You Can Have a Self-Cleaning Home Too If You Give up Everything You Love.
The belated New York Times obituary pays homage to the inventor Frances Gabe, who designed, built and lived in “the world’s only self-cleaning home.” Gabe comes across as an adorable and ingenious eccentric in a house full of honey, I shrunk the kids. Her big idea: to transform an ordinary house into a giant dishwasher.
Gabe used her home as a prototype for the technology she hoped to spread across the country. It was a filthy execution, hacked together with existing materials and a concrete mixer in the yard, with ceiling sprinklers spilling over the waterproofed rooms. The floors were slightly sloped and varnished, the bed was covered with a canopy, the books were protected by “waterproof jackets.” And the pipes will burst, spraying water in unwanted directions, as captured on video in local news:
But that’s the nature of prototypes. They didn’t go through the design department; no one chose a consumer-friendly color; they don’t come with accessories to fill in the blanks.
Cleaning is not easy. It means putting dirt or “matter out of place” in place . It is essentially a fight against entropy, a losing battle that creates a temporary mess of soap, water, and bags full of trash. This most difficult job is mainly assigned to women, and then devalued as a subordinate. 3 million Americans working as janitors and housekeepers earn less than $ 30,000 on average; millions of couch potatoes work for what their partners give them; and millions more perceive cleaning as a thankless “second shift” outside of full-time working hours.
Although homework technologies have made tremendous advances over the past century, they still remain manual. Existing innovations involve trade-offs. Washing machines and dishwashers are less accurate and more aggressive than hand washing. The Swiffer needs to be refilled and generates debris. Roomba is having problems with complex carpet topography. Making corrections for these machines; we buy dishwasher safe glassware and easy to clean countertops. All Gabe asked for was a few more such benefits in exchange for a life without scrapers, scrapers, and stoops.
In some cases, this is a great compromise. Ovens bake dirt on their own; Teflon coated clothing and utensils remove unwanted dirt. Cities such as Paris, Boston, and San Francisco have public self-cleaning toilets that are poured over, like Gabe’s kitchen. Example from Dresden:
The self-cleaning public bathroom is Gabe’s idea, brought to life where it matters most. The demo video above is very similar to the following playful simulation of Gabe’s house, made by artist Lily Benson after visiting the real site.
In this low-quality CGI rendering, comically unrealistic water droplets randomly pour onto the kitchen furniture. This makes the flaws obvious, but also shows how much Gabe’s vision resembles other grandiose concepts such as space elevators or Elon Musk’s Hyperloop . Every big idea in the early stages looks ridiculous.
In the case of Gabe’s house, even the basic concepts may seem ridiculous. He asks you to completely rethink your priorities. Would you only fill your home with waterproof items to avoid mopping and dusting? Would you constantly flood all your dishes with water to keep the dishwasher from emptying out?
It doesn’t seem all that radical compared to the compromises we already agree to: would you buy a salad in a bag so you don’t have to wash it? Would you maintain a database of your friends to stay connected? Would you cover the ground with sidewalk to move faster? Would you spend your life looking at lights so you can spend more time with more lights?
In the end, the public was not ready to accept Gabe’s compromise, but like the nuclear car , supersonic airliner, and modular phone , they were still important to consider. The self-cleaning home does not exist as a model for the home of the future. It exists to teach us a lesson: there is always room for efficiency gains if you are willing to lower your standards.