How is our reliance on modern appliances shaping both our daily routines and our broader lifestyle?

This week, Jamie explores the history and impact of key kitchen appliances, highlighting how they’ve shaped modern home life. From the refrigerator and electric stove to the microwave and dishwasher, he traces their evolution from simple inventions to essential household tools. Along the way, he reflects on the paradox of convenience: despite all these technological advancements designed to save time, many of us feel busier than ever. 

Episode Highlights

• Origins of Appliances – From invention to essential kitchen staples.
• Tech Milestones – Key innovations that changed how we cook and store food.
• Convenience Paradox – Why modern tools don’t always save us time.
• Lifestyle Impact – How appliances shape our daily routines.

Welcome to Thoughts from the Crawl Space, a podcast where our goal as home inspection experts is to support and serve our community.

Whether you're a homeowner, home buyer, real estate agent, or investor, we believe everyone deserves solutions to their homeownership challenges and inspiration along the way. Your path to success starts here. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Thoughts from the Crawl Space.

Today we're going to dive into a little bit of fun topic. I'll give you a little history lesson today on kitchen appliances and information that you may never need, but it might make you smarter parties.

It might get you some admiration. So here we go. Maybe not, but we'll see.

We're going to dive into when appliances were first invented that you regularly use in your kitchen, or maybe some of you don't use them at all. There has been a trend in recent years to go away from certain appliances like microwaves.

We see less and less of those in homes that we inspect, but some people still like them. And we're not here to judge. You can do what you want and, you know, have the, what shall we say, freedom, the convenience of different appliances.

So number one refrigerator, big one, right? Everybody needs a refrigerator. Cool your food short term and long term with a freezer.

So experiments in refrigerating technology date back to the late 18th and early 19th century.

It's a brand, it's an older brand, but interestingly, the early manufacturers used ammonia, sulfur dioxide and methyl chloride in the cooling process. So these had the potential to be very dangerous and create. In a recent episode, we talked about indoor air quality. Well, here you go.

So again, over 100 years ago, or about right at 100 years ago, such as manufacturers of like Frigidaire, General Motors and DuPont joined in this party. So we don't even think about it today. Now we got refrigerators that our smart refrigerators have TVs built into them.

They tell you what's in your fridge and what isn't and can even order for you if you are so inclined to have one like that. So crazy stuff. Number two, the electric stove. Gas stoves to one degree or another were in before this.

David Smith came up with that. But by the late twenties, again that's what we just mentioned on the refrigerators.

This was basically more the creation of the combination stove and oven stove being the top of it, the oven being what goes inside. So the invention of the electric oven kind of went hand in hand with the stove.

So you can see a lot of times these appliances, they were for the wealthy, the folks that had access to electricity and the utilities needed to run these devices. And so that's where they usually started. Thank goodness for their invention and that they're available to be used by everybody these days.

One we touched off on in the beginning that is maybe a little controversial. If there is one that's controversial, that's the microwave one that we see less and less of.

It does have a potential impact on your food quality if you use it a lot.

Dr. Perry Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket, which you know, who wouldn't want that melted when he was researching active combat radar. Well, you know, you put a chocolate bar in your pocket, it's going to melt anyhow.

But depending what kind of pockets he had, could have been a lab coat. I suppose that wasn't close to his body, but he noticed that he was just in the room. The microwaves melted.

It so he deduced that the heat generated by microwave producing magnetrons could be utilized in cooking. And he was right. He filed for a patent for the first microwave through his employer Raytheon, who is now known as a defense contractor.

So the first, this is funny.

So microwaves obviously have continued to shrink in size and costs, but the device was slow to gain popularity as many people feared the ill effects of radiation. Well, they still feel that and that's why many of them are going bye bye and are no longer in kitchens.

And you know, that's something that you need to decide for yourself.

They're great for heating things up instantly and that's the society we live in and that we want it now and we don't want to heat it up on the stove or anything like that. So something to think about. I will say this.

If you use a microwave and you like it and you don't think there's a problem, if there is any damage to the front of your microwave door, you notice in a microwave door they have like a wire mesh and that's designed to absorb the microwave so they don't come through. But if there's any damage, you're going to potentially have leakage of the microwaves coming out. Definitely don't want that.

So get rid of it, get a new one. Don't even try to fix it. They're not worth fixing anymore. They're so cheap. Okay, rant over on microwaves.

I know growing up we had ones that were 40, 50 years old that had been passed down generations. This things just were made to last. And it wasn't until after the Second World War that freezers were widely manufactured and sold.

And today many times are sold as one unit could have a chest Freezer obviously sent standalone and they're just a humongous benefit to society as a whole. Number six. And this could raise some eyebrows because you'll get people on both sides of this and that's the dishwasher.

Some people love them, some people can't imagine why you'd use them and love washing dishes by hand. I don't understand those people. There's a sickness I think if you love washing dishes by hand.

Both designs were hand cranked wooden devices. Neither of them were particularly efficient or practical. So fast forward a few years.

So again this is somebody that is wealthy and they have the time to devote to these kind of things and the intelligence, intelligence to do it.

It's probably next. Microwave is one of the most hit or miss devices that we see.

We'll probably see more dishwashers than microwaves, but many houses still do not have dishwashers. Could be, you know, they are a. They do take up space and you can get a lot of dishes in a cabinet that's in place of where a dishwasher would be.

Number seven, the garbage disposal. This has become a staple of American kitchens. I would say stats here indicate over 50% of homes have dishwasher or excuse me, garbage disposals.

This was invented in 27. And he didn't get his manufacturing company going for 13 years. So that's a lot of work and effort, but it was worth it.

The idea behind the garbage disposal was simple. Food scraps were inefficiently disposed of and something needed to change. They were used to burn them, which was inefficient.

So he wanted to liquidize the waste and put it down sewer systems. Now, there were initially strict prohibitions on the release of food waste into the sewage system.

And Hams was an instrumental force in renegotiating these prohibitions with local governments. Well, of course he's going to make a lot of money if people can use garbage disposals.

So there are restrictions and recommendations to today on should you use a garbage disposal with a septic system, because you're introducing maybe more into the system than it can break down efficiently.

And we would recommend that if you do use it in a septic system, don't use put a lot of leafy green vegetables down there because those will clog up your septic system, not break down like they should. And then you'd be calling the septic company to come bail you out at the very least. So keep that in mind. Number eight, and this is a portable idea.

The blender. From mixed drinks to medicines, right? We can make everything. How many people live on smoothies? Well, when was this invented?

The first blender was invented to aid in the creation of milkshakes and malts. That sounds good. Right, well, instead of stirring them or shaking them by hand, let's get a machine to do it.

And it would become the vital piece of medical equipment and even went into creation of medical supplies and vaccines. Number nine, the electric kettle. So think of heating up water. It doesn't seem like a big deal.

The pressure cooker. How many of those have pressure cookers out there, great for canning, speeding up the cooking process.

So a common theme here with a lot of these appliances and then one that almost everybody uses in one form or another these days, the coffee maker. Any guesses on when that was invented? Well, a coffee maker.

So about 117 odd years, Ben's created the first coffee filters from blotting paper, creating a method of making coffee that's still in used in coffee machines today. So basically the filters.

All right, so just some information today to let you know that you live in absolutely the most easiest and technically efficient generation in history. All these folks that invented these things, they came from generations that didn't have modern conveniences. So we have all these modern conveniences.

We can wash dishes without even thinking about it. Obviously you got to put them in the machine and take them out, but you don't spend the time actually hand washing them.

Same with the oven, the microwave and any of the other planes as we talked about. All purported to make life easier. But is it? What do we lose?

Why are we busier than we've ever been if we have the conveniences to make things go quicker? Think about that. Don't want to get on a rant about that either, but just wanted to provide you a little framework, a little history lesson.

The last hundred years have been amazing technologically in this country and worldwide, and we wonder where it's going. But thanks for listening and watching. Please share this episode if you know somebody that might enjoy it, and we'll talk to you next time.

Thank you for listening. This week you can catch up on the latest episode of the Thoughts from the Crawl Space podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

For more information about Gold Key Inspection services, go to goldkeyinspect.com.