I read Robert Caro's biography of LBJ. The first volume talks about conditions in rural Texas. He describes the nonstop, grueling labor for women supporting a farm family. One of the chores was washing clothes. In Caro's view, rural electrification changed womens' lives dramatically, and the electric washing machine was a nontrivial factor.
Now, that happened starting in the late 1930s, so there wouldn't have been any use for electric washing machines before that.
Maybe urban women had easier lives. That wouldn't shock me. When I lived in a house with no wash machine, while in grad school, I took my wash to the nearby laundromat, and picked it up the next day, folded, ironed, the works. It cost me just a few bucks.
> Second, the semiautomatic washing machines themselves may have taken some of the drudgery out of clothes washing, but they did not really save time. Scott explains that the person washing “had to manually feed each item of clothing through the powered wringers between each part of the cycle.” You could not just close the door and turn the machine on and leave.
Second? Why not first? This could be the entire article. Why would I buy a machine that doesn't actually provide meaningful value? Everything else in this article is ragebait for HN.
I still hand-wash a lot of my stuff. I do not find such washing to be tiresome in any way.
There is a method to it that produces good results (definitely better than the machines) with little effort. To start with, I pre-soak the clothes in good washing powder. I also do not let clothes pile up. I wash a bit at a time.
It still seems like that would save a ton of unpleasant work, if not time.
I own a pasta machine where I have to hand-feed the pasta sheets, and it's so much easier and more fun to make pasta compared to rolling by hand, even though it doesn't save me any time.
Simply feeding an item into a wringer is easy and a bit meditative; wringing by hand is a lot of work and a lot of wear on your skin.
Clothes were more expensive (relatively to income), while manual labor offer was in excess, and washing machines were big, not particularly good at their job, and needed constant supervision. So, all in all, there's no hard questions here. Meanwhile, authors made an impressive work trying to spice up otherwise bland text with as much "social and racial dynamics" ritualistic mentions as possible.
My grandmother had a washing machine with a manually fed electric wringer until she moved into assisted living. It would've likely been no newer than the immediate postwar era, as that's when she moved into the house she lived in. I doubt she would've owned it earlier (steel being needed for the war).
It was a bit of a production to do laundry with it. I can buy the argument that it was tough to sell machines that weren't fully automated. It looked fun as a kid, but I can't imagine it's fun for more than a load or two!
Edited to add: they lived north of the Mason-Dixon in an area with very few Black residents.
When I was young I did summer work for a woman who described how difficult it was getting to find a new washer with a wringer, which if you are not familiar is a pair of rubber rollers above the washtub to really squeeze out the water. This was a wealthy woman who just couldn’t change her workflow.
There's polyester sports clothing which seems to be more stain resistant (because it doesn't really absorb moisture), but for some reason bacteria seem to stick to it even better, so it gets smelly.
My friend (a highly paid tech-bro) wouldn't pay cash money for a cordless Dyson vacuum when I could clearly see it being much more pleasant to use and saving much a lot of time and hassle. It was a matter of $200.
The issue is that people are really conservative spending money on things that are not the status quo. They don't do a first principles analysis using ROI - that's what nerds do.
Its also the same with agentic commerce or agentic anything. Its obvious that's where things are headed. But you will get the same greybeard response "but you don't need it, just use your brain" etc etc.
Not sure which Dyson you recommended, but I understand where he’s coming from. I’ve considered going back to corded because the Dyson:
1. Doesn’t perform as well
2. Battery dies over time (fixable, but annoying)
I’m not willing to give up the lack of cord, but it’s not a clear cut upgrade and end result is a lesser product for some benefits that I could technically do without.
Lots of parallels to vibe coding, actually. I’m worried things are headed in the agentic direction because wealth is consolidating at the top and the rest of us will be left with whatever AI slops out. We won’t be able to afford quality.
Any of these that are electric is where your money is going: heat, water heater, air con (if you have it), clothes dryer, oven. Switch them to Russian natural gas for the savings.
From what I understand, the dryer is a bigger concern. In the UK and in Europe, you are already ahead of the curve by reducing use of the electric dryer.
It just takes 5 seconds to think about the treatment of white workers in coal mine to debunk this entire article. My grandmother was a middle class family in mid 20th century and still preferred to hand wash the families cloths until arthritis took over.
My great-grandfather died in a coal mine so, I have an intimate understanding of your argument. Intimate enough to tell you that you did not understand the article.
Now, that happened starting in the late 1930s, so there wouldn't have been any use for electric washing machines before that.
Maybe urban women had easier lives. That wouldn't shock me. When I lived in a house with no wash machine, while in grad school, I took my wash to the nearby laundromat, and picked it up the next day, folded, ironed, the works. It cost me just a few bucks.
Second? Why not first? This could be the entire article. Why would I buy a machine that doesn't actually provide meaningful value? Everything else in this article is ragebait for HN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posser
They are weird devices, if you didn't know what they are for you (someone) might never work it out.
There is a method to it that produces good results (definitely better than the machines) with little effort. To start with, I pre-soak the clothes in good washing powder. I also do not let clothes pile up. I wash a bit at a time.
I own a pasta machine where I have to hand-feed the pasta sheets, and it's so much easier and more fun to make pasta compared to rolling by hand, even though it doesn't save me any time.
Simply feeding an item into a wringer is easy and a bit meditative; wringing by hand is a lot of work and a lot of wear on your skin.
It was a bit of a production to do laundry with it. I can buy the argument that it was tough to sell machines that weren't fully automated. It looked fun as a kid, but I can't imagine it's fun for more than a load or two!
Edited to add: they lived north of the Mason-Dixon in an area with very few Black residents.
The issue is that people are really conservative spending money on things that are not the status quo. They don't do a first principles analysis using ROI - that's what nerds do.
Its also the same with agentic commerce or agentic anything. Its obvious that's where things are headed. But you will get the same greybeard response "but you don't need it, just use your brain" etc etc.
1. Doesn’t perform as well
2. Battery dies over time (fixable, but annoying)
I’m not willing to give up the lack of cord, but it’s not a clear cut upgrade and end result is a lesser product for some benefits that I could technically do without.
Lots of parallels to vibe coding, actually. I’m worried things are headed in the agentic direction because wealth is consolidating at the top and the rest of us will be left with whatever AI slops out. We won’t be able to afford quality.