No Housework Day

No Housework Day is April 7th

Need a break from dusting? Tired of hearing the whine of your vacuum? No Housework Day is the holiday for you! This holiday, celebrated annually on April 7th, is a day to take a break from the constant cycle of cleaning your house. In a 2008 study by the University of Michigan they found that the average American woman does 17 hours of housework per week! After a long day of work, this is the last thing anyone wants to do. Today is a day to simply relax or let someone else do the housework for once. Those dust bunnies aren’t going anywhere.

Housework Helpers

Housework isn’t the easiest thing or the most exciting, but there have been many inventions that have tried to make it easier. Here are some inventions listed below that many of us take for granted:

• The Dishwasher - The Dishwasher was invented in the 1800’s by a socialite named Jospehine Cochrane. She was annoyed with her servants for constantly chipping her china plates. After washing the dishes herself she realized just how tough the job was. She created the automatic dishwasher to help make the task easier. While there had been other dishwashers invented before this one, Josephine’s was the first to be commercially successful. It wasn’t until the 1950’s that women really started using dishwashers when homes had hot water heaters that could support these machines.
• Vacuum Cleaners - For most of history, a clean house was the result of scrubbing everything by hand. The invention of electricity is what caused the world and housework to change. In 1901, the vacuum was created by H. Cecil Booth. He created the vacuum after watching workers clean seats with a device that blew air out. He realized it would be more effective to have the air blow in and the vacuum was born. In 1907, a janitor named Murray Spangler had a similar idea due to the dust he was sweeping constantly causing an asthma attack.  He used a tin soap box, a pillow case, a fan and a broom handle to suction dust out of the air. A man named W.H Hoover liked Spangler’s idea and they became business partners. The rest is history.
• Paper Towels - One of the inventions that perhaps everyone takes for granted is the paper towel. Before the invention of this handy product, many of us had to rely on rags and other cloths to mop up quick spills. Sounds pretty annoying right? In 1907, a school teacher finally found a solution to this problem. She was convinced that her schoolchildren were all getting sick because they shared one cloth towel. To fix this, she cut paper squares for the kids to use once and then throw away. The Scott Paper Company loved this idea and introduced Sani-Towels to companies that year. It wasn’t until 1931 that paper towels were sold in stores for households across the country.

No matter what housework needs to be done, big or small, today is a day to simply relax. Today is also a day to realize the impact of the various inventions that have made housework easier when it is being completed. But for now, sit down and take a load off, you’ve earned it!