The statistics illustrate the proportion of families possessed electronic gadgets and how much time each household spent on chores weekly in one nation from 1920 to 2019.
Overall, there was an upward trend in the usage of all three appliances used by electricity, whereas the time people did housework exhibited a contrasting pattern. Furthermore, washing machine accounted for the highest value initially; however, from 1960 onwards, this position belonged to refrigerator and vacuum cleaner.
With regard to the households’ ownership of gadgets activated by electricity, the figure for washing machine was two-fifths of the total in 1920, sodifying its position as the leading machine, and then continuously rose by 30% before witnessing a slight decline to just over 60% in 1980; finally, ending the period at around 75%. This was followed by vacuum cleaner and refrigerator, as their respective figures stood at one-third of the total and about 5%. Over almost a century, a constant increase was recorded in both of those categories, with 100%, holding the leading proportion.
Concerning the number of hours it took each family to do their housework every week which were washing clothes, preparing meals and cleaning, in the first year of the period, the amount of time to do chores stood at 50 hours, but then steadily decreased by 30 hours in 1960. After that, the drop was more gradual, reaching about 10 hours in 2019.