When Instagram fell in love with toilet cleaning
In which we discover that brooms now have feelings, and bleach bottles deserve mood lighting.
Somewhere between minimalism and maximalism, turmeric lattes and “soft life” routines, Instagram did something miraculous. It fell in love… with chores.
Not just any chores. Not the “I cooked because someone had to eat” kind. No. This is a newer, glossier era: romanticised domesticity.
Cue the slow-mo reel: A perfectly manicured hand squeezes eco-friendly dish soap onto an artisanal brush. Mellow jazz plays while someone folds beige-linen-coloured laundry. A broom glides across marble floors like it’s auditioning for So You Think You Can Clean. There’s golden sunlight, a neutral-toned spray bottle, and — often — a caption that reads:
“Romanticising my Sunday reset.”
🧽 Toilet scrub, but make it hot girl core.
What once was an act of routine hygiene has now become content. Cleaning is not just necessity — it’s a mood. A vibe. A performance. “Look at me,” the video says, “I clean… but elegantly.”
And yet — I remember my mother and her entire generation (of Indian mothers) which woke up at 5 a.m. and swept the house before the rest of us even remembered we had limbs. No music. No content strategy. No lavender-scented diffuser perched just-so. Just the rhythm of responsibility — done with grace, a loose bun, and zero captions.
There was no “Sunday reset.” There was just Sunday. And “reset” was what your soul got after a hearty lunch of sambar rice with potato roast, followed by an afternoon siesta.
In the 80s and 90s, mopping wasn’t a performance. It was how you got turmeric stains off the floor after making pickle. It wasn’t aesthetic, it was essential.
And no one uploaded a video of it — unless, of course, you count my mother yelling “Don’t walk there, I just cleaned!” as a kind of live stream.
Now we’re here. We’ve romanticised dishwasher loading and unloading.
Somewhere, someone’s shooting a slow-pan video of a ceramic plate sliding into a rack like it’s a spa day.
And I want to scream: “Wait till the bai (classic Mumbai term for domestic help) doesn’t show up for two days.”
That’s when the dishwasher becomes a real-life Kitchen Nightmares: Solo Edition.
Because when the help’s on leave, nobody’s playing jazz while you’re scrubbing dal off a pressure cooker.
The curated visuals? That’s your hair tied up with a scrunchie that screams anger. The vibe? Desperation.
I get it. We all crave control in a chaotic world. A sparkling countertop, edited to perfection, is our way of saying:
“Look — I’ve got this.”
But have we gone too far?
Have we over-aestheticized the mundane? Does every act of care — even self-care — need a cinematic arc?
Are we still living… or are we just framing life?
Our parents didn’t post about romanticising the mundane. They just did it. And somehow, it still felt meaningful.
No beige filters. No matching loungewear sets. Just the quiet dignity of getting things done.
Because some things don’t need a reel.
They just need to be real.