Hello! As promised/threatened last issue, I’m not Alex, instead I am your guest editrix Margo, usually found over in the archipelago of newsletters at http://tinyletter.com/threeweeks.

Of all the glorious subjects that I could cover, I have settled on housework. Domestic chores have long been one of the most unifying issues in feminist thought, as who among us hasn’t stared at a sink full of dirty dishes and considered rising up against the patriarchy just to avoid doing them?

Oregon artist Frances Gabe was clear-eyed on the issue, saying of housework, “It’s a nerve-twangling bore. Who wants it? Nobody!”

But Gabe didn’t just complain about doing laundry only to end up making a little nest out of dirty clothes to sleep in (not that I speak from experience. I’m immaculate). She invented a home that cleaned itself. Using different mechanisms across the house, made up of 68 separate inventions, she had self-cleaning rooms, cupboards, sinks, a loo, and a special cabinet for clothes washing. Built in the 1980s, it was a brief media sensation, but despite her best efforts she’d never see another one like it built. The New York Times wrote a celebratory obituary for Gabe after she passed away at 101: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/18/us/frances-gabe-dead-inventor-of-self-cleaning-house.html (alternative link: https://archive.ph/da12U). In a better world she would be twice as famous as Elon Musk and far richer.