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If you like this, check out the BBC's excellent series, Victorian Farm. In the show, a historian and two archaeologists live and work on a farm for a year, usin
by bendykstra 11y ago
If you like this, check out the BBC's excellent series, Victorian Farm. In the show, a historian and two archaeologists live and work on a farm for a year, using only tools and techniques of the Victorian era. Experts in period crafts and trades visit the farm to demonstrate tasks like building barrels or creating lime mortar to use in the building of stone walls. Here is a farrier creating a horseshoe in minutes from a plain metal bar: https://youtu.be/-x1hP8zisUI https://youtu.be/-x1hP8zisUI
Although the farm is the focus of the show, a good amount of time is given to domestic labor. I used to grumble when I had to do laundry, but now when trudging down to the basement, I can only think about how much of my day has been freed up by the washing machine.
- JorgeGT 11y agoI read two separate AMAs on reddit of +90yo German ladies. When asked what was the favorite invention of their lifetimes (telephone and electricity spreading, radio, TV, antibiotics, modern surgery/dentistry, aircraft, cheap automobiles, Internet, etc.) the answer of both was the washing machine. It was a real life changer for women everywhere.
- jacobolus 11y agoNow go back another 150 years earlier before the era of carding/spinning machines or industrial looms, and you get even dramatically more time spent on clothing. Making cloth by hand out of raw wool or cotton is an unbelievably time-intensive process, which is why most people only had a couple sets of clothes.