The former makes sense, the part in bold is down right distrubing too…
"The Cleaning Innovations Survey conducted by SC Johnson discovered that a staggering 60 per cent of respondents would purchase (if available) a self-cleaning garbage can, whilst another 59 per cent would appreciate a stove top that has the ability to rid itself of food matter and stains every day. These requests, along with recent releases such as the Siemens shirt-ironing machine, are no longer whimsical ideas reserved for science-fiction novels or crazy invention TV shows.
Consumer demand has always been a catalyst for invention. The voice of 47 percent of those surveyed by SC Johnson crying out for a dryer that also folds your laundry could be enough to inspire a manufacturer to pilot such an item.
The slightly disturbing aspect of the survey is what it reveals about the steps people take to avoid household chores whilst they wait for technology to catch-up. An alarming 33 per cent surveyed close their shower curtains to hide a dirty bathtub, 20 per cent haven’t cleaned their bathroom for a month or longer and 16 per cent dine on paper plates due to a sink full of dirty dishes. Not to mention the 13 per cent who have thrown out pots after cooking to avoid cleaning them. Perhaps next on the agenda should be full-service, house cleaning robots much like the lovable ‘Rosie’ from 80s cartoon series The Jetsons.
We eat on paper plates, so we don’t have to do the dishes. Sure we have a dishwasher but its easier to just throw the plate away when your done. But the bathrooms and showers are always spotless. Go figure.
I love how this “research” sponsored by a major cleaning products manufacturer is spun with terms like “crying out,” “alarming” and “disturbing” when describing how people live.
Is this PR mean’t to fight off the growing environmentalism movement?
Living with or avoiding the mess is probably the greenest thing you can do. As for paper plates, dishwashers are frequently the efficient ecological choice over manual washing. And paper plates may be as well when you add up all of the factors.
dunno. grew up in a german family. my wife doesn’t understand my insistance that we clean the house every week like we do. elbow grease and soap…it’s satisfying
Wow! Throwing away pots and pans because they don’t want to wash them?? That’s scary and just shows how lazy our society has become. I really enjoy having a clean place probably to the point that I clean too much. Same goes for the car and I’m kicking myself for getting a new car with BLACK interior!! Argh!!
So which really is better for the environment? Paper plates, hand washing of dishes, or dishwasher?
The little iRobot vacuum cleaners sure are cool though. I’d definately use one of those!
My wife grew up in a German familly, and my brother and I knicknamed my Mom “Conan the Cleaner” (I was 8, it seemed more clever at the time), anyway, between the two of us, we clean the house pretty thoroughly weekly, which isn’t a big deal if you stay on top of it.
I never really thought about it, until to take a break, I hired a maid service for a day. Just because I thought it would be a nice treat for us, and I thought they would do it better… they didn’t. We clean better ourselves. The entire time the maids kept remarking how clean the place already was… to us is was pretty bad…
Anyway, the point, right, I guess people’s ideas about this vary greatly. You get accustomed to what you grew up (or revolt against it) and then don’t think much about how other people do it.
Yup, my mother was a notorious cleaner. Cleaned BEHIND the fridge, dusted underneath the TV and wouldn’t let us move furniture without thoroughly vacuuming behind things. Thing is, I’m like this now!!
How on earth college kids can live in some of those fraternity houses is beyond me.
I hate cleaning. To solve this all I own is a spoon, a knife, a big bowl, and a big pot. I never have a lot of dishes this way…but I also never have a lot of friends over…Maybe I’m worse than the people who throw pots and pans away. Rather be lonely than do dishes.
2 gallons of hot water (1 to wash 1 to rinse) versus 5 to 7 gallons for the dish washer, small savings yes but a savings. Paper plates, total energy is likely about 1/5 the ammount for china, but oops you only use them once, yes paper can be recycled but at almost a zero sum.
Our local recycle won’t take dirty paper. Therefore it would go straight in the landfill. I wash dishes by hand daily. I find my dishwasher doesn’t do as good a job and I hate the fact that I have dirty dishes just sitting there for a week. Eww!
We participated in research for scj for a mundane household cleaning activity, and the way they phrase it is pretty ridiculous. “Would you rather do this or would you rather have this robot like thingie do it for you?â€
55% of overwhelmed w/ housework moms say, “yeah totallyâ€
25% , “yeah if you can build itâ€
15% ( the “german†school of cleaning ppl) say , “no, I don’t trust it to do a good enough of a jobâ€
10% say, “no, you can’t build that shitâ€
Then the survey comes out. OMG.
If you phrase everything that way, who wouldn’t choose it? It’s not like people sit in filth and wait for this new magical thing to fold their laundry.
Everyday use of paper plates appall me big times though. But so do watering lawns and 2.5 kids and more than 500 sq ft per person homes.
eta: you can’t recycle soiled paper plates, you can only compost them.
eta2: There are major differences about what maybe I consider ‘clean†and what somebody else considers “cleanâ€. Observing people that were parts of scj’s study, mainly stay at home/working married females w/ kids, I realized how much more emphasis they put on the cleanness of their homes. It defined them. It was customary for them to be embarrassed about some imaginary dirt. I honestly doubt scj would survey frat boys, they’re not their market.
The saddest part was hearing multiple women talking about their husbands getting “angry†when they saw some dust or toddlers’ fingerprints on tv screen because that’s the first/only thing they saw. So they’d always make sure to clean the stuff off tv first. How bad is that? Way worse than a pile of dishes imo.
There’s a LOT of wiggle room in translating these findings. For instance:
“13% have thrown out pots, pans or dishes, rather than clean them.”
What defines a pot, pan or dish? Do disposable Glad Ware containers count? How about plastic plates? What about non-stick pots with peeling off teflon? What about foil pans?