Skip to main content
  • Main menu
Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
  • Home
  • Explore
    • Study
    • Try
    • About
    • Multimedia
  • Blog
    • Invention Stories
    • Places of Invention
    • Beyond Words
  • You Don’t Have Time to Clean Your House—Now What?
Figure 1 of US Patent 4,428,085 showing floorplan for self-cleaning house invented by Frances Gabe

You Don’t Have Time to Clean Your House—Now What?

August 31, 2017 by Tricia Edwards

Frances Gabe called cleaning a “thankless, unending job, a nerve-twangling bore.” She set out to change that.

Twitter Facebook Tumblr Email Print

Frances Gabe, inventor of the self-cleaning house, died at 101 on December 26, 2016. Other than a brief mention in her hometown Oregon newspaper The Newberg Graphic, Gabe’s passing went without national notice. Then in mid-July 2017—some seven months later—the New York Times ran an obituary and, suddenly, Gabe’s story was everywhere.

I knew about the self-cleaning house because it’s one of the examples we reference in Spark!Lab with our Now What? game.

blog-edwards-tricia-2017-08-31-now-what-750-inline-edit.jpg

Five young children and a Spark!Lab facilitator playing the Now What? Game

Visitors to Spark!Lab at the Michigan Science Center work together to solve challenges presented in the Now What? Game, Photo by Tricia Edwards

The game challenges visitors to think about solving problems using limited resources. For example, you might spin the “Now” spinner on the game and be presented with the challenge “A puppy suddenly appears. You want to catch him but you only have…” A spin of the “What” wheel tells you that you have five cardboard tubes to solve the problem. Now what? How can you use those tubes to remove the puppy from your room? Visitors think creatively, either by themselves or in a group, and are encouraged to share and sketch their invention ideas.

(One of my all-time favorite Spark!Lab stories is about solving this exact Now What? challenge. A mom, dad, and son were working together, and the grown-ups were having a tough time coming up with a solution. Their son, however, was not: “You just tape the tubes together, lure the puppy into the tube, and he walks through them and out of the room.” When mom and dad looked quizzically, their young son—exasperated—said, “The tubes are GIANT!” and showed with his arms how big around the tubes were. A great example of how young people use their imaginations and think creatively in ways that adults often don’t.)

To provide real world context for the Now What? game, we profile several inventors who have solved different kinds of challenges. We show Frank Epperson who invented the popsicle after a drink he left outside overnight froze, and Gauri Nanda who invented Clocky®, an alarm clock that encourages people to get out of bed instead of hitting snooze.

blog-edwards-tricia-2017-08-31-frances-gabe-450-inline-edit.jpg

View looking down on Frances Gabe, wearing rain gear and holding an open umbrella, in her self-cleaning house kitchen in 2002

Frances Gabe in the kitchen of her self-cleaning house in 2002. Photo by Shane Young, New York Times

​

One of the other inventors we highlight is Frances Gabe. Our story about Gabe begins, “You don’t have time to clean your house. Now what?” Naturally, this is a favorite story among visitors, young and old alike (who likes to clean?), and her quote about housecleaning as a “thankless, unending job, a nerve-twangling bore” is instantly relatable. But something I learned about Gabe after her death is that she thought of the self-cleaning house not just as a solution to her own challenges but also for others’. A 1982 article in People magazine quoted Gabe as saying “I want to eliminate all unnecessary motion so that handicapped and elderly people can care for their homes themselves. My system will allow people to do so by pushing a few buttons.” That same article highlighted Gabe’s desire to free women from spending so much time cleaning: “We should be better mothers, wives, neighbors, and spend time improving ourselves instead of saying, ‘I’m sorry, I have to clean the kitchen.’”

Gabe received a patent in 1984 for a “self-cleaning building construction.” The patent describes the invention as “apparatus for applying a fine spray or mist of water and/or water and detergent to wall, floor and ceiling surfaces, followed by warm air drying. Floors slope in a direction for removing excess moisture via a drain.” Gabe’s patent actually included 68 different devices that made up the self-cleaning house, all of which she designed to save time, energy, and space in her Newberg, Oregon home.

inventors-gabe-frances-us4428085-5-450-inline-edit.jpg

Line drawing of dishwashing closet in self-cleaning house from US Patent 4,428,085

Figure 14 in Frances Gabe’s US Patent 4,428,085 illustrates the dishwashing closet for her self-cleaning house. Courtesy US Patent and Trademark Office

In 2003, author Chuck Palahniuk profiled Gabe and her invention in his book Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon. Palahniuk describes the house:

 

“To clean the house, you just turn on the water to a spinning spray head in the center of each room’s ceiling. You add soap through a stint in the plumbing. The wash and rinse water run down the sloped floor and out through the fireplace. You turn on the heat and blower to dry everything. In the kitchen, open work shelves allow all the water to drain to the floor. A hatch in the wall channels trash down a chute to the garbage can. Clothes are washed and dried as they hang on hangers hooked to a chain that pulls them through each process in a three-part cabinet. The first part is a washing closet, the middle third is a dryer, the last third is the storage closet where the clothes wait, ready to wear."*

Perhaps the best view into Gabe’s home, though, is a 1990 video of the inventor herself walking through it with reporter Carl Click. She describes its different elements and demonstrates how the cleaning devices in her kitchen work (or are supposed to work; there’s a slight malfunction of a pipe fitting, though she easily fixes it).

Gabe worked on the self-cleaning house for more than 20 years, continually inventing, sketching, testing, and tweaking its myriad devices. Several years ago, she sold her home and moved into an assisted living facility. Its new owner removed all of the cleaning devices, though a model that Gabe built of her home still exists and is preserved at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware. I’d like to think that a young inventor might see the model and become inspired to pick up where Gabe left off. Not only would it be a wonderful tribute to the inventor, it might also mean that someday I’ll able to turn a knob or flip and switch and—voila!—my house will be clean. A girl can dream, right?

inventors-gabe-frances-c-hagley-self-cleaning-house-model-750-inline-edit.jpg

View looking down on model of self-cleaning house

The model of Frances Gabe’s self-cleaning house is now in the collections of the Hagley Museum. Courtesy of Hagley

* Chuck Palahniuk. Fugitives & Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon. New York: Crown Journeys, 2003: 30.

Tags

  • Women inventors (Relevance: 39%)
  • Household technology (Relevance: 27%)
  • Spark!Lab (Relevance: 34%)

Resources

Remembering Frances Gabe Son of Carwash, the Self-Cleaning House Frances Gabe and Her Amazing Self-Cleaning House! First Self-Cleaning Home Was Essentially a ‘Floor-to-Ceiling Dishwasher’ Inventor of the one and only self-cleaning home Frances Gabe

Related Stories

Fresh Paper inventor Kavita Shukla
Invention Stories

Try It: Fresh Paper

A young woman's concern for food waste lead to a remarkable invention.

"Joy" movie poster
Blog

"Joy's" Process of Inventing

Jennifer Lawrence's silver screen portrayal of inventor Joy Mangano makes the case for the invention process.

Jane Lancaster
Beyond Words

Podcast: Historian Jane Lancaster Follows Lillian Gilbreth’s Quest to “Have it All Ways”

Industrial psychologist Lillian Gilbreth (1878-1972) revolutionized management techniques and improved workplaces for all kinds of workers.

A young girl works on the Invent a Skate Park activity
Encouraging Innovative Thinking

A Toolkit for Developing Innovators

Tricia Edwards shares practical tips for creating innovative learning environments

VIEW 2735 Matching Results

Found 2735 Stories

  • Agriculture and horticulture (Relevance: 5.1919561243144%)
  • Air and space (Relevance: 6.764168190128%)
  • Archives@NMAH (Relevance: 8.4095063985375%)
  • Chemistry (Relevance: 3.0712979890311%)
  • Food and drink (Relevance: 3.290676416819%)
  • Industry and manufacturing (Relevance: 7.5319926873857%)
  • Medicine, health, and life sciences (Relevance: 4.5703839122486%)
  • Military technology (Relevance: 3.327239488117%)
  • Mining and drilling (Relevance: 3.400365630713%)
  • Patents and trademarks (Relevance: 11.334552102377%)
  • Photography, film, television, and video (Relevance: 3.8756855575868%)
  • Power generation, motors, and engines (Relevance: 3.436928702011%)
  • Spark!Lab (Relevance: 3.5831809872029%)
  • Textiles and clothing (Relevance: 3.363802559415%)
  • Transportation (Relevance: 5.9597806215722%)
  • Women inventors (Relevance: 3.400365630713%)
❯
Go to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History website

About Menu

▼
Open menu
▲
Close menu
  • Explore
    • Blog
    • Invention Stories
    • Places of Invention
    • Beyond Words
  • Study
    • Research Opportunities
    • Archives
    • Lemelson Center Books
    • Lemelson Center Research
    • Symposia & Conferences
  • Try
    • DO Try This at Home!
    • Spark!Lab
    • Spark!Lab Network
    • Encouraging Innovative Thinking
  • About
    • Events
    • Exhibitions
    • News
    • Who We Are
    • FAQ
    • Donate
  • Multimedia
  • Tags
  • Surprise Me
  • Search
  • Open Drawer
Copyright 2023, Smithsonian Institution, All Rights Reserved
  • DONATE
  • Terms of Use
  • Privacy Policy
Twitter Facebook Tumblr Email Print