Though germ theory is often seen as a revolutionary turn towards modern medicine and more modern day practices in medicine, it was also a significant figure in modern overconsumption. While many cleaning practices were evolving to modern machinery, such as using a washing machine instead of a washing board, this allowed for more free time outside of these timely chores. But, following the Industrial Revolution, this definition of a “clean house” was rapidly changing, as many new processes and products changed the meaning of clean– especially with the new germ theory. With this newfound time from other tasks that no longer were the primary focus of many housewives’ cleaning, there was a new opening for something else– plus a new heightened sense of cleanliness and paranoia of germs. A new idea was introduced, if you can no longer see the dirtiness of your home, then how do you know that it is clean? Though healthy cleanliness is a good thing and it can be very detrimental to our health to be unclean, certain measures of cleanliness aren’t always as beneficial as they appear. Several corporations targeted this new fear and introduced many new methods of keeping your home clean– many of which were detrimental to their health in other ways. Chemical cleanliness was the new clean, as many products were advertised to kill all germs. But, chemicals powerful enough to “kill all germs” are also very likely to be poor for other living organisms’ health, like humans, too. This new idea of clean allowed several new products to manufacture to target each aspect of house cleanliness- even if not all were actually necessary or different from one another. With this combination of cleanliness paranoia and the duty that many felt towards keeping their homes clean and safe for their families, it was a perfect opportunity for several companies to mass produce new products to satisfy this opening. Though some of these cleaning practices are beneficial for our health and helped evolve hygiene and cleaning practices, many of the processes which were used to obtain this type of “clean” were extremely detrimental to both their health and to this new view of consumerism. With all of the new and somewhat unnecessary products that everyone was expected to use and buy, a new wave of consumerism grasped the modern world to satisfy the social expectation of cleanliness. This was one of many factors leading to our modern day dangerous overconsumption of all goods, something that is continuously socially expected of many, to “keep up with the times”.