The glory of this mechanisation thing

One of the things that people often miss (or at the very least, underappreciate) is how the mechanisation of daily tasks in the past century has made us both hugely richer and also increased our leisure time. Further, it's less the mechanisation of industrial tasks that has done so: the mechanisation of the household has probably had more to do with it than anything else. In one of the few things that he's observably got right even Ha Joon Chang has cottoned on to this. That possibly the greatest labour saving device, the greatest contribution to female emancipation, has been the domestic washing machine.

Now, the thing is that these machines do depend upon the basic infrastructure of our society. Electricity, piped water and so on. They're also, while incredibly cheap for the time they free up, expensive for people in the poorer parts of the world. Which is where this little invention comes in:

"The GiraDora is a blue bucket that conceals a spinning mechanism that washes clothes and then partially dries them. It’s operated by a foot pedal, while the user sits on the lid to stabilize the rapidly churning contents. Sitting alleviates lower-back pain associated with hand-washing clothes, and frees up the washer to pursue other tasks. It’s portable, so it can be placed nearby a water source, or even inside on a rainy day."

The freeing of the distaff side from the monotony of hand washing clothes is quite possibly an even greater contribution to human utility than the concurrent freeing of men from those boring and repetitive tasks in a pin factory. Mechanisation of such routine tasks leads to the ability to do something more interesting and more remunerative with ones' time.