They are talking about a plumbing device that grinds up any matter that goes down the drain in the kitchen sink.
Illegal here (our town in New England) due yo concerns about the sewer system.
You’d have a problem with the home inspector when you go to sell the home.
But yes, many people have them in towns here where they are not allowed. A licensed plumber wouldn’t put it in, so it’s a DIY or handyman job.
Ok, so I misunderstood the meaning of a garbage disposal device (since I’ve never encountered such a device), but that would surely be illegal here too because of restrictions for the sewer system. First thing I think about is the attraction for rats and other vermin if you dispose your organic trash into the sewer.
Dishwasher. No place to put it without losing too much storage space.
Garbage disposal.
Like many others here: electric can opener
For me, it’s the reverse: Parents didn’t have a dishwasher; I never lived with a dishwasher until I turned … 42? Now I wonder how I’ve lived so long without one.
In the spirit of the thread, all I could really think of is an electric carving knife. What the hell was the point of that? Pretty sure we got it as some sort of gift from the bank for opening an account or whatever the heck it was that banks rewarded customers for with small household appliances.
I was given an electric carving knife as a wedding present. I have used it only when needing to carve a large roast, like a turkey. In that circumstance, an electric carving knife is absolutely the best, much better than a regular carving knife. But, for me, and for many people, that circumstance isn’t going to be common.
I’ve been married 30 years now. We’ve had an electric knife the entire time. It has probably been used less than 20 times in all those years.
Our breadmaker we’ve used hundreds of time. But my parents never had one.
A dishwasher is a must in my opinion. We’re on our third house and all 3 have had them. Not having one for a few months in our recent transition was annoying.
Similarly, if parking in a garage, must have an opener. Our first house didn’t, so the garage ended up a storage space and workshop. In this house only 1 bay had and opener so I installed one as soon as it warmed up enough for me to do so.
My parents had an electric knife, but I never saw either use it. My grandfather would use it to carve the turkey on Thanksgiving, but as I recall, it was more trouble than it was worth. I own one but have only used it a few times. I find the fact that it vibrates wildly makes it challenging to make precise cuts, and you mutilate the poor creature you’re trying to carve. An extremely sharp German carving knife works better for me in most cases.
We have an electric carving knife, and I use it once a year, at Thanksgiving.
It does a fantastic job, and doesn’t “vibrate wildly.” It basically just buzzes right through the meat.
You’re doing something wrong. Or there’s something wrong with your electric knife. Maybe it’s just a bad one.
This is just baffling. “Almost nobody alive today” had a mother who had to provide clothes for her kids before the 1950s? I’m… pretty sure that’s not true. I mean, it might be for some very large values of “almost nobody”, I suppose.
And in general, I disagree that modern garment manufacturing has made home sewing machines “pointless”. Sure, modern garment manufacturing provides a lot of ready-made consumables that don’t require an individual maker with knowledge or skill, just as processed prepared foods (“TV dinners” and the like) did in the 1950s.
But then people got tired of having to put up with mass-market pre-processed crap in the home kitchen because they’d lost the skills to produce anything better, and set to work regaining some of those skills. I think we’re beginning to see similar trends when it comes to mass-market pre-processed crap in the home wardrobe.
Of course, most people nowadays won’t be making most of their own clothes from scratch, just as most people nowadays aren’t butchering their own chickens and curing their own bacon. But I think diagnoses of the essential obsolescence of the home sewing machine are premature.
My mother made most of my clothes on her sewing machine well into the early 1970s. She was not very good at it. My pants routinely split at the crotch when I was in Kindergarten-first grade.
For what it’s worth…
My wife (age 59) grew up, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, primarily wearing clothes that her mother and her grandmother sewed on their sewing machines. Strictly speaking, they didn’t need the sewing machines, because, yes, store-bought clothes were available.
However, her family was not well-off, and sewing clothes, at home, allowed them to stretch their clothing budget much further than it would have gone buying clothes at a store. So, from the standpoint of balancing a tight budget, yes, they did need those machines.
Also, when it comes to altering or otherwise customizing clothes, it’s still much more expensive to have it done professionally than to do it oneself.
It’s like saying that you don’t need home cooking equipment or skills these days because there’s fast food. Sure there is, but if you want something that’s special or customized or individualized in any significant way, you’re still going to either have to pay a skilled professional serious money to produce it or learn how to make it yourself. The same holds true with regard to sewing equipment/skills and fast fashion.
While I have a lawnmower, when I was growing up we had a riding lawnmower. Today I have a manual push reel mower.
No, almost nobody alive today had a mother who had to make clothes for her family because there was no other way to get them. There were certainly people who made their family’s clothes by choice, then and now. I was responding to someone who answered
The sewing machine at a factory that makes home sewing machines mostly pointless.
in response to your question
How many people do you think are currently alive whose mothers needed a home sewing machine to clothe their family considering that 90% of garments were ready made by the '50s and 60% of garments were ready made by 1890? And remember that some of those garments that were not ready made were also not homemade as there are made-to-measure clothes and custom-made clothes. (And the way my family stretched the clothing budget is that I wore hand-me-downs even though I was the oldest of my siblings. I had older cousins)
Look, I’ve been learning to bake bread - but I do it because I enjoy it and it tastes better and I can customize it. But I don’t do it because I need to- I can always go buy bread.
See my prior reply to you. Needed from the standpoint of “sew or your family is naked?” No. Needed from the standpoint of “sew in order to be able to stretch a tight budget for new clothes, and make sure that your family is well-clothed?” Yes.
In the case of my wife’s family: there were no older siblings, and there were no cousins. Hand-me-downs from family members were simply not available for clothes for a young girl.
Also, I don’t automatically equate “not needed for the sake of averting outright nakedness” with “not in any way needed” or with “mostly pointless”.
As kind of an aside, the sewing discussion reminded me of a book I read when I was probably in 5th grade or so. Likely it was one of Beverly Cleary’s earlier works; at that age I checked out literally every one of her books the school library had. But anyway, in the story the main character’s friend had the idea “Hey, let’s get our moms to make dresses for us, so we’ll have identical dresses to wear on the first day of school” or something like that. And ultimately the main character ended up feeling embarrassed by her dress because her mom couldn’t sew as well as her friend’s mom.
So I guess the existence of that story line demonstrated that sewing one’s own clothes was “a thing” when that book was written (I’m assuming 1950s or 60s), at least in some families.