Save Time with Dishwashing 1930

SCIENTIFIC DISHWASHING

If you clear away the dishes for an average American family and do the job in the customary American manner, you spend just 38 minutes and 8 seconds a day at the task, and the number of motions is precisely 1,954. This information, preliminary to bettering the American speed record, has been ascertained by Mary K. Heiner and N. M. Venner, of the University of Chicago. Says Science Service’s Daily Science News Bulletin (Washington):

“By applying office efficiency to the dining-room and kitchen, you can cut the daily dishwashing schedule to 22 minutes and 58 seconds flat, these investigators state in reporting their work in The Journal of Home Economics. Saving in energy amounts to almost 950 motions. Present standard methods of American dishwashing include scraping and stacking the dishes at the table, washing the dishes by hand after each meal, and drying them by hand with a towel. To reduce to a minimum the time and energy spent on dishwashing, a housekeeper must be willing to break with traditional methods, the investigators emphasize. Dishes for three meals must be washed at one time, probably after breakfast. The dishes are allowed to dry in the air instead of being wiped with a towel. Dishes waiting to be washed are left stacked on the sink table until washing time, thereby saving 3 minutes and 22 seconds otherwise spent in hiding them in the oven.”

Source: The Literary Digest for June 7, 1930

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