Tidying Up depicts a young contemporary (1930s or 1940s) working woman in an unguarded moment of checking herself in her hand mirror.

Bishop's work generally focuses on young women caught during the idle moments away from their jobs.

She spent more than ten years painting the secretaries, sales clerks, and blue-collar workers who lived or worked in and around Union Square.

Her favorite subject was women going about their everyday lives, eating, talking, putting on makeup, taking off their coats.

These ordinary motions produced facial expressions that Bishop felt revealed the personality of the people she portrayed.