Here is my rough theory (supported by some evidence). Washing machines, invented at the turn of the 20th century and broadly adopted by around 1920–30 (along with a phalanx of related devices) reduced labor just enough to make live-in servants an uneconomical luxury. Those servants then had to serve multiple households to make up their income. This led to separation of residential neighborhoods for the domestic servant and middle class, with the latter moving to suburbia thanks to automobiles. This made commuting to domestic work more expensive, and more domestics chose to become lower middle class social climbers. The resulting scarcity in domestic labor caused more women to actually have to take over the semi-automated laundry process as opposed to having a domestic run the fully-human-powered version.

This, paradoxically, set the women’s emancipation movement BACK in the early decades of the century, until, by the 50s, with Betty Friedan’s “Feminine Mystique” we had a female counterpart to William Whyte’s “Organization Man” who was less free than her turn of the century grandmother. In other words home automation, by separating out the domestic class and moving a lot of them into the lower-middle class, caused a temporary reversal in women’s emancipation, one that has still not been corrected. Women are still more likely to do run the washing today…(though the reasons today are more complex).

The same trajectory, compressed and accelerated and time-shifted forward a few decades, is repeating itself in other parts of the world.

I don’t have a complete proof of this conjectured theory (that would take a Master’s Thesis level of research), but I think the evidence is highly suggestive.

I like that this item on the list isn’t something out of the Jetsons, just something that someone my age takes for granted. I really like the box in my kitchen that can be used to keep meat edible for months, without having to salt or smoke it.