‘The Food Package Makes My Hands Dirty Now’: Exploring Domestic Cleaning Practices During the Pandemic

Abstract

Abstract This article examines how domestic cleaning practices were transformed during the pandemic and how they redefined everyday life. Based on a perspective of actor-network theory, we take the food package as an actant and follow it in domestic space through its interactions with other actants. To get a deeper understanding of these interactions, we conducted an ethnographic study focusing on the food package. Our findings reveal that the new cleaning rituals emerging in this context are shaped by metaphors, which are connected to a broader network of cleaning culture based on particular traditions and beliefs.