The House That Did The Housework – Margalit Fox & Amisha Padani

In their article, Fox and Padnani describe the life and work of Ms. Gabe (born on June 23 in 1915),the creator and inhabitant of the world’s only self-cleaning house during times when housecleaning was to belong to a woman’s main activity.
The lady is described as an independent woman and a true visionary. Inspired while sluicing a wall from jam soiled by her children, she began to design a house that was able to wash, rinse and dry itself at the touch of a button. In the 1980s after more than 10 years of planning, it was built out of cinder-block with a size of about a thousand square feet. A single button allowed to activate a sprinkler in the ceiling to clean walls and floors before jets of warm air dried everything. The whole process took not longer than one hour. A cupboard with meshed shelves, washed and dried dirty dishes itself. Laundry was cleaned in a tightly sealed cabinet, which was equipped with jets of water and air, while later on automatically pulled back into the clothes closet by a chain. Nearly all other objects in the house were encased by either acryl resin or plastic to protect them from water and soap.

Unfortunately she did not receive a lot of support from her community. Striking is the section in the extract of Fox in which Ms. Gabe has a group of women standing in front of her doorstep. They complain on her and her house to have a bad influence on their on household. Because if they weren’t for housework, they say, they would probably no longer be of interest to their husbands. As innocent as this comment might be at first sight, it is actually highly profound and ambiguous. Women not as self confident as Ms. Gabe seem to identify themselves with housework and thus are scared of the Industrial Revolution in the Home. We think it is always a pity if people are reduced to only their profession and the work they do but it is even worse with housework, because so often it has not been chosen deliberately and is neither acknowledged nor paid. Those women in front of Ms. Gabe’s doorstep would not be no longer of interest without housework, but they would maybe become the most fascinating personalities if they would have time to develop their thoughts and interests.

In 1984 Ms. Gabe got a patent on her in total 68 inventions. But while she earned some small money from visiting tourists, she could hardly cover the arising expenses. Her house was featured several times in notable newspapers and magazines. In 2002-03, a model made by herself wasexhibited at the Women’s Museum in Dallas. Although she was dreaming of an entire village of self-cleaning houses, of ce buildings and even hospitals, her mission could never be taken for- ward. By 2002 her patent has expired and never got renewed.

The dish cupboard

Comparing it to the topic of Ruth Schwartz Cowan’s essay about ‚The ‚industrial revolution‘ in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century‘ (Technology and Culture,vol. 17, no. 1 1976, pp.1-23), one could draw interesting parallels to the story of Ms. Gabe. As introduced in the first text, a survey of the nonfiction in the Journal ‚Ladies’Home Journal‘ shows that the decade between the end of World War I and the beginning of the depression was shown to generate the most drastic changes in patterns of household. By 1928 gaslight had disappeared and electronics had increased to four-fifths percent of the the electrified households by 1930. But not only electricity in form of electric light did change profoundly tasks in the household’s routine. Moreover it was due to electrical devices like irons or washing machines that changed a house-wife’s life. However must be mentioned that those devices did not drastically reduce the time thathad to be spend on household, as the housewife had to wait beside the machine, stopping and starting it. In this respect new routines were introduced by including the new available technologies.

Let us note, it was exactly during this time in the 1910s when Ms Gabe was born. At this aspect, one could assume that Ms. Gabe, raised in this very epoch affected by constant technical developments was a part (or maybe one could say a product) of this era. Growing up within a global trend towards automation, she was probably quite influenced by the movement. And never the less was she in uenced by the soon changing mindset of all housewifes towards their labour in this time. Ms. Gabe emphasizes on this in one sentence:

‘You can talk all you like about women’s liberation, but houses are still designed so women have to spend half their time on their knees or hanging their head in a hole’

The Baltimore Sun, 1981

As a reaction to this, her inventions can be seen as a form of contribution to the improvement of women’s work. As she might not haveoptimized the devices themselves, she rather optimized the processes in between, which in Cowan’s text are considered to be most time requiring. A modern proposal towards more free time and exibility.

 

Sources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/obituaries/the-house-that-did-the-housework.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margalit_Fox
https://www.instyle.com/news/international-womens-day-2018-new-york-times-obituaries
https://www.wnyc.org/people/amisha-padnani/