It wasn’t long after I typed the question of the day about using bots to solve housework, that I heard on this Freakonomics podcast how house work has actually increased, rather than decreased, over the past century.

A guest on this podcast mentioned that we think everything got better, for instance, because washing machines made it a lot less labor intensive to do the laundry.

But, now we do a lot more laundry, so we spend more time doing it. Back in the day, you might wear the same set of clothes for a week, have 2 sets and do laundry once every couple of weeks.

Now that doing laundry isn’t as hard, we wear a set of clothes a day (or two) once before washing it and have many more sets.

So, lower amounts of intensive labor have been replaced with more less intensive labor.

This reminded me of Jevons Paradox, which says an increase in the efficiency of a resource will increase the consumption of that resource rather than decrease it.

A simple example is when I put a more efficient AC installed in my house. Rather than enjoy the cost savings of using less electricity to keep my house at a 75 degrees, I cranked the thermostat down to 72 degrees and enjoyed a cooler home.

Of course, it should be recognized that there are other benefits of the laundry changes, like not having smelly clothes and having more variety in what you wear. Such benefits are what I think helps drive Jevons Paradox: rather than pocketing the resource savings, we apply it to more benefits.

I have to go unload the dishwasher now.