Do you keep your cabinets organized? Well, I have bad news for you.

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The recent TikTok trend of showing off perfectly organized and styled home pantries is rooted in a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures, according to one Chicago professor.

Through her research at Loyola University, Associate Professor of Marketing Jenna Drenten noticed a recent uptick in what she calls "pantry porn," a plethora of social media videos where women show off their fully stocked kitchen and methodically organized home supplies.

While minimalist designs used to represent an anti-consumption mindset of using less and buying less, the "new minimalism," according to Drenten, means "more is more," so long as it is not dirty or cluttered.

Historically, Drenten says that tidiness is intertwined with status and a person’s messiness often breeds assumptions about a person’s capacity to be responsible and respectable.

"Cleanliness has historically been used as a cultural gatekeeping mechanism to reinforce status distinctions based on a vague understanding of ‘niceness’: nice people, with nice yards, in nice houses, make for nice neighborhoods," Drenten writes. "What lies beneath the surface of this anti-messiness, pro-niceness stance is a history of classist, racist and sexist social structures."

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