Life without Home Appliances: Is It Possible?

Can you imagine life without refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, microwaves? One must have some vivid imagination! Wouldn’t you agree?

And the question is not whether or not you can live a day or two without a major home appliance, but if you can live without home appliances – period.

There are two ways to test yourself.

1. Think of how quickly do you search for an appliance service technician when the oven breaks or the washer doesn’t work. If you are starring outside the window to see how quickly the tech arrives or try to find an appliance repair company the moment you notice a problem with the stove or the dryer, then yes. You cannot do without your appliances.

2. Consider this. You walk into an empty home – either because it’s your brand new, very first home or it’s robbed down to the last thing. Besides the unavoidable panic in the second case, what would your buying-list include? If some appliances are among the top 10 things you need to buy first, these are the appliances you consider more precious to you.

Such tests help us, how? Not only to see if we can live without home appliances but also (maybe, mainly) to see which ones of all big home appliances are the most important to us.

Home appliances we really CANNOT live without

Chances are high that if we ask ten different people, they will all rank freezers and refrigerators as the most important appliances. Which appliance will come next? The washer. Surely, a cooking appliance.

That’s a tricky one.

You see, if someone tells you they can live without their microwave, range, or wall oven, you need to ask which cooking appliance they keep. So, here’s a parameter to consider.

A household may survive without the microwave. But no household could go for long without some type of a cooking appliance – whether a range, a counter mount cooktop, a wall oven. Someone may not care to have a huge side-by-side refrigerator, but would surely have a small fridge.

So, what do these things show?

Things that influence our decision on appliances

To put it bluntly, we need home appliances – more than we know. What’s the paradox here? Some appliances, we don’t need. But we don’t even know it. What happens is consumption. What also happens is hectic lives. Appliances are commodities. They are also the means for an easy, uncomplicated life.

Think of your dishwasher, for a minute. Yes, you could do without. After all, who cannot handwash dishes? But today is not like the old days. Today, both women and men work. All members of the family are tremendously busy, from dawn to late. And then, when you are dishwashing instead of handwashing, you save water.

Plus, not all families are the same. Some are huge, some are tiny. Some cook three times a day, some once a week. See the difference here?

Could you live without some appliances?

So, it’s not whether or not we can live without appliances but mostly, if there are some appliances we can do without. It all comes down to our habits. I mean, if the microwave is there, you are bound to use it – just for the heck of it. But you could still do without it, without feeling it’s missing either. And while some households like their microwave or built-in oven, no family can do without the fridge. Or the washer, for that matter.

Alternatives? Sure, there are. You take the clothes to the laundromat. You don’t buy dairy and food that must be refrigerated.

But let me ask you this: why would anyone want to do that? Scientists struggled to come up with ideas, with inventions to make life easy. Why would we want to go back? I can only think of one thing: perhaps some didn’t get the memo that this is a different age and life is all about living it, not enslaving over the sink. Isn’t it?