A Feminist-Socialist Vision in the 1920s
With childcare, cooking, and laundry demanding so much time, the question arises, Aren’t there more efficient ways to design the home? This radical idea was first suggested back in 1888: Science fiction author Edward Bellamy described a utopian community with public kitchens and rapid delivery services for food and laundry. Housework of all kinds was centralized and labor kept to a minimum.
Ten years later, feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman championed a kitchenless home that would give women the leisure to engage in more intellectual pursuits. In Women and Economics, she wrote, “Take the kitchens out of the houses, and you leave rooms which are open to any form of arrangement and extension; and the occupancy of them does not mean ‘housekeeping.’ In such living, personal character and taste would flower as never before… The individual will learn to feel (herself) an integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society.”
In the early 1900s, two movements united to redesign the American home: Feminists wanted to free women from the drudgery of housework while socialists called for a more equitable allocation of domestic work. These goals converged in one of the first planned communities in America, Llano del Rio. In the state of California, in 1911, a self-taught architect, Alice Constance Austin was hired to design a kitchen-less home for some 900 residents in Antelope Valley, north of Los Angeles. Austin envisioned houses with a living room at one end and bedrooms at the other, all with large dining patios open to the clement weather.
Built-in furniture would cut down on dusting and sweeping. On a rotating basis, residents would serve a centralized kitchen and laundry. Meals would be delivered on an underground conveyor belt and dirty dishes returned in the same efficient manner. Freshly washed and ironed clothing and linens would be provided once a week. The idea was to make housework a community effort once again—and to leave more time for celebration. May Day, a holiday that honors laborers, was marked at Llano with a parade and a picnic.
Though Antelope Valley was hailed as “a feminist utopia,” sadly, it was never finished. This remote location had no reliable source of water—a problem that would dog developers until Los Angeles started importing it from the Owens River Valley.
Still, the collaborative housekeeping movement hasn’t disappeared—it’s simply been incorporated into the co-housing movement. According to Forbes magazine, “Co-living communities exist in both rural and urban environments and can include small, single-family homes with shared community spaces…including guest rooms, laundry facilities, large kitchens and dining areas, recreational facilities and libraries. Some communities have common gardens, walking trails and even shared farms. Many include a co-working space for those who telecommute.”
Shared housekeeping, along with shared meals and celebrations, fosters better relationships and more sustainable living. Pioneered in Denmark in the 1960s, this type of housing is fast becoming an international trend. Adherents include young professionals and retirees, single people and families, entrepreneurs, and artists. Co-housing democratizes housework and turns it into a community-based endeavor.
A feminist/socialist approach to the home may offer a practical solution to our political and economic challenges and become a viable—and even fashionable—lifestyle.
