dirty stovetop and scrubbed - resonated. Initially, her videos were “all over the place,” she said, with grocery shopping hauls and cooking tutorials mixed in with her cleaning videos. The YouTube channel “opened me up to a community of people. “It was just a really dark time,” she said. Paige, 31, started her channel in 2017 to cope with postpartum depression after the birth of her youngest son. Instead, she found a niche by showing her home at its worst and then restoring order. Tull launched her YouTube channel in 2017 as a way to make friends during a lonely and isolated period at home with small children, trapped in what she described as a “super toxic marriage.” The videos didn’t help her make local friends. The influencers show that there is money to be made filming yourself doing work that is generally dismissed.
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In one video, influencer Amanda Paige empties and deep cleans her refrigerator, then cheerfully demonstrates how to make a sheet-pan dinner. They dress for the occasion and offer techniques for how to, say, deftly clean out an overflow drain cover with a toothbrush. These influencers validate and elevate the work that housekeepers do, reframing it as skilled physical labor that deserves respect. It’s usually left to women to shoulder in silence. She said the “Clean with Me” genre appeals to many of her roughly 50,000 members: “To see that somebody that looks really great and has this great YouTube following can’t also keep their kitchen clean is so validating.”Ĭleaning a house is tedious, hard work that is often derided. Many people “feel like they’re the only one that can’t keep the kitchen clean, when 98 percent of us can’t,” said Lindsay Graham, 28, who runs Organizing Love, a Facebook group for people looking for advice and support. She may have a glass of wine in hand, because what’s more relaxing than a late-night tidying session? She may even mention a link on her page where you can buy said leisure wear or the matching headband, in a not-so-subtle reminder that these videos are also about selling products for sponsors. There’s the “After Dark” subset, where the influencer, in cozy but stylish leisure wear and a messy bun, tidies up the living room and kitchen, presumably after the children are in bed.
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The videos are usually set to serene, generic music, featuring a pretty young woman who invariably describes herself as a stay-at-home mother as she deep cleans her cluttered, but well-appointed home. “I watch ‘Clean with Me’ videos to make myself feel better, like, ‘I’m not a hoarder,’” she said.
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Seeing someone else battle a sink full of dishes somehow takes the pressure off.
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She often feels anxious that the three-bedroom house she shares with her husband doesn’t look perfect.
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“It feels like the opposite of Instagram,” said Emma Doany, 29, a nursing student who lives in Austin, Texas, and regularly watches the videos, favoring channels like The Secret Slob and Jamie’s Journey, which to her seem authentic because the mess looks real and not staged.
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