Or consider laundry: Instead of slaving over a hot cauldron for an entire day, often with a group of other people, you throw your clothes in a machine and go watch TV for forty minutes. Then you put your clothes in the dryer and watch more TV. Electric washing machines were not widely used until the late 1940s, and clothes dryers were not common until the 1960s. In 1940s rural Minnesota, my grandparents and their neighbors used outside clotheslines for drying. If there was an unexpected cold snap, the clothes would freeze solid.
