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Needless crap, yes indeed. All made in PRC (China), including the shopping cart and the credit card!
I used to work for a company that manufuctures credit cards. I promise you, all of the major credit card companies would not even think of permitting them to be manufactured in China -- security is too vulnerable there. The company I worked for and its main competitor account for about half the volume of worldwide credit card manufacturing -- both based in the U.S. We had some competitors in Europe (Gemplus, Slumberger Oberthur), but nobody in Asia.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve-o
The laziest thing I ever thought Americans could buy was a remote for the car stereo. I mean, really...
I have one of those and I use it all the time, not out of laziness but because I don't have to lean forward to manipulate the stereo controls and it's easier to keep my eyes on the road and I'm less likely to accidentally turn the wheel by leaning forward. I used to have a car that had the stereo controls mounted on the steering wheel. They don't make enough of those any more IMO.
burning shrubs, tree branches, etc. instead of cutting them and bundling them per trash pick up instructions I just love the polluted air from the smoke....NOT. Well, that isn't purchased, but it's lazy to me.
I don't know of any densely inhabited places that allow this any more. This is done out in rural areas where there is often no tree-limb/shrub pickup.
For all this talk of laziness, how many of you still grow your own food? Wash your clothes by hand with a washboard? Fix your own car? Patch your own roof? Chop your own firewood? Wash your dishes by hand? Sew your own clothes?
I just dont have a wash board, I must be lazy.I actuly enjoy the rest of thoes activities. I allso enjoy mending my own fences, I dont make my own clothes but I have ben known to make a repair on my shirt and pants.
Back way when, wash day was the most hated day of housework and it was on Monday. It was joked that Monday was wash day because housewives would spend Sunday praying for the next day to be sunny.
Monday
Get up at dawn.
Haul fresh water into the house. Put a large pot on the back burner for hot water.
Cook breakfast from scratch on the wood stove.
Wash dishes using soap and the hot water on the stove.
Replenish stove water.
Strip beds, collect garments.
Separate garments by fabric and color (remember vegetable dyes?)
Put aside items needing repair.
Start boiling water out back over a fire you've made and water you've hauled.
Get out the brown soap
Soap and soak your cold items first, dumping them into a tub by item or color. Scrub and scrub and scrub and scrub. Change water with each change of color.
Hand wring each item of clothing from heavy coats to woolens.
Get your whites and divide them into batches.
Dump them into a vat of boiling water to disinfect.
Fish each item out of the boiling water and put into another tub of very hot soapy water.
Once cooled enough to handle, scrub and scrub and scrub with brown soap.
Put each item into the pile
Dump delicate items into the boiling water and do the same thing only handling them with care.
Fish out each of these, hand scrub each, and hand wring them.
Dump these into a separate wet pile.
Dump the water, put salve on your lye-chapped hands.
Fix lunch from scratch for everyone in the house using the wood-fired stove.
Do the dishes by hand with more soap and the hot water pot.
Haul more water into the kitchen to replenish the hot water pot, stoke stove.
Last, scrape the dirty diapers and menstrual napkins and dump them all into the vat that's kept at a rollicking, very hot boil.
Fish out each of these, hand scrub each, and hand wring.
Dump vat of soiled water.
Refill vat with fresh water, heating it to rinse items.
Go fill every bucket you have with water.
Rinse your woolens in lukewarm water.
Empty woolen rinse water
Refill vat and reheat
Rinse your colors, careful not to mix unlike colors.
Repeat rinse process for each colored cotton or linen, changing water as necessary.
Hang it all on the line.
Heat stove
Cook dinner from scratch.
Wash dishes.
Pray it stays sunny.
Tuesday:
Wake-up,
Haul water
Start the stove
Cook breakfast from scratch.
Wash dishes by hand.
Put irons on stove to warm.
Get out the ironing board.
Begin to iron the linens and cottons first. If you're lucky they should be just barely damp.
Burn yourself a few times on the hot iron in the hot kitchen. Keep checking stove.
Iron all the underwear, all the sheets, all the shirts, all the petticoats, camisoles, pantalettes, trousers, blouses, bed and table linens. If you're lucky, you've got to all of them while they're just damp. If not...
Get the hand sprinkler, fill it with cold water, and sprinkle each item you iron. Be sure the iron isn't too hot for cottons, but not too cool for linens.
Check each item of clothing for new rents or holes. Put these aside for needlework.
Haul more water.
Cook lunch from scratch.
Wash dishes by hand.
Fold each item of clothing
Place each item in their linen presses and chests of drawers.
Check each drawer for moths.
If you find moths, kill them and then go outside and get some meadow rue, lavender, or cedar sprigs to help repel the moths.
Fold-up the ironing table, let irons cool, take the hot soiled water from yesterday and dump that too.
Haul water
Cook dinner from scratch on the hot stove.
Wash dishes again.
Alternate Tuesday, It Rains:
After cooking breakfast you bring in all your soaked linens, re-wringing them as necessary.
Keep the stove hot and stoked.
Hang blankets to block doorways, hotboxing the kitchen.
Run rope and cords in the kitchen to hang linens and clothing
Hang the cottons and woolens in the kitchen to dry (linen won't mind the damp wait or mildew). Cottons go closer to the stove, woolens farther away.
Spend morning turning items to keep them dry, taking care they don't catch fire.
Cook lunch in your hot kitchen taking care not to ignite your laundry, splatter grease on it, or cook anything smelly.
Take down the dry cottons.
Hang the linens.
Start ironing as above in your very hot, very damp kitchen which now smells of wet wool.
Keep checking the woolens as they dry slowly.
Keep ironing and taking down items as they dry, taking down linens while they're still slightly damp.
Cook dinner and do dishes taking the same precautions.
Keep the stove warm to continue drying the woolens.
If necessary, keep this up through Wednesday until everything is done.
Wednesday
Wake up
Start the stove
Cook breakfast from scratch
Wash dishes
Go through all the clothes needing mending, separating them by type of mending needed. Put them into piles for those needing patches, those needing buttons, those needing basting or seam repair, and those needing simple tears sealed.
Go through all your spare pieces of cloth, hooks, and buttons looking for matches.
If you need patches you may get together with a neighbor to see who has what.
Start the stove
Haul water
Cook lunch from scratch
Wash dishes
Many ladies meet for sewing circles to exchange needles, hooks, pins, remnants, and buttons. Go to town or the sewing circle.
At the sewing circle start sewing! You will spend the entire afternoon sewing, darning, knitting, mending, or even spinning. If you finish early then you go work on a quilt. All the ladies get together to make quilts according to need. New children? New marriage? They need a quilt. Whomever most needs one, gets one. Your daughter(s) will be watching and helping but if they finish early they'll get to work on the hooked rag rugs.
Go home
Start the stove
Haul water
Cook dinner from scratch
Wash dishes
Continue sewing or teaching crewl to your daughter.
All in all, three entire days of the week are devoted to doing laundry and tending to the household linens and clothing. That's a lot of work.
It's a hot and humid summer day? Too bad.
It rains all day Monday? Too bad. You'll have to iron dry EVERYTHING.
Pregnant or have infants? Too bad.
Stab yourself with a needle? Hope you don't die of lockjaw.
Scald yourself? Too bad. Put some salve on it and get back to work.
Each day, other than Sunday, you will also be:
Cleaning tack
Sweeping floors.
Dusting.
Hauling blocks of ice and emptying drip pan in cooler.
Bringing in wood, stoking and tending fires.
Additional chores could also include:
Hand washing windows with vinegar you made.
Taking out rugs to beat clean then bring back into the house.
Tending to chickens, geese, and ducks, feeding and collecting eggs.
Slaughtering fowl, plucking and saving feathers and down to make pillows and mattresses. This is followed by scalding the bird to scrape off the rest of the feathers, gutting, and butchering.
Tending to goats, milking them.
Tending to children.
Teaching children.
Churning butter
Separating cream from milk
Making yogurt and pot cheese
Making candles
Making soap
Carding and spinning
Weaving cloth
Making cloth into clothing, linens, and curtains.
Tatting lace.
Making tinctures, linaments, and medicines
Making vinegar
Planting, weeding, and maintating an herb garden
Picking berries and fruits, digging-up vegetables for home use.
Canning said fruits, vegetables, and meats.
Cleaning out and stocking the root cellar.
Your other days are spent in the following:
Thursday: Market Day
Friday: Cleaning Day
Saturday: Baking Day
Sunday: Day of Rest
We think of linen as a luxury fabric but back in days of yore, it was a necessity. Linen has the unique property of being stronger when wet than when dry. It was a tough and durable fabric that held-up to the very harsh laundry methods of the day. Linen also tolerates wet heat uniquely well so it was easy to bleach and sanitize. Since they didn't have dryers, there was no danger of breaking the fibers in a hot dryer. Cotton was cheaper, but not as durable and it had to be handled relatively gently to prevent it from tearing.
Laundry was a BIG deal before the advent of the washing machine and, of all things, the US Patent Office has more patents for laundry related inventions than any other single catagory. In the 19th century, the majority of patents were for laundry related inventions.
I don't think lazy has anything to do with it. The life of a pre 20th century woman with no domestic servants, female relatives, or daughters to help was a life of unimaginable toil. While the men rarely had it any better, it was a very tough life.
Lazy? Hardly. Nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they had more time to iron or vacuum. We may love our work, but household chores are the least desirable way to spend time. Some people may enjoy some of their chores, but I don't know anyone who wouldn't rather being doing something else related to leisure or career.
Last edited by Jason_Els; 07-23-2007 at 12:27 AM..
I don't know of any densely inhabited places that allow this any more. This is done out in rural areas where there is often no tree-limb/shrub pickup.
For all this talk of laziness, how many of you still grow your own food? Wash your clothes by hand with a washboard? Fix your own car? Patch your own roof? Chop your own firewood? Wash your dishes by hand? Sew your own clothes?
When I cut down shrubs, tree limbs, and the like, I do bundle them and haul them to the street for pickup unlike my neighbors who load all that kind of stuff on a trailer attached to their golf cart or riding lawn mower, the epitome of laziness, dump them in a huge pile, and have an occasional bonfire. I hate that because I hate the smell it causes and don't enjoy breathing the air while the burning is taking place. Yes, we're rural, but we do have a weekly trash pick up. Even if I didn't, I would pay someone to haul off the cuttings.
I do still wash my dishes by hand. When I bought my home, a dishwasher was in it, but I had a guy replace it with a two-shelved cupboard. I gave him the dishwasher for his work.
I never buy clothes that require dry cleaning, but do buy the "hand wash only" and I do that in the kitchen sink, no washboard though.
I still don't have a microwave and never will. One was given to me at Christmas several years ago, but I returned it and credited that person's account with the money.
Roof ~ I'd fall off for sure and don't like heights.
Sew ~ I never learned how because I wasn't interested in it, but I do alter or sew on buttons or tears.
Food ~ My dogs would ruin a garden, and I don't want one in my front yard.
Wood ~ no fireplace
Car ~ I only wish I were so mechanically inclined. The only thing I can do is check and add oil, check and add transmission fluid and all other fluids, and check and add air to my tires.
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