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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

I get unreasonably angry when Victorian cosplayers think they've found the solution to our wasteful modern life. Simply eschew modern conveniences and spend hours each week beating your clothes against a rock!

Simple, instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market down the block before dinner each night.

Was it cloudy yesterday? Simple!, take a whore-bath¹ at the sink and be thankful your meetings are on Zoom these days :)

Ok, ok, those are caricatures of the final paragraphs, but that's what I hear when the word "simple" is abused that way.

[¹] Or, "PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive?

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"Simply eschew modern conveniences and spend hours each week beating your clothes against a rock"

My question is, if those people actually tried that by themself before suggesting it, or if they just picture the women doing it somewhere.

I mean in this specific instance I can imagine they tried. And I did too, while off grid. It gives you a special connection to your clothes. But suggesting this as a general way of life is a bit offworlds.

I grew up doing all of those by hands, with the exception of washing machine, I still do all of those chores by hands now.

And I'm still only in early 20s, not some old dudes.

We debloating our computers all the time, so what's wrong with debloating our houses, and our life ?

Absolutely nothing wrong with that (I grew up hanging clothes on a line and using gas stoves, for example), but suggesting these kind of regressions as a drop-in solution to our modern lives is misguided.

Doing more manual chores is the opposite of debloating IMO.

I think if you read lowtechmag much it's fairly clear they are true believers and probably have done a fair amount of washing clothes the hard way. They aren't simply armchair philosophers.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/10/mist-showers-susta...

I know: "I mean in this specific instance I can imagine they tried"

But the person I was answering to, was speaking more broadly of people proposing "awesome simple solutions". Who in my experience seldom lived their solutions.

> instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market

Middle class Victorians, in England at least, had things delivered. I imagine that quite a lot of cosplay characters are middle class.

In fact food delivered to homes of all types was a normal feature of life in England when I was a child in the 50s and 60s. Milk, eggs, etc., every weekday morning delivered directly to the door before breakfast, grocery van came to the street once a week, bread van twice, another van came a bit less often selling lemonade and other drinks.

Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class.

We didn't have a freezer until 1966 and I'm not sure that we suffered from the lack. But once everyone had both a freezer and a car those services became unprofitable and eventually disappeared.

> Of course these services were not universally available, we were lucky to live in a moderately affluent town with a prosperous working class.

I think that's key. The wealthy live well enough in pretty much any society. It is the poor who often have the greatest to gain (and lose, when mis-applied) from technological innovations and from having them become widespread.

My grandma didn't have a drivers license. She had to use those trucks to get food, or wait for grandpa to get home to go to the store. Those trucks were a real life saver for her. Today women drivers are not a rare exception.

It's frequently much more energy intensive too. Cars are a lot more efficient than horses and dishwashers are more efficient than hand washing.

Can you explain how dish washers are more efficient than hand washing? Is it about water use? What if you don’t run the water while you soap your dishes and only rinse them in a rinse tub?

I haven't watched this video in a while so apologies if it's not specifically elaborated on, but I believe it's covered here: https://youtu.be/_rBO8neWw04

From memory yes, it's partially about water usage, but dishwashers are in general just pretty good overall about efficiently using energy to maximize "food grime removed" per unit of resources fed in. Even if you're careful with water usage while hand washing, I think a decent dishwasher will beat you.

Another advantage is the dishwasher heats its own water, whereas with hand washing either you need to use a house-wide water heater or preheat water in a kettle or something, which will have its own energy wastes. This of course depends also on how your house's water is heated.

One page I found googling elaborates on these ideas, concluding that you could potentially be more efficient hand washing, but only with a lot of effort: https://www.treehugger.com/built-in-dishwashers-vs-hand-wash...

>Even if you're careful with water usage while hand washing, I think a decent dishwasher will beat you.

I once ran the dishwasher with the outlet hose in a bucket because the drain pump was on its way out. I expected to have to empty it several times, but at the end of the cycle there was less water in it than I would use to fill a washing-up bowl to do the dishes by hand (and the amount of dishes it cleaned might have required more than one bowl).

Thanks. I read the treehugger link—pretty convincing overall. Not sure why my question was downvoted tho. (Not accusing you)

In my observation unfair downvotes come, when people are angry at something and looking at anything that looks like a scapegoat to direct that anger, which can be anyone not expressing the same mindset they have. Which was you by asking that question that apparently was enough to mentally puts you in the "stupid treehugger camp". I would not worry about it too much and try to not take it personal.

Their rational explanation is probably "how you can be so stupid for not knowing that common knowledge".

And well, even though I am indeed a treehugger, I also knew about the efficency of dishwashers before and also assumed it to be common knowledge, but I would never downvote someone because of a genuine question adding to the conversation.

I didn't downvote -- it's fair to be skeptical that a machine that spends hours making loud whirring noises would be more efficient than just scrubbing some dishes in the sink. And I don't want to careful about making unequivocal statements like "dishwashers are always more efficient", I've just heard some convincing reasons why dishwashers in particular are pretty cool and (unintuitively) efficient.

And it's disgusting and water where I live is cheap and plentiful. Hate water austerity imposed on everyone because of megacities and people living where people shouldn't live.

Large human population is an issue. But if you accept that as a premise, Megacities are more efficient in terms of resource usage than equally-sized but geographically dispersed populations.

As for water usage, think first of agriculture, then industry. Only after that do cities come into play. Cities are relatively small water consumers.

See my other post: agriculture water is not heated or treated. Thus cities use as much energy for their water despite only using a fraction. In all of the above water itself is not the issue as it isn't lost, just moved downstream until the water cycle (rain - which has always been non-uniform) brings it back.

A city may be more efficient than lower population density on a per-capita basis but that is only tangential to the problem. A city in the California desert is not a good reason someone in NYC should have to endure a washing machine and dishwasher that are so stingy about water usage they are frequently ineffective at their primary task.

>As for water usage, think first of agriculture, then industry. Only after that do cities come into play. Cities are relatively small water consumers.

Where do those agricultural products get sold and eaten?

Typically even within residential areas the issues isn't people per se, it's lawns and golf courses. And those are absolutely not evenly distributed or used.

IF this was about water I agree with you. However it isn't actually about water it is about water heating. Hot water cleans better than cold, but it takes energy to heat water and that affects everyone (global warming). Thus less water is better.

There are also some water pumping and treatment costs (more energy), but they can be ignored as insignificant.

You have to heat water to wash your dishes ? What kind of gravy sauce are you cooking in your pot.

If you're careful about water usage and use cold water, you'll always beat a dishwasher. Another thing people often forget about dishwashers: you're supposed to pre-scrub the hard shit off the dishes. Well, you just did half the mechanical work yourself, why not finish it?

I think part of it can also be (at least for me) upbringing. We always handwashed our dishes, and only used the dishwasher a couple times per year for big events.

I grew up handwashing too but I disagree with your assertion.

Firstly, you can't wash with cold water because soap doesn't activate with cold water, hot water also kills bacteria and helps cut through grease.

Fats themselves are hydrophobic and without activated soap you wont get them off... enjoy your "filmy" dishes.

Second, humans expend a lot more energy than you think. The act of standing and using our arms releases varying amounts depending on physical fitness but averages somewhere in the 1kg/h ballpark. https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/jjphysiol/50/2/50_2_199...

Dishwashers use about 1800 Watts and are commonly run for 30 minutes, the average co2 in the USA is 0.92lbs per kWh.

Meaning it's _basically_ the same.

Then there's the freshwater usage, which is the real kicker, because dishwashers use significantly less freshwater, and freshwater filtering is the largest environmental impact of washing dishes (not the direct co2 output).

Humans are expending energy regardless of whether they're washing dishes or not. The question is how much extra energy they expend when washing dishes over whatever they might do otherwise.

Human body will have to expense energy regardless whether you do it with house chores, or going to the gym, or a walk in the park.

That energy use is likely an overestimate - thats mostky the heating element and it doesnt run the entire washing cycle or the water would boil

you can't wash with cold water because soap doesn't activate with cold water

Bunch of pseudoscience. I've never noticed any difference between washing with cold or not.

hot water also kills bacteria

Ultimately doesn't matter because they're all being washed away by the soap molecules anyway.

The act of standing and using our arms releases...

Lol, are you seriously trying to reason that what little energy you burn is more than a dishwasher?

> I've never noticed any difference between washing with cold or not.

Soap not activating when cold is not "pseudoscience", it's just a fact. Like grease doesn't become liquid unless heated. It's a similar principle.

> Ultimately doesn't matter because they're all being washed away by the soap molecules anyway.

If they bind, but, I'll give you this one.

> Lol, are you seriously trying to reason that what little energy you burn is more than a dishwasher?

Humans are pretty shitty at expending energy. This is one of the largest arguments against cycling long distances (though those arguments I don't agree with, but we're talking about total Co2 output here).

I've worked in a cheese plant. The metal forms can be very greasy, and as the soap water cools off it is very noticeable that stuff doesn't want to get clean. Heat the water back up, and stuff cleans far easier.

>you can't wash with cold water because soap doesn't activate with cold water

That may be true for most laundry detergents, which have to pull grime out of fabrics, but not simple dish soap. Just look at how well Dawn works to take oil off concrete, for example. Nobody's heating that up.

Modern dishwashers encourage you to do nothing more than scrape off any leftover food, there's not "you are supposed to scrub".

(essentially, the instructions are to remove the same things from the dishes you would remove if hand washing them in a sink with no disposal...)

These are dishwasher about 20 years ago not modern. Modern dishwashers are so "efficient" that they are not really removing much. Often I am finding dished come back out also dirty after, so now I spend more water and time on a hand wash again.

I have a modern cheap-ass dishwasher and never had this issue unless i literally leave half eaten leg of lamb on the plate. Maybe your's needs repair?

Something is wrong with your dishwasher or drain system.

I thought the same, and then it turns out that my garbage disposal was broken and obstructing the speedy removal of waste water from my washing machine. Fixed that and now my dishes come out clean.

> Another thing people often forget about dishwashers: you're supposed to pre-scrub the hard shit off the dishes.

Once you’ve removed the bones and massive solids, the modern dishwasher can do an astounding job on the rest. Put a little detergent in the prewash (or on a Bosch, just in the tub) and let the machine do the work. (I also grew up washing dishes before putting them in the dishwasher. It’s almost never needed now, but old habits die hard.)

> Is it about water use? What if you don’t run the water while you soap your dishes and only rinse them in a rinse tub?

Yes: if your dishwasher has the Energy Star rating then it must use ≤15L of water using the normal cycle per the EPA. This is half the volume of a small sink and a one-third or less of larger ones.

Most people run the water. In the US the average flow rate of a kitchen faucet is 8 L/min (2.2 gpm), so you can quickly use up 15L even just rinsing.

Most people use as much water rinsing their dishes to almost clean before putting them in the dishwasher.

Very few people are running the faucet anywhere near full blast when dish-washing.

My faucet is very slow, about ~1gpm (I timed it once upon a time because I wanted to be able to put a number to how slow it is). When hand washing I run at maybe 1/4 or less of that. Everyone else in my household runs it at less.

Dish washers do reuse the same water far more than most humans would because it looks like you are washing dishes with filth. Most usually only run 3 small batches of water through them I believe. Not sure if it actually makes them more resource efficient versus mindful hand washing, but I wouldn't consider them inefficient at all.

I read somewhere modern people spend the same amount of time doing chores as someone before electricity. It wouldn't surprise me if it were that far off the truth. We own so much more and are told we need things when in reality maybe we don't?

I definitely don't spend as much time doing chores as my grandma used to do before she had electricity. Recall that not too long ago "sewing your own clothes" also was a chore you had to do, and washing clothes took a whole day. Modern appliances made it possible for women to join the workforce because they freed up so much time.

Yeah was a really, really interesting social change. From the point of view of the middle class (~10% of the population of the wealthier nations?) when the appliances came in the station of women of that class went backwards. Servants became expensive and women who, post-childbirth had high-status and important roles running charities, political parties and such no longer had enough time for it. The suffragettes now had to do the work (assisted by appliance) of the house as well as run it.

Not many of us would reverse the changes that came with widespread home appliance availability and adoption on either a personal or societal level but every significant change comes at a cost to someone to whom you might well be sympathetic is something worth remembering when looking forward.

Absolutely untrue. My mother's life was changed significantly for the better when she got her first washer and dryer. She actually had more time for herself and for working a part time job.

I came across a similar line in a Podcast 3-4 years ago. I was baffled at that line, same as the reply commenters here. it was Hidden Brain or Planet Money or Freakonomics. They didn't elaborate on that. & I forgot to dig into it

You might be referring to some of the studies associated with the "original affluent society" proposal. To think that all basic needs can be covered by a 3-5 hours of work a day is quite shocking for a judeo-christian that has been indoctrinated in the "work as a curse" tale.

For sure it all depends on how you define "basic needs", and how do you divide "work time" from "leisure time".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society#%22W...

At some moment I've heard of more recent studies about the myth of the increase in leisure time, but I don't manage to find any good reference now. In any case, I suspect Graeber had a point.

Trust me it's not true. I grew up poor and we did lots of things by hand that would take hours more per week than all the automated stuff of today lol. I'm not going back willingly...

My grandmother(aged 92) still washes by hand - both the clothes and dishes.

It takes a considerable amount of time.

And before anyone asks she raised five children like that and I'm not the one to try to convince someone who on top of that lived through WWII to change anything in their life.

Have your ever seen what it's like to wash clothes by hand? It's like a 3 hour hour process. Its arduous, tedious, and keeoing the house in order used to be a full-time job

Washing machine has done more to liberate women than all political efforts combined.

I think the distinction is we have 50X more clothing to wash. And it's partly because washing is so easy. I have a family of four and spend a lot of time folding clean clothes.

I am not sure how this works. Even if you have a million pairs of pants, you only wear, and hence need to wash, one at a time.

My grandma really spent a lot of time washing clothes, so i dont think this is a significant factor

I grew up in Russia in 70th and 80th, and most people around me were wearing the same cloths all week long. On Saturday you would have a bath and done a fresh set of underwear at least, perhaps a shirt too.

Women typically would change a bit more often, and generally tried to have fresh panties every day (they would wash them separately from the main laundry). Men who considered themselves sophisticated would change _socks_ every day, but this was a minority. Nobody washed a shirt that they only wore once. Nobody washed pants until they had visible spots or smelled really bad.

And these were civilized XX century households, with access to hot and cold running water, gas, and electricity (but not always a bath or a shower, and rarely a washing machine).

Try wearing the same briefs and socks and shirt for a week, and you will show much you reduce your laundry load...

There are two variables, time and cleaning standards. People clean to a higher standard with modern tools in general (in general, but not in all specifics).

My grandma took a bath/shower once a week - she grew up when a bath meant bringing water in from outside by hand, heating it on a fire, and then you had to bring it back outside to dump it - I sometimes shower twice a day, and I still use less effort over a week to get clean than my grandma did back in the day.

An hour of labor with modern tech is far more productive than an hour of labor with 1890 tech. The modern person can perform far more work in the same time or the same work in less time. Even if you split the difference the net result when applied to chores is a much cleaner household.

> Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive?

I like bird bath for this.

I agree with your overall sentiment, I do also aknowledge that we (as a society) are very wasteful with resources. I would like to see some form of incentive for using less power and producing less waste.

My energy provider during the first lockdown actually paid us to use electricity because it was being produced at renerwable plants and would otherwise go unused. We set our washing machine to start during the period they would pay us and did our morning routine a few hours earlier. That small incentive was enough to change our behavior

> [¹] Or, "PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive?

Sponge bath?

> 1. A quick sponge bath by hand, using a wet washcloth or a pre-moistened towelette, to extend the interval between showers or clean up after casual sexual intercourse.

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whore_bath

* https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sponge_bath

> Simple, instead of grocery shopping twice a month, ditch that wasteful freezer and walk to the farmers' market down the block before dinner each night.

This might be a positive though. Having moved to the UK years ago, the average trip to the supermarket is for around a few days of food, a week at most here. The supermarket is 7 minutes by foot or a 4 by car. It means we buy a lot more fresh items, and this is natural due to the limited amount of freezer space we have (60/40 fridge and no chest freezer in our house). It's arguably better than the experience I had back in Canada plus for the same quality of food, it's much cheaper over here.

So it isn't exactly the same as the olden days with wet markets and whatnot, but it's much closer to it (they even have manned meat, fish and deli counters at our local).

> whore-bath at the sink / Or, “PTA", which isn't much nicer. Any ideas on what to call this that's less vulgar, but still derisive?

Not particularly derisive, but I've always called it a “pits & bits” wash. I've heard it called a “got lucky rinse” too, presumably a variant on the whore-bath.

Simplicity is not a synonym of ease; very often it's an opposite.

Making something both simple and easy is a highly sought art.

Pirate bath/shower is what I've heard them called: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pirate%20bat...

Victorian ? Where I'm living that's what most people do ( well except for the washing machine ).

I think the same applied for the majority of population in underdeveloped / developing countries.

Getting unreasonably angry is usually a pretty good sign that you're trying to distract yourself from a good point that was made

Not trolling. If the response were, "_simply_ throw a small child into the nearest wishing well", you wouldn't be angry. It's only because there is truth therein that you are upset.

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