Alison Wolf's book, "The XX Factor," examines time use diaries to gather data about which domestic tasks women spent the most time on, and the conclusion that she ultimately comes to is that while washing machines did make the process of washing laundry more efficient, the end result of these efficiency gains isn't that women spent less time doing laundry, but that people started doing laundry more often. So the washing machine made us more hygienic, but it didn't really free up a lot of time for women who performed those sorts of domestic tasks.
One Alison Wolf's main conclusions is that the inventions that actually resulted in women spending less time on domestic tasks were mainly those relating to cooking and food preparation (such as TV dinners and fast food in the 1950's), because the result of a x10 efficiency gain in food preparation isn't that people start eating x10 as many meals, but that the same number of meals get produced with 10% of the time investment.
One Alison Wolf's main conclusions is that the inventions that actually resulted in women spending less time on domestic tasks were mainly those relating to cooking and food preparation (such as TV dinners and fast food in the 1950's), because the result of a x10 efficiency gain in food preparation isn't that people start eating x10 as many meals, but that the same number of meals get produced with 10% of the time investment.