I worked with people (not that old) who remember when their parents installed indoor plumbing to replace the outhouse. (Never asked about chamber pots). Technically, the main answer there would have been “electrification”. All the labour-saving gadgets run on electricity. Actually, the biggest change would be all the services - running water, sewer, electricity, phone, and now cable TV, internet. All these make possible the appliances we take for granted and replace much of the household management that consumed so much time.
Oh, and gas lines. I’m barely old enough to remember my school switching from coal to oil heat. Fire and forget technology for house heating, plus air conditioning, have totally transformed our lives.
It’s a self-feeding cycle. Almost nobody bakes any more except for fun. Much of what you want comes pre-made or substantially made, or ready to bake. One of the biggest changes is the refrigerator, thus eliminating the morning trip to market every day and making the low-effort food prep of today a breeze because the large selection of ingredients are right there at home. You make a meal by tossing together a few premade ingredients (if not a complete meal) rather than labouring over it.
I’ll ditto the lower standards. My dad wore a shirt and tie to work… but took his white shirts to a laundry. Where I work, nobody wears a tie; many just wear casual golf shirt attire. Everything is pretty much permanent press. In some businesses people dress up, but the prestige value of a “suit and tie” (formerly “white collar”) job is much diminished.
The biggest shift is that to appreciate the modern lifestyle, and all its toys, a couple usually needs 2 incomes. Thus the woman pretty much has to work. The smaller family is the result of the expense of taking time off for child care. The plethora of convenience appliances feeds the fact that time is more precious than money when both spouses work.
For example… The current fad was coffee-makers. In a household of 2, nobody needs to make a pot of coffee; it’s worth the fifty cents a cup to pop in a cartridge and toss it into the garbage after, rather than disassembling and washing a filter system and pot and dealing with a soggy filter when you only wanted one cup of coffee.
The ultimate convenience is pre-made meals. I saw a statistic quoted once that half of Manhattan residents almost never use their kitchen. It’s simpler and more convenient to eat out or order in.
