Ten for Tuesday

Ten (10) Inventions That Have Made My Life Easier

I fear these pictures are really going to date me. However, I am still grateful for the changes that have been made in my life over the past however many years.

1. Indoor plumbing. When I was born, my home had only the "facilities" shown below:


When I was 2 1/2 years old, my family moved to a home that had a flushing toilet--hurray!

2. Bathtubs. The first house I lived in had no hot water, but the barn did! My mother sometimes took us out to the barn and filled up the milking equipment tubs to give us a warm bath.

When we moved, the home we move into had a shower, but no tub. While the older members of my family used the shower, on Saturday night my mom filled up a round metal tub, and we took turns taking our weekly bath. When I was 10, my family remodeled our home and put a tub/shower combination in the bathroom. Heavenly!

3. Hot Water Heaters. We loved having a bath in warm water--right in the house, and I know Mom appreciated the hot water, too.

4. The first washing machine I remember was a wringer washer that sat in what we called the back porch. Mom used that to wash our clothes, and I am sure she was very careful because some years before my grandmother caught her hand in the wringer. Ouch!

Of course we were all glad (Mom most of all) when we got our first automatic clothes washer. No, it didn't look quite like this one, but it was a good one that lasted for more years than the newer ones do.

5. Modern stoves. I remember my mom cooking on a coal stove. Before it was fired up, someone had to go out to the coal pile and fill up the coal bucket. One night, when Mom and Dad were gone, my older brothers and I made a game to see who could walk around the house without stepping on the floor. When we got to the coal stove, we walked right across the top of it. I was barefoot, but stepped right out anyway. Fortunately, the fire had been out for a while so I just got very warm feet and not any bad burns.

One year the oven door in the old stove was sprung, so my mom could no longer use it for baking. She tried making cookies in an old electric roaster for a while, but then my oldest brother tired of that. He offered his saved money as a down payment on an electric stove, and my parents used it for just that. Our first one looked similar to the stove below. It had two ovens (great), but the four burners were not so close together. My mom used it for years and years.

Today, while I am grateful for my electric range (complete with oven), I am also thankful for our microwave. What would any of us do without them?

6. We didn't have a furnace in our home until I was about six. We had a heater in the living room, sat close to the coal stove in the kitchen, and took hotwater bottles to bed with us to warm the sheets in the winter. After getting the furnace, I sometimes sat by the vent behind the bathroom door when the furnace was running just to feel the warmth.

7. Clothes dryer. My mom didn't have a clothes dryer until after I was married. She dried her clothes on a clothes line. In the winter, sometimes the clothes would freeze while still wet, so she would bring them in and hang them over chairs, tables, and other furniture so they could thaw and then dry. We all got to take turns hanging the clothes out and bringing them in. I do know, though, that few things smell better than sheets that have been dried in the sun while hanging on a clothes line.

Her first clothes dryer was a used one that my aunt gave her when she got a new matching washer and dryer and didn't need her old one any more. Boy, did it make the jeans and towels softer.

8. Hay bale elevator. You had to be there to appreciate this one. When my two older brothers were both on missions and no longer living at home, the three girls had to help in the hay. We built haystacks like this one, sometimes even bigger:

My dad knew it was hard work for girls, so he bought a hay bale elevator that would life the hay bales from the truck up to the different levels of the stack. This way we didn't have to throw them so far.

We also had an elevator on wheels that hooked onto the side of the truck out in the field. If the truck driver was good (and I was), the elevator would just pick those bales up and take them up to the level where hay was being stacked on the truck. Again, this kept us from having to throw the hay bales so far.

9. Dishwasher. My mom didn't have a dishwasher until after she moved from the home where I grew up into her new home on the farm my dad bought in 1971. I know she enjoyed having it. Even though most of the children were gone from home, it was a great help when the grandchildren came. I am grateful that I have one, too.

10. Computers and everything they mean.

It was not fun typing on an old typewriter with two pieces of carbon paper stacked between three sheets of typing paper to try to correctly type a report or term paper that had to be turned in. Today, we applaud the computer, the keyboard, the printer, and all that go hand in hand to make our communication easier. Not only are reports, etc., easier to do, but we have email, facebook, blogs, and other computer programs that are a great part of our everyday lives.

I'm grateful that all I have all the blessings of the "new" inventions listed above. Because of them, my life is much easier than my mom's was. It will be interesting, in future years, to see how some of these have become improved for my own children and what science and research brings to make their lives easier.