Wash Day is Fun Day

by Alexander Lee, Reprinted with permission.

Note: This is a snippet of a longer piece. Found here.

For Ma and other pioneer women, each day had
its own proper chores. Ma used to say,

"Wash on Monday,

Iron on Tuesday,

Mend on Wednesday,

Churn on Thursday,

Clean on Friday,

Bake on Saturday,

Rest on Sunday."

-Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

Since 1945, General Electric and other large appliance manufacturers have spun a myth that all new appliances will liberate you from the drudgery of housework and make your life easier.[1] Today, Americans work harder and take less vacation than any of the nations to which we normally compare ourselves.[2] Groups like the Center for a New American Dream and my organization, Project Laundry List, have been questioning this for over a decade and offering an alternative perspective.

 

An ad from GE (part of which is pictured here) tantalized women of the post-World War II era, "Wash day is fun day. In go the dirty clothes...and out they come, cottons ready for ironing; synthetics ready to wear!" One can imagine Rosie the Riveter stretching her feet out in a 1948 Levittown home and imagining that the long, grueling war of housework was finally over. Alas, this is not the case.

 

A recent study by the Pew Research Center found that we view all sorts of gadgets as necessities which we recently regarded as luxury items—the microwave, the dishwasher, and home air-conditioner, for example. They found, "more than eight-in-ten (83%) now think of a clothes dryer as a necessity, up from six-in-ten (62%) who said the same a decade ago..."[3] These statistics are staggering and tell an interesting story.

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[1] Town-builder Levitt previews the new 9 ½-foot wonder kitchen by General Electric, GE ad, http://server1.fandm.edu/levittown/images/lg_jpegs/GE-ad.jpg (last visited October 30, 2007).

[2] Don Mekrund, Americans Work Harder and Go Without Vacations, http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0728-02.htm (last visited October 30, 2007).

[3]Pew Research Center, Luxury or Necessity? Things We Can’t Live Without: The List Has Grown in the Past Decade, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/323/luxury-or-necessity (last visited October 30, 2007).