Making Housework Fun Again

Though we may be loath to admit it, most of us can remember a time when housework was just a wee bit fun. Maybe it started back when you were a kid, when you were finally considered old enough to help with the dishes or sweep the floor. At first it was exciting and offered a sense of accomplishment; you could be trusted to help Mom out around the house! But the housework never ended, did it, and there's nothing like the daily grind to suck the joy right out of a task. When was the last time you actually looked forward to cleaning house?

Mechanizing the inevitable
Unfairly or not, housework has traditionally fallen to the women of the family, though this is changing rapidly; plenty of men are now well experienced in all manner of housework, as your humble writer can attest. Perhaps coincidentally (or perhaps not) it was only as American society turned toward greater gender equality that the endless tasks of housework became simpler.

Most people don't wash dishes by hand anymore, because it's easier to drop them into the dishwasher and let 'er rip. Ovens have timers and heat control, so you don't have to constantly check on what's cooking, and hauling huge blocks of ice into the house to stick in the icebox is a welcome thing of the past; the refrigerator and freezer stay cool all on their own, through the miracle of modern refrigeration. Maybe best of all, the washboard has gone the way of the dinosaur and the Model T: the washing machine may be noisy and uses lots of water, but it frees you for other tasks.

But mechanizing housework hasn't taken all the drudgery out of it. There are plenty of tasks you still have to do by hand, though items like ceiling fan blade cleaners and swiffer mops have made many tasks far easier than they once were. You still have to lift and carry items to the washing machine, sort them, and run them through various cycles before you're done. It still takes a human to cook a good meal, and most dishwashers require (ironically enough) that you wash the dishes before you load them in the washer. You may no longer have to beat your carpets to get them clean, but you do have to push a vacuum cleaner around the carpets, and sweep uncarpeted floors.

Robovacs to the rescue
Here's where a little fun comes back into the housework equation. It may seem little more than a light at the end of the domestic tunnel, but technology has added one more tool to the housework arsenal: the robotic vacuum cleaner. The "robovac" was pioneered by a company called iRobot, which offered its groundbreaking Roomba robot to an adoring public in 2002. The Roomba's a true marvel, the first inexpensive household robot that does more than amuse. It's a flattened saucer that can automatically vacuum a whole room without guidance, avoiding obstacles, scooting under furniture for maximum coverage, and plugging itself back into its charger when it's through. It can do any type of floor, not just carpets. It's fun to watch, fun to use, and makes your housework load just that much easier. Now if we can just get it to do windows...

The Roomba wasn't alone in the robovac market for long. Electrolux, Samsung, Sharper Image, and other companies rushed their own models into production, using similar designs and software. The really exciting thing about Roomba and its competitors is that they presage a time when robotic assistants will do a variety of household tasks, up to and including that pesky laundry. Hot off the assembly line is their new robotic floor washer, which mops and shines as it goes. iRobot is selling the Scooba as fast as they can make them, and competitive alternatives are surely just around the corner. After all, nothing succeeds like success!

Published with permission (FCDMInc)