Time
I’m sure that years ago, as our forefathers and foremothers were laboriously going through the motions to stay alive, the idea of time savers was magical. What if every chore you had to do suddenly took half – or a quarter – or an eighth of the time to do?
Imagine you could go back in time 100 years, and tell your great-grandmother that you could put dirty clothes in a big box and it would wash those clothes for you? And then you could put those clean, wet clothes into another box and it would dry them for you?
A load of clothes going from completely dirty to completely clean in a matter of a couple of hours? Whoa! No soaking, and back-breaking scrubbing, and wringing out, and rinsing, and hanging out on clotheslines, and waiting for the clothes to dry, and then removing them from the clotheslines and bending them into submission? Magic. (I’d suggest not mentioning that irons are almost obsolete.)
Cleaning the house is a matter of running a vacuum, tidying up the bathroom and occasionally dusting the TV. No beating rugs, no daily cleaning windows, no hand-scrubbing kitchen floors. Some people don’t even make their beds every day. (I know, scandalous, right, Grandma?)
We don’t have to grow our own veggies, clean our own chickens, or bake our own bread. We don’t have to sew our own clothes, or even mend them – we can just buy new ones. We can pop in our car – yes, almost everyone has a car – or even order some online and have them delivered.
If your grandmother starts to add up all the time she’d save if she didn’t have to do everything from scratch, she’s going to have some questions: What do you do with all your freed-up time? If it takes you just a few minutes to sort and start a load of laundry, what do you do with the rest of the day?
Now we have to try to explain and/or defend our free time.
“Well, let’s see … I have to answer email, and check on social media … hmm? Social media? Um, it’s kind of like getting together with friends and keeping up with what’s going on with them. Or sharing stuff … pictures of your sushi dinner, see? And I have some games to update. I’ve got 17 Trivia Crack games going — no, I don’t actually physically get together with any of my friends to play, I do it online.
As a matter of fact, I don’t know any of the opponents on the Trivia Crack games. What? Why don’t I just play with friends? Because they’re all at work, or, you know, at the gym. What? What do they do at a gym? Exercises — lifting weights, or walking on a treadmill, or using a stair step machine. No, see, it’s because we’re all busy, so it’s hard to get in exercise.
“Oh, hey! Here, Grandma, let me show you how to stream movies and TV series. If you find a TV series you like, you can binge watch them. What does that mean? It means you can start at the beginning and keep watching the next one until you’ve seen them all. Well, yes, each show is usually around an hour …
“What about dinner? No worries, we don’t need to get out any recipes. We can order in, or we can check the freezer. I have lasagna we could throw in the oven, two P.F. Changs — that’s Chinese food, Grandma – and chicken nuggets.
Oh, gosh, a chicken nugget is … what? No, if I want a whole roasted chicken I go to the store and get one in the deli. It’s er, a time saver…”
I guess saving time is only really valuable if you then use that time on valuable things. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to use the washer and dryer, but maybe I’ll find something more productive to do while the cycle is going than watching reruns of The Office or playing Candy Crush.
In fact, I think I’ll slow things down and bake a batch of cookies from my Grandma’s recipes, and think about how lucky we are.
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at [email protected].
