If you're in the HN demographic that likes to live in small urban apartments then you may not see value in automated vacuuming, but believe me they are filling a need for many people. My 68 year old mom decided to get one last year, prompted by discussions with several of her friends. She loves it so much that she's become something of a Roomba evangelical - last I checked she's talked 4-5 other people into getting one, and they all love them.

I don't even have a large house (~1200 sq ft), but I do have a cat. The whole ordeal of vacuuming probably took me at least 45 min to an hour every week, and often it didn't get done weekly. Getting a Roomba was amazing for me. It runs on a schedule twice a week, and I only spend a couple minutes dumping its dustbin.

I suppose I could have a Roomba that I moved up and down the storeys on alternating days, plus a manual vacuum cleaner solely for the stairs, but that seems to be defeating the point of robotics.

My parents have gotten themselves a back-pack style vacuum cleaner. It's not the prettiest thing, but it makes it very easy to vacuum stairs, and very very easy to play Ghostbuster.

This one: https://www.gearbest.com/smart-home/pp_187246.html

Turns out it's a few weeks short of 2 years old now, and it's still going strong. (It's kinda slow to charge, but at least thats kind to the batteries.)

It works fine for me - and I've had friends who've got real Roombas who say theirs doesn't work as well. I _think_ you sometimes get lucky with the wheels/traction and your particular carpet - mine does it's least-good job in the most rarely used room (spare bedroom) where the carpet is fluffier. It occasionally gets "trapped" in there. But I probably wouldn't have ever pulled the trigger at a $600 pricepoint.

I got it dirt cheap using a price match, included 5y warranty. Will see if they replace or fix it... But overall very happy with my purchase.

Replaced the battery once with a higher capacity one; does a great job, can go for hours, always love the result. Bit noisy, so best to run when out.

You have to look after it by cleaning the rollers and dust bin etc, but yeah, it's a very solid build.

Mate has the new one and it creates a spookily accurate floorplan. Pretty cool to see the advancements made.

I admire its design - it's a fairly simple machine that gets most everything right, including climbing carpet, being fairly quiet, not bumping hard into furniture, not falling off steps, and even returning to its charging base (on command or when battery is low after a couple hours work).

It does not have fancy magnetic barriers to close off areas, but a simple door draft stopper pillow on the floor holds it off well enough.

I had been hoping the Roomba would make my apartment and sweep it intelligently, but as near as I could tell, the Roomba just moved at random. I also found the power of the Roomba was weak. Inspecting my floor afterwards, I'd frequently find the same kind of lint, or detritus that made me want a Roomba in the first place.

Maybe I was just unlucky, or had a bad living space for a Roomba, but in my experience they aren't worth it at all.

It has no app and setting up any sort of non-trivial schedule using the simple remote that comes with it is very hard.

It never manages to find its way back to the charging station, so you have to find it and carry it back yourself each time.

It has no 'memory' so it has to learn the space it's in each time you start it and it doesn't know what it has and hasn't cleaned.

Beyond that it just works. I don't bother with scheduling. I just turn it on when I'm on my way out the door every other day or so and just let it get to work.

I don't think any of the others, including the 4x priced Roomba are any better at navigating my house. The sensors don't seem to work well on black floors, and there are places you will have to block so you don't have it getting stuck often. Once you've figured those two things out in your house, it's push button vacuuming with the $200 Eufy.

[1] https://www.productreview.com.au/p/xiaomi-mi-robot-vacuum.ht...

- we can't run it on a schedule, b/c it requires prep (moving cat food/toys, floor mats, etc)

- it's much slower than hand vacuuming, especially with our lightweight Dirt Devil (which is great for hardwood / tile but not for carpet)

- it's not all that thorough. it naturally leaves some stuff behind because it pushes some dirt / dust around while scooting around the floor

- whenever it's running we have to either hide in a different room or always be getting out of its way

- it can't get nooks and crannies smaller than itself

I will say that it's particularly useful on carpet, where I'd normally have to retrieve our very heavy standard vacuum out of the closet.

However - my wife loves it and I tolerate it. The mental hurdle of picking up a few things off the floor and pressing the "start" button is easier than actually doing it by hand. It's really best thought of as supplementary to a regular vacuum rather than a replacement.

If you have one of the models (I think it's the higher end ones) that supports the "lighthouse" that can do a circle, consider getting one. I have one of those by the cat's bowl, and I schedule the Roomba to start right before I leave for work so I'm reminded to go around picking up toys, etc. The cat usually sleeps most of the morning, so she normally leaves them alone long enough for the Roomba to finish.

> it's not all that thorough. it naturally leaves some stuff behind because it pushes some dirt / dust around while scooting around the floor

FWIW in my house (about 80% carpet) it does great. I was a little nervous last fall when I pulled out the upright vacuum for the first time after 3-4 months of letting the Roomba handle things, but what I got was much less than a normal week pre-Roomba.

I'd love a similarly simple way to press a button and have my laundry done - I've seen combined washer/dryers, but I'd love something that sorted and folded everything for me...

(Interestingly, I live alone, and do not have any motivation to buy a dishwasher.)

By far the best investment I ever made for house cleaning though is a cordless Dyson vacuum. It’s mounted on the wall and I end up vacuuming (5 mins max) every day so it hardly feels like a chore.

I also have a washer-dryer, though mostly for space reasons.

I would've gotten a robot vacuum ages ago too but my place has quite high doorsills, I don't think there's a device that could climb those.

My cat also HATES the sound of the vacuum me and makes me feel guilty every time I use it :(

This. I have animals and letting the Roomba run daily while I'm making breakfast helps keep the fur at bay until I vacuum each weekend. The Roomba does a good job getting under furniture, and having it run daily makes my weekend vacuum go much quicker.

95% of my house is on a single level so that does help.

Is this a joke? A machine that, when you take a piece of laundry and after de-tangling each piece (fixing inside-out/sleeves/etc) and then orienting it properly, insert it into the machine in a specific way, will fold laundry in "a few" minutes. All this for the low price of $1,000 USD and they claim to deliver in two years (which we all know will slip).

If this machine let me dump a dry bucket of laundry in the top and came out folded, that might be useful but expensive.

If it let me dump a dirty bucket of laundry in the top and it came out clean/dry/folded, that would be super useful and cheap!

You wouldn’t buy, say, a car that only got half the mileage or whatever just because there’s a human story behind it. There’s a human story behind almost everything.

Easily the most intriguing aspect of the show is discovering the often inordinate amount of time, energy and money that the candidates have invested in what, to the disinterested outsider, appears to be a completely mad and unworkable idea: the potentially destructive power of human determination.

I agree with your second paragraph completely. I also totally undrestand it, having cofounded startups myself in the past. You get tunnel vision.

Don't let a robot do something a human can do better.

A good example is robot vacuum cleaners: I have had one for a few years now and it's easily the best purchase I've ever made: it doesn't vacuum as well as we do but it does it everyday which is something I'm absolutely unwilling to do. Having it in my home greatly reduced the amount of time we had to dedicate to cleaning the floor and dusting non-floor surfaces (it turns out that daily vacuuming the floor has a huge impact in the amount of dust collected everywhere else).

(But I suspect you don’t need a fancy machine for simple shapes - a simple folding wooden rig would do and be almost as quick. Hell, I’ve got a cheap plastic thing that’ll do shirts in seconds.)

Large hotels and commercial laundry operations already have expensive specialized machines for folding. This does not seem to be targeting that market.

There are already such machines in industry (in garment-making, hotels etc). The challenge is that they are typically specialised towards specific types of garment. Nobody in industry really needs a generic machine; but that's the only configuration that the home market will consider. The only sub-niche big enough that could maybe sustain a specialised machine in the home is "shirts and trousers" - but there the real annoyance is ironing, not folding.

Fairly expensive machines though, and typically can only fold 1 type of article (eg: need a machine for each towel size or spend time setting it up)

There's a human story behind every product.

It's called Washbox, and it's a locker in the atrium of my apartment building. I drop my clothes off, text the locker number to the company, and my clothes will be returned clean the next day. It is, in fact, both super useful and cheap.

I'm sure they would love to automate their washing & folding process further, but those implementation details are already well abstracted from me as the end user. If I were interested in automating laundry, it seems smarter to start by targeting industrial use by existing laundry services who will be willing to pay more per unit and put up with more quirks than a home user would.

They'd be charging me almost as much just to do wash & fold than I pay for someone to clean my whole house....

I can see it being worth it for people who make a decent income and spend that time doing something else. It’s pretty much the same as any service for things that need to be done regularly. As your time becomes more valuable, it makes sense to delegate those tasks off.

A robot that puts my kids' clothes in a bag for pickup by a laundry service might be a winner.

Or one that sorts out intimates and drycleaning from towels and shirts, so that the latter can be sent out. My wife's primary objection to laundry service is that it's too personal to send out. Thus, the dream of a robot that can do it all in-house.

2) Get a laundry service or maid service.

Save thousands of dollars.

Dishes and laundry are a total non-issue.

I think it is completely reasonable not to consider your circumstance when giving general advice. The vast majority of people can choose a much simpler solution because they have much simpler problems. It's interesting to hear what people in your situation need to do, but I wouldn't expect many people to relate because they have no such experience.

Sure, only 23% of households have 4+ members, but they contain 44% of all Americans. Likewise, the 1.3% of households with 7+ members contain 6.2% of Americans.

And there are more people in households of 6+ members than in single-member households.

  #people_in_household  %_of_households  %_of_people
  1                     28%              11%
  2                     34%              27%
  3                     15%              18%
  4                     13%              20%
  5                      6%              12%
  6                      2.2%             5.3%
  7+                     1.3%             6.2%

  #people_in_household  %_of_households  %_of_people
  1-3                   77%              56%
  4-6                   21%              38%
  7+                     1.3%             6.2%

I mean occasionally my wife and I will both purchase bread on the way home resulting in us having a lot of bread, but I can't think of a time we both accidentally bought a refrigerator or oven on the same weekend.

But even having more money, will people buy robot appliances? Again, my gut feeling is that singles are actually more likely to buy things like that because the downside of making an ineffective purchase is dramatically lower.

My children are 3 and 5 which is why they're not much help with washing/drying and why the bedtime routine is more involved - bath, drying, brushing teeth, packing up, reading, answering questions about why they have to go to bed, why it's still light outside, how they are actually tired and so on.

Plus even our ten-year-old dishwasher is more energy efficient than hand-washing. It's more than paid for itself by now.

I didn't mind doing laundry when I lived by myself.

Then I started living with my wife. She has laundry preferences (among other things) different from mine (whoa!).

Then we had a kid. And another. And another. Not a family of 7, but I think I know where you're coming from. It was a walk in the park, individually. A complete non-issue.

The other benefit we find of using a dishwasher in a family is that the dishwasher produces a consistent and good result as compared to a 8-12 year old trying to hand-wash, and kids can be trained to competently unload things if you store plates and glasses "low". So the aggregate effort for parents is almost zero.

I'm thinking that the bulk of people giving advice like yours live in smaller-scale households and don't entertain, or don't entertain in a way that generates any dishes. I think a dishwasher would probably be a bit weird if I lived alone, as it would take ages to fill with dirty dishes and I would probably wind up having to retrieve stuff from it all the time.

We just don't have that much hand-washing to do. They are still rubbish at the task even when made to do it.

When I entertain, I deal with things as required. (Admittedly not often...)

*I mean the efficient ones (a gallon of golf balls with 1 gallon of water marketing gimmicks, etc), not the "low flow" crappy ones.

With a relatively new dishwasher you can put your dishes in completely dirty with no rinsing. They're a solid time savings for sure.

I agree that washing dishes immediately after use reduces the effort to almost nothing. I try to do so as much as possible. Laundry is not as precise.

I can’t immediately run today’s clothes through my washer and dryer alone without wasting resources. I also need to remove my laundry from the dryer soon after it finishes if I want to avoid wrinkled clothes. For these reasons, I only do laundry in large loads and I have to schedule around the task. This is even more of an issue for people who do not have laundry machines in their homes.

Similarly, washing clothes is not a significant time sink, 99% of the process is done by a machine unattended, I only need to collect the clothes, transfer them from the washer to the drier and put them away afterwards. Or put them on a hanger to dry if they require ironing.

That's about 25% of the US population. Those of us raising families do quite a lot of labour every day, at least while the kids are small.

A quick mental estimate says daily dishes for family of 4, 2 of whom are preschoolers, is about 12X my singleton workload. Also laundry every day at least one load, maybe two.

We're a family of 4. My trick is that I'm super damn quick.

Not the only one. Admittedly I don't have kids, but I'm familiar with family life and I don't think this is really that much of a problem.

I think a lot of people suffer from the problem of not being educated about how to do basic things around the house. They make huge problems for themselves. For dishes, the main key is just not to ever have dirty dishes. Definitely, do not store dirty dishes in the sink. Not only does it stop you from cooking, but it means you are almost certain to break stuff when you do eventually wash it (because there is no room).

The idea of storing dirty dishes in a dishwasher is also just bad. You either need 10 of everything, or you are stuck digging around and hand washing some horribly encrusted pot that you need. Instead, as you cook, clean. If you are in a typical North American kitchen, box off 90% of it and constrain yourself to an area that includes the sink, an area the size of your cutting board and your stove/oven. Hopefully the sink, board and stove are right next to each other. Keep a small dish of hot water and detergent right next to the sink with a sponge or cloth in it. Replenish occasionally (I usually use the kettle since it is faster and more efficient than trying to get small amounts of hot water out of the tap -- I lived 5 years in a house without hot running water and never missed it!).

Whenever you use anything, clean it right away. Also put it away. Specifically: pots, knives and cutting boards should never be dirty. Get a knife board (or similar). Clean your knife and put it away every time you use it. The 2 seconds you save by putting your knife on the board (or other hazardous place) is not worth it. Pots should be cooking something, storing something, or spotless. Similarly, your board should be in use or clean.

Try to make due (or 95% of what you do) with a frying pan, 1 small pot and one large pot. Then reuse these as you are cooking. Also, buy 1 good knife and do everything with it. Think of these things as being in your cache. Make it a cache miss to swap out to something else. Obviously you will occasionally need specialised tools, but try to keep these really infrequent. Finally, wash the kitchen before you serve the meal. It sounds crazy, but you should be able to do it in less than 5 minutes, so the food can wait. Not only will your kitchen always be clean, but you will dramatically increase the speed at which you can cook. It is really astounding how much better it is.

At that point, the only thing you ever need to wash are the dishes you are eating off of. If you are a couple, then it takes virtually no time. If you are a family, then this is good "family time" (teaching children that working is part of life is not the most terrible thing you can do).

For laundry, my wife does the laundry every day that's sunny. We store dirty laundry in the machine. (Hint: Always leave the machine door open if you can. A dry machine is a not-moldy-machine). As soon as we get up my wife turns on the machine. After breakfast she hangs the laundry outside. Total time: 5 minutes. When she gets home at the end of the day she folds the laundry. I work from home so if it starts to rain, or is too windy, I take the laundry in and fold it. Total time: 5 minutes.

When we lived in London (i.e. a-not-sunny-place), we hung everything indoors -- just make sure that the room is well ventilated, or you can cause problems with moisture. It sometimes took 2 days for some things to dry thoroughly, but you can quickly put a few things in the dryer for a couple of minutes if you don't want to wait -- normally takes less than 5 minutes to finish it off.

I used to wash all the laundry by hand (really)! Before breakfast, soak. Before taking a shower, drain and re-soak with detergent. After having a shower (not having clothes on means you don't have to worry about getting wet), wash and wring out the detergent. Rinse and soak in rinsing water. After getting dressed, brushing teeth, etc, wring out the water, then lay the clothes out onto towels. Roll up the towels with the clothes inside. Twist the towels to transfer the water into the towels. Total time: about 10 minutes. Downside: you need a couple of extra towels that you need to hang.

Now, the above is hard work if you have a lot of clothes, but it's practically trivial if you are doing it every day (I still do this when travelling). To be honest, a modern washing machine is stupidly efficient and does quite a good job, so might as well use it, but it's useful to realise how little hassle it is to do it by hand -- as long as you are doing it every day!

The extra "during cooking" dishwashing steps of intermediate pots, knives, cutting boards, grating boards, and other intermediate cooking tools & pots, blender parts etc may satisfy a sense of order in the kitchen but it's but that's not enough to sway most people over.

And now the dishwasher feels like a good idea again. And you can accumulate dishes in it all day, so it also handles the between meals glasses, coffee mugs, french presses, sandwich making dishes etc.

In my opinion it's not necessary to be too strict about it, aim to have your kitchen 80% clean before eating, then clean up right after dinner.

The reason it helps is that if you build up a big mess in the kitchen, it makes the task of cooking seem overwhelming.

While this 'clean as you go' habit seems to be about cleaning,it's really about nutrition.

If your kitchen is well stocked and clean, you will find it easier to cook your own meals, which will do wonders for your overall health.

This is what I do, but everything else goes in the dishwasher. :)

Yeah, it is much of a problem. Once you get one kid, your dishwasher will be used more than merely 1/3 more, as will your laundry machine.

Every time I clean a pan or dish or fork or knife I use water, soap, and I gotta let it dry (which uses a rack which takes up space) after which I can soak up the remaining water and put it away. If I'm already doing that, it goes in one go, called dish washing or I put it in this spot where I put in a tablet and let it work for a few hours, called a dishwasher. Which is, incidentally, very space efficient and consumes very little time. I'm a proponent of reusing dishes, glasses, etc but with cats I don't find it very hygienic.

You want to wash your dishes for 5 minutes after you finished cooking your meal. Well, that's your choice. I want to cook my food, serve it with the family, and watch them enjoy the food and (potentially) receive feedback or even redo parts or grab additional spoon or sauce or whatever and perhaps most importantly for myself: enjoy the food I made, served hot, with my family. To hell I would stand 5 more minutes in the kitchen cleaning my mess up. That's for after dinner! And cleaning it up means putting it in the dishwasher.

> The idea of storing dirty dishes in a dishwasher is also just bad. You either need 10 of everything, or you are stuck digging around and hand washing some horribly encrusted pot that you need.

Then you get more pots, or you put your dishwasher on more often, or you wash the pot(s) by hand. We, or well generally my partner rather, do the latter but we also have enough pots and pans to easily last for a couple of days. They're washed in one go, not in multiple. I think time-wise, that's more efficient, regardless of you saying is better (not sure why actually).

Putting my clothes in my garden is a sure way to attract cats, thieves, and bad weather. I don't have a dryer (am considering getting one given a baby is due). Putting clothes on doors and a rack seems to work well, though does require ventilation indeed. I can also recommend to use vinegar as fabric softener.

Your advice is interesting and inspiring, even more so for road warriors and the like but its just less practical than using machines for the tough work. Why? It saves us time and effort. Time and effort is what you sorely lack when you get kids. You don't have kids, I suspect you underestimate the impact of having even one (young) child. If you have a baby you can say bye bye to your sleep rhythm. Do you think I'd love to do dishes regularly between my sleeps? No way, I'd rather have the dishwasher on, let it dry (you gotta keep it open to let it dry via environment), and be done with it.

I just throw them all in the machine and run the machine once a week, way less effort, way less time wasted.

Maybe it's my cooking techniques that are the problem. I do somehow manage to use 6 pans to make a dinner for 2.

I actually have two dish washers and this is indeed a problem. We just clear out what's left into the cupboard. If your usage pattern is non-standard, for example because people come over, it also breaks down. But on the whole I'm happy with the time savings.

My other favorite is the Italian dish drainer (a few examples here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/759138080911631519 ) -- basically the cabinet above the sink is a dish drainer with an open bottom.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_drying_cabinet

https://maisonderose.wordpress.com/2014/03/17/cera-una-volta...

http://www.lasoffittaretro.it/classico/48-scolapiatti-in-fer...

until houses had water (and thus sinks), I believe that as soon as sinks were installed in kitchens, the one or the other form of "scolapiatti" became in use, this is an early, primitive, type:

http://www.comune.sangiorgiodellarichinvelda.pn.it/fileadmin...

And this is another example:

https://www.picclickimg.com/d/w1600/pict/192394042552_/AAX-P...

1: https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/kitchen/dish-washers/dishdra...

I considered it a non-negotiable to never live with them again if given the choice. The small ones just aren't practical if you cook. Put on some rice, boil some veggies, fry up some meat, and suddenly you're already out of room. You've not done cutlery, breakfast, lunch or desert. And god help you if you cook anything more complicated than that...

But double, that I would believe.

I've heard that's how these are used, never tried it myself.

Then we moved house, and the new one had an old regular dishwasher that often doesn't quite clean bowls properly -- can't quite bring myself to chuck out a working dishwasher to get dishdrawers, but if the dishwasher breaks any time soon...

Secondly, there are drawer-typ dishwashers made specifically for this. They are way overpriced, but are really useful and pretty darn small. One or two of those and you really don’t need to put dishes away anymore.

But you could probably also get by with less.

Changed my life. I really hated having to do laundry.

Maybe a dumb waiter would open in the wall with a little standard sized basket. I'd name what I'm storing, like tennis racket or snow shoes, and it would whisk it away to a storage space under the house or in the walls somewhere. I ask for it by name, the house brings it back to the portal.

An uncluttered house where I can have anything I use once a year within seconds. Hoarding by way of Marie Kondo. Possibly a gross dystopian consumer fantasy, but still.

If the house could just post anything you haven't used in two years on Craigslist, then we'd really be in the future.

Meanwhile, no amount of money can currently buy you a robot that will completely do your laundry, because the problem has not yet been solved. The development of this stuff is not exactly intuitive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k3mVnRlQLU

Considering the trend for new construction is to have luxury housing, while problematic in general for much-needed affordable housing, maybe it represents an opportunity to develop a system like this, whereby a developer installs the dumbwaiter in the walls, sets up a dumbwaiter floor, and is the primary investor in a startup that builds out the dumbwaiter tech. As the developer builds out more buildings, and the dumbwaiter can do more things, buyers will pay more for units with the dumbwaiter, and the developer can possibly even license out the dumbwaiter tech to other developers.

I'm sure a custom industrial-scale solution could be designed, but that still leaves the problem of folding. I suppose a compromise might be partial folding, like having the machine gently 'stack' the clothes in a return basket to minimize wrinkles.

Disregarding security and privacy, big apartment complexes with these dumbwaiter could actually work, with shared storage space and and laundry systems.

When autonomous cars fully arrive, I'll bet something like this takes off, particularly in areas with small homes like the Bay Area.

You could charge a subscription fee that allowed up to X monthly trips.

Some time ago, in a different country, I used a storage service where they unloaded the box -- a big unit about 2m tall and deep, with enough space for a couch, several chairs, etc. -- on the street and then picked it up again when you wanted, all scheduled via their web app. Very nice system.

I wrote about a related idea here, expanding on the idea to include an actual internet of things in boxes: http://pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#Princeton...

I'd also like something for storing and retrieving lots of different types of LEGO.

Related prior work: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kay/pln/

I basically want a standard set of plates, bowls, cups and silverware, which is designed to work with an automated washing box that has slots (or maybe holders) for each to be deposited inside. The idea is, you use the item, and then feed it into the machine, and right there it cleans and done.

Within the machine, it can queue up a small amount of each item internally (in case you have more than one item), and then washes, rinses, and quickly spin or air dries each item, one at a time (or maybe for silverware, in small batches).

Lastly, it spits out the clean items either completely (or mostly) dry at the end of the process.

This way, you can own less dishes overall (because you wash/dry them instantly), and you get all the hard work mostly done. Maintenance would be mostly keeping it loaded with soap/cleaner, and making sure food waste doesn't clog it.

If you could pull that off and make it reasonably water and energy efficient... I think that would make a lot of people happy, self included! Not sure if washing things piecemeal can be made water and energy efficient though.

Some days I wish I regret not having more hardware/mechanical/electrical engineering experience!

What we want long term is a machine that does all the work, e.g. that can spit out requested items and which when returned to the machine will clean and store them (the same idea works for any of clothing, cutlery, tools, shoes etc).

Why should I have to take the folded clothes or washed dishes and go pack them away? Won't it be easier if the machine just does that for me? If I want a glass I just browse the stored inventory and it spits out my requested item.

But seriously, standardized is the only way such a system could work unless you have a robot at the sink.

That said, a left and right washer is the easier approach. One is dirty,the other is clean. This obviates the need for putting dishes away. This also obviates the need for dishes to sit in the sink (ie because you hadn't put the clean dishes up yet.). Once the dirty is filled and the clean is empty, the washer runs, and the clean and dirty designations switch.

https://myheatworks.com/blogs/news/heatworks-announced-conne...

While you wait around it to catch plates as they are ejected? The regular dishwasher is better, because it can also double as a rack for plates and cutlery and you can just start it and do something else.

I don’t care how many downvotes this get but how lazy can one person be.

Also I found even a better way and that is not to use the dishwasher at all besides after a dinner party or a large cooking session during the weekend.

I live with my partner and it doesn’t take more than 10min to do the dishes at the end of each day without using a dishwasher.

I downvoted but just to answer your question: INFINITY. INFINITY LAZY is the goal. Absolutely zero milliseconds worth of mindless toils would be my ideal number in life. That is the spec.

She CAN NOT see the benefit of having wireless bulbs controlled by your phone for this purpose. Apparently this is "too lazy".

TOO LAZY. IS THAT A THING?!

(And in physical life, if one overdoes it with laziness, they can get from obese to pressure ulcers)

And as for diminishing returns, I would argue that it is not. With proper configuration you can automate the entire morning routine; Lights up with your alarm, off when you leave the house, on when you arrive home, off when you go to bed. Just minor conveniences that make life more pleasurable.

Yes. And while that is nice to have, it's by no means as useful as "automatic clothes folding". A dimmer takes like 5 seconds to dim when you put on a movie -- whereas clothes folding takes up to tens of minutes.

Laziness is a crappy mental setup for long term relationships, for parenting, heck even for work (I get some brilliant engineering work comes from laziness but it's a bit different type, and applied only sporadically).

In fact, some mindless work can be a sort of meditation.

Which is true, if I was to walk from Land's End to John O Groats then I would need a lot of food for that plus the overnight stays in guest houses would not be that green as the sheets would be changed daily rather weekly-ish.

A friend of mine is not capable of washing dishes unless there is a scorching hot tap at full beam running straight to the plughole for rinsing purposes, no hand basin is used and the plug is nowhere to be seen. No draining board support is allowed to spoil the kitchen aesthetic and anything washed has to be dried with those paper towels you just use once and throw in the bin.

Fortunately for people like my friend there are dishwashing machines. Since they do have a machine and it has to be put on anyway, there is therefore no harm in my friend using a different cup everytime he wants a cup of tea. Therefore there will be a good dozen mugs and glasses in there by the time the machine goes on.

Undoubtedly the dishwasher definitely makes sense and is more economical now!!!

Meanwhile I just make do with the same cup that I wash each time I need it, a quick rinse, usually without chemicals. Come main meal time I also manage to wash as I cook so there is only the plates and a couple of pans to wash at the end. Of course you could put the dishwasher on for that or wonder what happens if you have a vast Mormon family, but it does not have to be the case that the dishwasher is greener.

Not sure it is as green as "have some predetermined amount of water at the ready and wash dishes with it", as is the case in much of the developing world (and could be an alternative for the developed world too if environmental costs were a concern).

Plus the cost of water+electricity to develop, pack, transport, etc a dishwasher could be big too.

Of course it could be premature optimization -- if 99.99% of the water is wasted in other uses.

Yards. (At least in my part of the country, you have to water them fairly heavily.)

I never seem to be able to wring rags/sponges out well enough to stop them from quickly getting smelly. I would expect spectacular bacterial growth on a soft surface periodically refreshed with water and nutrients, and that seems to be exactly what happens. My parents swear by this approach but they always have a stinky sink and a gross scrubbing sponge/cloth. Do you have a better technique or do you just learn to be one with the bacteria-ball :-) ?

As for soap, dish soap leave my hands feeling so dry and awful that it takes regular application of hand cream over days before picking up paper, touching fuzzy fabric, and typing no longer bring immediate physical discomfort. Gloves solve the problem, but putting on + taking off gloves to scrub a single dish has poor time economy. Again, do you have a better technique or do you just live with it?

I am far more interested in automating the parts of the day that really enslave me so that I am free to spend my time exactly as I wish. I spend maybe 1hr a week folding laundry, tops, but I spend 40hrs a week at a desk doing something I am at best somewhat interested in but generally wishing I was at home/away doing things I enjoy with people I truly care about.

The future I really care about is one where people don't have to spend nearly all their waking hours doing things they don't really care much about. If I could have a farming robot that could grow all my food for me in a self sustaining closed cycle, that would revolutionize my life. Add solar and decentralized sanitation/water and I really don't need much else.

These are idealistic naive fantasies, but there is something to it. Technology has the potential to really free us well beyond folding clothes and washing dishes. And the task of folding clothes actually sounds more complex than growing food on a hobby farm.

You see, if I can be self sufficient I don't need a job with a boss. My so-called job could be farming my land and I could use automation to make that basically trivial and escape the desk job that consumes nearly every waking hour of my adult life.

This is just one simplistic way of looking at what I am talking about. My overall point is that having a vision of using automation to free up fractions of your workplace dominated day is missing a trick. We should be finding ways of freeing up that 8hr a day time-suck. Automating menial chores around the house is a distraction from the real goal.

Here is a video of it working: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Uay9hzwusk

This looks like it would take quite a lot longer than just folding the clothes yourself.

First off, the left and right video are completely different, the left isn't a zoomed in version of the right. If you go to 43 seconds, you can see the folded clothes do not match.

Secondly, it's not a continuous shot. There is a cut when the shirts are added to the bottom part of the machine at 25 seconds, and again at 51 seconds. You need to watch carefully, but it's pretty obviously something is not right about this video.

Also, the CES videos show the same pile of clothes appearing at the bottom, regardless of what order the clothes go in the machine. I would guess the machine doesn't yet fold clothes, or maybe it has issues with certain clothing like button up shirts.

Like I said - almost.

All that would be needed to make this actually work would be to own a second dishwasher, placed next to the first. So instead of putting the dishes into the sink, you put them into the second dishwasher; when it is full, you turn it on, then use it as the source for clean dishes. Ping-pong between the two.

The only other problem is the fact that this system wouldn't work for a large family (more than 2 people and place settings), or for food prep (all the dishes, plus pots and pans, etc) - unless both dishwashers were much larger, or the dishwasher were redesigned as a part of the storage cabinet system, etc.

In other words, the entire kitchen would almost have to be designed around the dishwasher. This is ultimately the solution to the problem, though. In industrial automation, you don't usually design the machines and processes to work like a human would, but rather optimize the processes for the machines, and the machines for the processes, to the point where a human can't even do the tasks any longer with the available machines, because they were designed for other machines to use.

Kitchens are designed around humans; you'd have to re-design the kitchen to be more machine-centric in the utensil/plate storage and cleaning process in order for your "dish robot" to become a reality (in which you would be working inside the "dish robot" you would call a "kitchen"). I really think you could do #1 (and likely #2 as well) - but it would require a huge redesign into what a "kitchen" (and "laundry room") is and how it works (and how humans interact with it) vs how these rooms (and machines within) currently are designed.

As such, I don't expect that such systems would be easy to build, inexpensive, or very flexible to usage. But they would or could be made highly automated.

Here's the solution:

1. Get a 2nd dishwasher.

2. Get two placards, one that says "clean" and the other that says "dirty". Affix one to each washer.

3. When you need a dish, take it from the washer with the "clean" placard. When you're done with it, put it in the washer marked "dirty".

4. When the dirty washer is full and the clean washer is empty, run the dirty washer and swap the placards.

Voila! Now you never have to waste any time putting away your dishes.

Bipedal is the hard half of the fold clothes and put them away

A general purpose bipedal that can perform basic human actions is considerably more flexible that telescopic arms fixed in the ceiling.

And if it's capable of folding clothes it's not much of a stretch to imagine it could also provide a light an put your book away.

My ceiling is remarkably free of obstacles and has a lot of unused space.

Robots need to be able to work around humans, not make more work for them.

It sounds like I'd be living in some dystopian nightmare.

for 2, I don't know about the US but in the UK you can get small local companies that will wash and iron a sack of laundry for you, and return them folded. I don't know what benefit you would see by having that automated instead of done by a human. It's fairly cheap too I understand.

I would imagine that for most people, putting away is the annoying and effortful step of the cleaning process. I wouldn't really count gathering dirty dishes as a step that's specific to having a machine since without a machine since they'd need to be gathered to be cleaned anyway. Once dishes are gathered, loading the dishwasher is easy because the dishes are already as close to the dishwasher as physically possible in most kitchen layouts, the specific organization of the dishes in the washer is generally more flexible than how they are organized in the cabinets, and gravity assists you while loading while it works against you while putting away.

> I don't know what benefit you would see by having that automated instead of done by a human.

The same benefit as anything else that's automated - not having to deal with humans. A machine where you could dump dirty laundry in any time and have it pop out neat and folded would be far superior than having to work with a third-party schedule and live human beings, just like an ATM is far superior to a bank teller 99% of the time if you need cash at a specific time and location.

2. You still have to arrange time to meet them or drive there, putting your clothes together and then taking them back

I want a robot that can clean the dust off my shelves without breaking things and clean spiderwebs. That seems really hard.

I found that for some music, it would find a radio station named after exactly what I was looking for (for instance a 'station' that only plays the one band or one song) after prompting me to get Google Play.

The most used function on there is the built-in trivia app my girlfriend and I play Saturday mornings while we're doing other things.

I never had a real problem with the search function, though. I'm surprised it wouldn't find results for that question. Did you have location disabled?

Their latest update lets it map your home. While some might have privacy concerns, it is admittedly a very cool feature to me as I can see exactly where it did and did not clean.

Ultimately, it saves me time, and my time is valuable. So I'd rather spend less time cleaning and more time doing other things, even if I technically am capable of doing the cleaning.

I had a thought about this some time ago. What if every cupboard was a dishwasher? You just put dirty dishes away in the "cupboard", and then they get washed once the machine detects that there are too many dirty ones, and it can blow air through the cupboard to dry them off once it's done, and then you just open a cupboard and take out some clean dishes, whenever you want some.

It would even be fine if you had to manually tell the cupboard when to wash its contents.

You'd probably have to have about twice as many glasses, plates, bowls, etc. as you really need, so that you don't end up having all of the plates stuck inside one cupboard while wet. You always want to have everything you need available, clean, and dry. I don't think needing extra dishes would be a dominating cost, though.

You'd just have to run plumbing and electricity to all of your cupboard locations, buy enough tiny dishwashers, and then mount them on the wall. Probably could be done for only a few thousand pounds.

That would mean either you wash every time you put in a dirty dish (which would be wasteful) - or you accept that you always have some dirty dishes mixed between your clean ones, including the food remains, fluids, smell, etc that come with them. Sounds really unpleasant.

More practical problems:

- Dishes can be stored a lot more space-efficiently in a normal cupboard than in a dish washer. You'd need a lot more space if all your cupboards are dishwashers. Putting in dishes correctly is also more complex for a dishwasher than for a cupboard - so instead of saving the effort to empty the dishwasher, you've multiplied that effort to all of your cupboards.

- A cleaning run takes time. If cleaning runs start automatically, you'll have random parts of your kitchen inaccessible at random points of time.

- If you used a normal dishwasher you find out very quickly that drying is not perfect - if you leave clean dishes for too long in the airtight compartment, you might as well rinse them again. If the cupboard are meant to store the dishes permanently, that problem will get bigger.

Rethink how we store things. Rather then all plates in one place, all bowls in another ect. you mix everything up so each cabinet has the same variety of objects in it.

I know this only deals with one of your extremely valid points. I know some of the sorting/organizing people on here (the ones who label their label guns) would freak.

> Rethink how we store things

My apologies, but no. I'd like to not design my whole kitchen (and kitchen usage patterns) around my dishwasher.

> Rather then all plates in one place, all bowls in another ect. you mix everything up so each cabinet has the same variety of objects in it.

How would I quickly find the dishes I'm looking for? (No, installing RFID sensors or watertight cameras in each cupboard, "indexing" the dishes and providing a smartphone app with search is not an option.)

[1] https://i.pinimg.com/736x/a8/d0/d5/a8d0d5ce749c4ad9e8dc37a1c...

You'd place your dirty plates into the left, turn it on when full, place the next plates into the right, then the clean plates would be on the left while you'd fill the right one with the dirty ones, and keep alternating. This way you don't have to put anything away, you'd take the plates as needed from the dishwasher.

The nice thing about this is that it'd work with current dishwasher sizes, and no messy weird electrified cupboards. It could be manufactured today because it doesn't require special engineering, it doesn't require weird kitchens, and it's not a solution looking for a problem like some gadgets in the article.

I have actually thought about this, since this is a chore that I absolutely hate. In my view no one should be subject to the task of making dishes. Some people seem to like it, God bless them !

Initial prototype will be to work with steel utensils to avoid damages. Current object detection techniques are sufficient to recognize plates, glasses, dirt etc.

I envision a setup something like this - two robotic hands sitting on top of the wash basin with a camera head. One of the hands has a built in tap and the other a detachable scrubber with soap dispenser. One arm picks up the utensil, rotates as required, sprays water as required. The other arm scrubs off the dirt until it's clean.A camera module watches until the cleaning is accomplished. Once clean, first arm piles up similar dishes in stacks.

This made up for a good hallway conversation and I had forgotten about it since then. Thanks for rekindling the thought.

"what's currently done with a jet of water..." I didn't catch this. Do you mean the current dishwashers ?

2) Get a washer/dryer combo. Put it in your closet. Have it double as your hamper. Run it nightly.

However, I would have a hard time giving up #1 to a machine. I do a great deal of my creative thinking, scheduling, et al during my time hand-washing dishes. I liken it to creative thinking during a shower, I can't imagine it being replaced by a 'bot. I realize YMMV but we all find solace in varying small corners. For me, it's the dishes, for others' it might be a long drive or vacuuming, etc.

I'm a huge proponent of automation, and the advancements that tech will provide in the future, however as an artist I still need the time to procrastinate (ie: THINK). I don't know that I could do this in the solace of a vacuum. I pay $10/mo to listen to white noise on Spotify while I write treatments for various commercial projects.

even socks will last a lot longer if you just quickly wash your feet every morning or twice a day if you have the time

On top of that it takes an hour to wash and spin the clothes, and I need to be home for that finishing since wet clothes can't sit in the machine too long.

On top of clothes you ahve bedding that needs washed and ironed and that is a proper pain, especially on my smallish washing machine. That's 2 washes each week to wash bedding, then ironing duvets and sheets takes ages.

And ironing services won't do bedding for some reason.

The dish machine would print using a biodegradable material that could either be recycled back into the machine for reprinting or composted if it is unable to be cleaned.

For clothing I imagine a knitting machine that prints 3D garments on demand using fibers and can also recycle the clothing to reuse the fibers at the end of the wear cycle.

Edit: my main point being that I don't see these being technically solvable using the legacy methods we have created thus far. Why try to make a machine complex enough to identify and fold specific clothing? Why not create a machine that can create something very basic and we adjust our expectations and style.

So, what you want is, er, a washer-dryer which performs the additional task of tipping the clothes on the floor when it's done? Washer-dryers exist; they're very common in some European countries. The clothes ejection feature sounds like a minor addition.

Maybe more efficient if it is able to lay out each piece for drying. Clotheslines are very energy efficient.

For #2, you can hire people to do it, probably cheaper, more reliable, more flexible and better than robots will be in forever. This'll also create or maintain jobs, and save you said hours a week (which you can use to work and make money to pay for the cleaner).

IMO some things don't need to be automated, and humanity can go back to being more social and giving work to other people instead of trying to automate it to avoid human contact.

I try really hard to burn it when it gets hot and dry, but the percentages aren't working out.

Failing that, I'd like to have a roomba that rakes my leaves.

Regarding other robots I would still like a vacuuming robot but it would have to be able to move chairs and similar objects a bit to vacuum where they just stood. I would also like a robot that could cook meals.

Get two dishwashers (or a two-drawer dishwasher). When one is dirty, put it on, and use the clean dishes from the other. Continue rotating dishes between dishwashers, forever.

Can't help you with the clothes thing (though a washer-dryer gets you part of the way there).

Add ironing, and that robot could replace most human manual labor.

So never going to happen. At least not before a washer-sized 2D printer that makes clothes. At $250/sqft, an average never-needed-again closet would save you ~$15K.

Hey Elon - I don't need a car or rocket!

Alternatively, multitask and listen to the news or an audiobook while you do your household chores.

This is a mostly solved problem - get 2 (or 3) dishwashers. Only requires some occasional reshuffling of less often used things. Like 90% of what's in your dishwasher is what you use time and time again. Highly recommended.

Wrote about this exactly several years ago, nothing has changed really

- before you leave anything in the sink, quickly rinse it if there is anything on it that will go hard

- washing with gloves on is easier since you can have the water boiling hot which means in turn does most of the work

- or install a double sink. leave things soak in 1 sink so most stuff will just fall off, then in most cases all you have left to do is rinse it

- if there is still some gunk left on them then one of those jet taps would help

- making meals - driving kids - laundry - grocery and other shopping - picking up - finances and planning

I think all of these are ripe for (more) disruption.

Making meals :- go to a cafe, been around for centuries, uber eats etc. Worst case, get frozen meals (some are really good) and bung them in the microwave.

Driving Kids :- Taxi, bus, chauffeur, again have been around for ages, auto drive cars are not that far away, but will you be willing to abandon your kids to the machine?

Grocery and other shopping:- Amazon, online shopping.

Picking up:- If you can't manage to put things away yourself, then get a maid or cleaner.

As somebody else posted, most of these automated devices don't seem to have got much further than they were in the tech shows of the late 70's, they just have more "AI" built in the seem to be designed to make you purchase from their vendor.

Are they willing to abandon kids to the machine?

iPhones, iPads, Nintendo's, dvd players, netflix?

What's one more "machine" taking care of kids?

Think of it... self flying vehicles that control where your kids go.

That's right up there with iPhone tracking your kid.

I use a Xiaomi Mi which has more "smarts" than a Roomba.

its just the natural progression of things.

If that's not acceptable, what about a dishwasher designed for keeping dishes in there?

Based on your suggestion I suppose an ideal design would be to put all the dishes back at the end of the day into their respective cabinets and then the cabinets (high-tech dishwasher) wash and dry them during the night.

but the prices of clothes & dishes needs to keep going down to be feasible... and ideally easy to recycle

Similarly, eating out comes close to solving the first problem. Will be very cost competitive with robots for the same in the foreseeable future.

To the point that solving this problem will require more behavior change from us than we're likely to realize.

Good luck convincing most people to wear t-shirts and jeans every day, let alone a small number of them. No thanks.

You know some people have occupations where you get really dirty, right?

You know some people have to "dress to impress" for work, right?

Not everyone can move to "simple" clothes so easily, including most people who are employed.

And... none of the people you mentioned are likely to benefit from the first several waves of robots cleaning outfits. Which was what I had on my mind.

That is, if you are a person that feels they need help cleaning their clothes, you are likely not a person that will benefit from the first robotic solutions. Unless, of course, you could already benefit from the current outsourcing techniques for the job. And it will be a while before those are beaten in price.

I say this as someone that has grown to love our robotic vacuum. Things is awesome. Probably still cheaper and more effective to just sweep and vacuum manually.