What's Your Cleaning Playlist?

I was standing in a friend's kitchen the other day when her favorite song came on, and without missing a beat she grabbed a dish towel, turned up the volume, and started wiping down the counters like she was on a mission. "This is my cleaning music," she said, laughing. "I can't do a thing in this house without it."

That conversation got me thinking about the power of music and how Black folks from my generation (Gen X) spent Saturday mornings doing the same thing: cleaning. The windows came open, the speakers came on, and the whole house got to work.

There was a science to it. A record or a radio station set the tempo, and somehow the dusting, the vacuuming, and the mopping all fell into rhythm with it. By the time the last song faded, the house smelled like Pine-Sol and possibility.

Music turned a chore into a ritual. It was how we learned the classics, how we memorized every ad-lib, and how a parent's favorite song became our own. The cleaning got done, but the soundtrack is what we remember.

So we want to know: what's on your cleaning playlist? Tell us the songs that get your whole house moving.