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Comment by portaouflop | Hacker News Reader

Inventions like the dishwasher for domestic use never really led to meaningful work reduction for the people (women) doing this kind of work.

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The dishwasher, maybe not, but a washing machine is reducing the laundry work by a lot. Have you ever tried to do your laundry by hand?

In those days you had fewer clothes and wore them longer between washes as well. Something to consider as we dedicate time to fold 7+ full outfits of clothes every week per person today.

And on average families, especially the poorest ones, had 4 kids each.

(Ok, I just made up the number to make a point but you get what I mean)

And kids would actually pull quite a lot of the weight back then too. "Clean your room" more like you are coming to the farm with me today boy and splitting the firewood for mother later.

Agreed. Washing machines have had a huge impact. See [1] for some summary info.

Anecdotally, having a dishwasher seems to simply mean that our house can go through 4x more dishes every day than I would expect…

[1] https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/how-appliance-boom-moved-mo...

Yes, life for housewives and mothers before the washing machine was hell. There are still billions of women in the world slaving away beating clothes on rocks.

Seems like you can pretty easily use more dishes with less effort? If you end up spending more time on other chores, that's up to you.

Having lived in apartments with and without dishwashers its not as much of a time savings as you might realize. the dishwasher needs a degree of maintenance. Dishes have to be loaded precariously in a way to effectively wash them from the sprayer jets. Some dishes have to be washed by hand still. Everything needs rinsing and scraping. Its a modern dishwasher so that means its too weak to dry dishes on dry cycle to skirt energy efficiency standards, so dishes are then loaded into the rack by the sink to dry. and the whole cycle takes like 2 and a half hours.

And I'm wondering why I'm not saving much time and its because the time savings isn't really significant to begin with. Coupled with the fact that when I was hand washing, I'd actually wash dishes as I generated them during cooking. It only takes me about 30 seconds to wash a plate or pan with sink and sponge and soap. I could have most dishes done before dinner was even served saved for the plates and silverware it was eaten with and maybe the last pan in the process, maybe 30 seconds work hardly less effort than the act of rinsing and scraping before the dishes go into the dishwasher.

All that begin said I still use it, but I probably am not saving much, if any time, with the new rituals it requires.

> Everything needs rinsing and scraping.

If you say that into a mirror five times an angry Canadian named Alec will show up behind you and start grumbling about prewash powder. It's amazing how absolutely nobody knows how to use a dishwasher properly.

Oh I am a powdered detergent truther already. I use the prewash tray. I clean the filter. I follow the manual to a tee. And you know what it says? Heat the water up out of the tap. Rinse and scrape the dishes. If I have to run the tap for 3 mins anyhow to get it hot enough to actually get the soap to suds up and not leave residue I might as well scrape out the pan.

I had a broken dishwasher with a part I didn't feel like replacing for a few years that I only used as a drying rack.

I replaced it recently because the door hinges broke as well. I now only run it once a week just to keep the parts moving. It is so much easier to just wash dishes as I go. And they're way cleaner when I wash them no matter how empty I keep the washer or how I arrange the dishes. Oh and I use it sometimes after I have guests over.

What I was getting at is that dishwashers and hand washing scale up differently, but not everyone needs to wash lots of dishes.

It may not have reduced overall work, but certainly it reduced the amount of work they did washing dishes. That would allow them to do other things (or allow them to use more dishes.)

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