17 Everyday Chores That Used to Take Way Longer
Remember when your grandmother talked about spending an entire day just doing laundry? Our modern conveniences have drastically reduced the time we spend on household tasks that once consumed entire days of our ancestors’ lives.
We often take for granted how technology and innovation have transformed these mundane activities into quick, simple tasks. Here is a list of 17 everyday chores that used to require significantly more time and effort than they do today.
Doing Laundry
Before washing machines became household staples, laundry was an all-day thing that required physical strength and endurance. People would heat large cauldrons of water over fire, scrub each garment on washboards, wring them by hand, and hang them to dry.
A task that now takes minutes to start would consume an entire day or more, with women often dedicating specific days of the week solely to tackling the family’s dirty clothes.
Making Coffee
That morning cup of coffee used to require roasting green coffee beans at home, grinding them by hand with a mortar and pestle, and then brewing through a time-consuming process. The entire ritual could take 30 minutes or more, compared to the seconds it takes to pop a pod into a machine or press a button on an automatic drip coffee maker today.
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Washing Dishes
Before dishwashers and modern detergents, washing dishes meant heating multiple kettles of water, scrubbing with harsh soaps that damaged hands, and drying each piece individually. A family dinner cleanup could easily take over an hour, with someone standing at the sink the entire time rather than simply loading a machine and walking away.
Cooking Meals
Preparing dinner once required starting and maintaining a fire, collecting ingredients from scratch (often grown or raised personally), and cooking without temperature controls. A simple meal could take hours of preparation without refrigeration, food processors, or pre-measured ingredients.
Modern conveniences like microwaves and instant pots have reduced cooking times from hours to minutes.
Cleaning Floors
Before vacuum cleaners, cleaning a carpet meant hauling it outside, hanging it on a line, and beating it with a specialized carpet beater to remove dust and dirt. Indoor floors required sweeping and then scrubbing on hands and knees with brushes.
What takes 20 minutes with a modern vacuum or robot cleaner once consumed half a day.
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Communicating Messages
Sending a message to someone living miles away meant writing a letter, taking it to a post office, and waiting days or weeks for delivery. Even a simple communication that we now handle with a 10-second text message could take weeks for a response.
The effort put into correspondence made each message more meaningful but tremendously more time-consuming.
Banking and Bill Paying
Banking transactions once required physical visits to the bank during limited business hours, standing in line, and completing paper forms. Paying monthly bills meant writing checks, addressing envelopes, and mailing payments days before due dates.
A task that now takes minutes online once required hours spread across different days of the month.
Researching Information
Finding specific information once meant a trip to the library, navigating card catalogs, locating books, and manually searching through pages. A research project that now takes minutes with a search engine could consume days or weeks.
Students and professionals would spend hours just accessing basic facts that we now have at our
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Preserving Food
Before refrigeration, preserving food required salting, pickling, or canning—labor-intensive processes that often took days. Families would dedicate entire seasons to food preservation, with summer and fall harvest times filled with canning vegetables and fruits to last through winter.
What we accomplish with a refrigerator door closing once took communities working together.
Shopping for Groceries
Grocery shopping meant visiting multiple specialty shops—the butcher, baker, greengrocer, and general store—often on foot or by horse transport. Each transaction was handled separately, items were individually wrapped, and everything had to be carried home without plastic bags or trunk space.
A quick 30-minute supermarket trip once consumed most of a day.
Heating Your Home
Keeping warm in winter meant constantly tending fires, chopping and hauling wood, cleaning ashes, and managing temperature by physical means. Many families assigned a person to wake during the night to add fuel to fires or stoves.
The simple act of maintaining comfortable temperature once required hours of daily labor rather than adjusting a thermostat.
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Making Clothes
Before mass-produced clothing, garments were either sewn at home or commissioned from tailors. Creating a single shirt could take days of measuring, cutting fabric, hand-stitching, and fitting.
Families would spend winter evenings repairing and creating clothing by candlelight, a stark contrast to our quick online ordering or store purchases today.
Personal Grooming
Basic grooming tasks like shaving required heating water, preparing lather, maintaining sharp blades, and proceeding with extreme caution. Women’s hair care could be a day-long social event requiring assistance for washing, drying, and styling.
What takes minutes in a modern bathroom once required hours of preparation and assistance.
Starting a Vehicle
Before electric starters, beginning a car journey meant physically cranking the engine—a dangerous and difficult task requiring strength and technique. In cold weather, various preparations were needed just to get the vehicle running.
The simple act of turning a key or pressing a button once involved a complex ritual just to start your transportation.
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Navigating to New Places
Finding your way to an unfamiliar destination meant consulting paper maps, asking for directions, and potentially getting lost multiple times. Planning a road trip required collecting maps, marking routes, and estimating distances and travel times manually.
The turn-by-turn directions we now receive instantly once required significant advance planning and navigation skills.
Taking and Sharing Photos
Capturing memories once involved loading film, carefully composing shots with limited exposures, sending film for development, and waiting days to see results. Sharing those photos meant making physical copies and mailing them or showing them in person.
A process that now takes seconds once required days of waiting and deliberate decision-making about what moments deserved the expense of film.
Contacting Emergency Services
Before 911 and mobile phones, getting emergency help meant physically finding a phone, potentially running to a neighbor’s house, and explaining your location to operators who had to manually dispatch services. The immediate assistance we can now summon with the press of a button once depended on proximity to communication and could take precious extra minutes or even hours.
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From Dawn to Dusk Labor to Modern Convenience
The transformation of these everyday tasks represents one of the most profound yet underappreciated changes in human history. What once consumed the majority of people’s waking hours has been condensed into brief moments of our day.
This efficiency has freed up tremendous amounts of time—though interestingly, most people report feeling busier than ever despite these conveniences. Perhaps understanding how our ancestors spent their days gives us perspective on how we choose to spend our own time in this age of unprecedented convenience.
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