Tag Archives: chores

19th century Household Technology

Posted on August 7, 2011 by iselva.alcantara

Searching through Google I found a video relating to household technology of the mid 19th century.  This mini documentary comes from the Library of Congress titled  “The History of Household Technology”. I, like most of you know that life for these women during this period wasn’t easy. Household work would take all day and it was arduous work.  I have never been so grateful for the advancements in household technology until now. The video portrays some innovations regarding laundry, ironing and the stove.  Today these chores have become so efficient regarding time, we often forget that each of these activities took a day each back in the 19th century.  In the documentary they mention some excerpts of reading materials provided to housewife by other housewives.  These were advices and tips on how to become a better housewife.

It is quite interesting on how these women first started doing laundry by hand and then decades later, trying to find easier, less strenuous ways to do these chores, technological innovations came up with a product that resembles a washing machine.

Even the clothes iron was something to dread, due to its weight and its capability to burn your hand or even worst explode.

This reminds me a great deal of how many of the authors of the readings we do for class, make the argument that all these technological innovations although great have did not take the women out of the kitchen.  I agree with them but at the same time it is hard to not grasp the importance of how much these innovations have diminish the laborious work endured by the women of the 19th century.  It is interesting to note that these women did think their work was difficult and at the same time the network of housewives around them served as motivation to continue working hard everyday.  I also was a little bit curious on how they manage to do the chores like cooking,cleaning and taking care of the children,all daily activities if each of these took a day.  I concluded that they had to have had help from their children and servants.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Assignment 3 | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Chore Wars

Posted on August 7, 2011 by irina.tyumentseva

This week we were discussing how household work changed in 20th century. In the article “Twentieth century Changes in Household Technologies.” we traced how housework changed qualitatively and quantitatively. We also discussed how technological sphere in household becomes another field of work. In our days people bring their household chores into internet space! The game Choir Wars is free online game that allows to turn real-life chores into points that are used in the game. Players can make a list of chores together and then game assigns certain rewards for them.

As one father was saying in his blog, the game helped to motivate kids in doing their house chores. He mentions that even though kids still got the same tasks and rewards as they did before the game, now they felt as they earned those rewards more then before.

I think what can be interesting for our class is that transformation that game makes of routine physically performed tasks into online game. It shows how much technology means in modern households and how it can be used in stabilizing relationship between family members.  Players report that they have less conflicts about who should do what and in what time. for those who have kids this game became powerful motivational tool.

The Choir Wars also can be seen as an epiphany in child marketing.  It manages to “sell” kids work that they usually don’t want to do. It employs media of computer game to make housework cool and attract kids by experience points and rewards they can redeem online after they finish real-life task.

P.S.:  If you know kids who spend all they time online, this may be the way to make them do something for their family on chorewars.com.

Posted in Assignment 3 | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments