The line charts illustrate the change in the proportion of ownership of three electrical appliances, namely, washing machines, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners, as well as the amount of time dedicated to housework from 1920 to 2019. It is clear that with the increase in the utilization these appliances, the hours devoted to maintaining and cleaning the houses have declined accordingly.
In the first figure have we see an overall growth in the use of these products. Refrigerators saw the fastest growth among the others. In 1920, almost no one used refrigerators, but by 1980, every household had bought a refrigerator. Meanwhile, washing machines and vacuum cleaners were owned by 40% and 30% of the households in 1920, respectively, and rose gradually to almost 75% and 100% respectively. Although the rate of ownership of vacuum cleaners was less than that of washing machines, it experienced a faster pace of growth and reached 100% in the year 2000.
The second chart depicts the rapid decrease in the amount of time allocated for housework weekly. We can see that the average time for this activity in 1920 was 50 hours, but it dropped by 30 hours in the next 40 years. Then, it continued this trend slowly until 2019 and reached 10 hours per week.
It is noticeable that with the development of these new gadgets and their increase in usage, people needed to work fewer hours in their homes from 1920 to 2019.