Last night, I filled a washing machine with laundry and scheduled it to finish in the morning. And do you know what I had to do next? Nothing. I simply went to bed. In stark contrast to 100 years ago, I didn’t need to fill a bucket with water, I didn’t spend an hour rubbing clothes against a washboard to agitate away the dirt, and I didn’t need to worry about whether the prolonged contact between a cleaning detergent and my hands was damaging to the skin.