How was life different before the use of electricity?

Answer 1

Since the dawn of mankind, up until the use of electricity began (and natural fuels), people have had to work very hard to ensure their survival and that of their young & old.

Life was more physically demanding before electricity (and fuel), to say the least.

Trees had to be cut, sectioned, and hauled back home (horse & wagon) ... then sectioned again (made smaller) and stacked before it was split to be carried into the home for use in a fireplace or woodstove.

Fires had to be lit for cooking several times a day ... all year long and maintained constantly in winter for heat. An axe was of the utmost importance ... with handsaws running close behind. (no chainsaws or log splitters)

Food was usually cooked at the source that heated the house. Cast iron pots were either hung in the fireplace for cooking or set on the hearth heaped with hot coals. The danger of clothes catching fire while cooking was ever present ... as was the possibility of burning down the house while preparing a meal. Getting food cooked for the family was usually time consuming. (no fast food restaurants)

Ashes had to be removed from the fireplace/woodstove and hauled outside periodically .. and often saved to make lye soap. Fire was used to heat a large kettle outside with which to make the soap for bathing and laundry use. The same was done for making candles before the advent of oil lamps (a more modern invention). Making candles & soap carried the danger of catching oneself on fire.

A big wash pot was usually heated by fire in the yard to wash clothes by means of a wash board (a more modern invention) or a battling block (a large tree stump on which to lay clothes and a wooden paddle to beat dirt out) or beaten against rocks by a river.

It was an all day affair to clean clothes/linens/etc, to be sure. Hauling water, keeping a fire going, dipping clothes with a stick into hot water, beating the dirt out, clothes back in the hot water, clothes rinsed in a second pot of water, clothes rung out by hand (unless you were lucky enough to have a crank wringer which still took a lot of strength to operate), and often a third pot was used for bluing the whites (an early way of getting whites whiter ). Dont forget those with babies had to also wash cloth diapers . Then clothes could be hung on a line to dry.

Once the water was cooled, the pots (kettles) had to be emptied and water dumped away from the house. Finally, clothes could be taken back into the house to be folded and set aside for ironing the next day. Again catching clothes on fire was a danger.

(along with fuel powered tractors came gasoline powered washing machines that had to be used out of doors <a porch> because of deadly fumes. Water was still hauled to the washer when doing laundry... clothes still hung on the line to dry).

(Electric washers were only a fantasy)

A block of iron , called a sad-iron, was heated on the fireplace or woodstove to smooth wrinkles out of clothes. Two to three irons were heated at a time to keep a steady pace going while ironing. When one iron cooled and became ineffective the second iron was used. While the first and second irons were reheating the third iron was being used. (some only had one metal iron which made ironing a much longer affair)

Water was generally lifted from a well or scooped from the closest creek to be hauled by buckets into the house. The more modern hand pump made the task of bringing water to the surface somewhat easier. This water was used for drinking and heated for cooking, cleaning and bathing. Hauling in water with buckets was a daily activity done multiple times a day. Left over gray water had to be hauled back out and dumped away from the house. (no faucet to turn on)

For bathing, water was hauled in and heated on a woodstove. Some woodstoves had a small water reservoir on the side to keep a few gallons of water hot as long as the stove was lit. The heated water was then poured into a galvanized tub while more water was put on the stove to get hot. The tub was normally placed very close to the woodstove, especially in winter. Only one person using a tub of water was a rareity ... bath water was shared. Usually women and small children bathed first then older children & menfolk. Some families had a female only bath night then a male only bath night. Harsh lye soap was usually the cleanser.

People didnt bathe as often as they do now ... considering the preparation involved. Sponge baths were an often used alternative.

The used bath water had to be hauled back outside and dumped away from the house. (no deep, soaking, private baths)

For elimination an outhouse was the place to go. Outhouses were placed away from the residence due to unpleasant odors and flies. It is a tiny, enclosed structure with a built in bench for seating. The bench may have one or two holes cut into it. Waste was released via the hole(s) and fell into a prepared trench beneath the house. Outhouses didnt have light or heat ... a lantern usually lit the way at night. If one only needed to urinate in the night, a chamber pot was pulled from under the bed to use. In the morning the pot was quickly emptied and cleaned then placed back under the bed for the next night. Pages of the previous years Sears & Roebucks catalog, placed in the outhouse, were ripped out one at a time and crumbled for use in wiping. If more was needed ... dried corn cobs were also kept within reaching distance. ( no indoor flush toliets )

If you were lucky enough to have a spring on your property (a place where water springs out of the earth as opposed to a hand dug well or nearby creek) you could construct a covering over it and use that space as a sort of refrigeration for milk, butter, eggs, etc.

Most homes could not be built right next to a spring so one had to walk a (mostly) short distance to get needed items. Children were often sent by their mothers to get items needed from the spring house...and also to fetch wood for the woodstove and water from the well pump (or creek) as soon as they were old enough to carry a bucket.

A more modern invention was the "icebox" in which things could be kept cool. Peddlers would bring big blocks of pre-cut ice, in a horse drawn wagon, to people in or near towns. As the ice melted .. the water was channeled down to a drain pan that had to be emptied daily. The delivered ice had been cut the previous winter from frozen lakes,etc. It was stored (covered in layers of straw) in ice cellars dug deep into the ground. Most ice peddlers didnt deliver to very rural areas leaving those families to continue using their spring house.

(forget about going to an electric refrigerator)

Lanterns and oil lamps were used to light homes and barns at night .. they had to be cleaned, refilled and wick trimmed daily. One had to be careful of lamps around children and lanterns used in barns around livestock ... even an adult could catch the house or barn on fire accidently. (no flipping on a switch for "instant light")

If one was lucky enough to have rugs ... they had to be hung outside in good weather and struck repeately with a "carpet beater" to get ground in dirt out. Of course fine clouds of dirt would get all over the (sweaty) person doing this chore.

Once the rug had been beaten it was ready to be spot cleaned & left to dry.

(forget the electric vaccum cleaner)

Grocery stores are made possible by fuel (for delivery of goods) and electricity (to keep certain items refrigerated or frozen). Before electricity (and fuel powered machines) most people had to provide their own food stuffs.

Fields were plowed by man and beast ... men, women and children planted the seed and hoed weeds all summer ... then hand harvested the crops. Each food had to be preserved from one harvest to the next (a year) and if it wasnt ... people would go without. (no tractors, no combines)

Some fruits and vegetables were dried by the sun for keeping (beans) ...others fermented (saurkraut) or pickled (cucumbers)at home. Root vegetables and winter squashes would keep fresh in a cool cellar for most of the winter without electricity When glass jars became widely available, people started to "can" fruits and vegetables for long term storage without electricity. People hand picked apples ...

then hand peeled and sliced apples ... then cooked & canned apples. All done without electricity.

Imagine canning foods over a hot woodstove all day long during the summer in a house without air conditioning. Yet it had to be done because there were no grocery stores ... no one was shipping foods to the corner market.

(no grocery store for frozen ice cream in summer or strawberries in winter)

People also worked hard to keep animals for meat and by-products. Cows were kept for milk & manure. Electric milkers didnt exist ... nor did electric lights for the barn...milking was done by hand during daylight hours or by lantern when dark.

Pigs were kept for meats ...no freezer to store meat in so it had to be salted and smoked by hand. Or ground into sausage with a hand grinder then smoked. All hard work and sweat. (no butcher with a refrigerated meat locker)

Clothing was usually fashioned from start to finish by hand. Hands planted & harvested cotton (or sheared wool) without electricity. The cotton was then spun on a hand operated spinning wheel. Next a hand loom wove the fabric and hands then made the fabric into an article of clothing. Even buttons were fashioned by hand out of wood or bone. (no fabric store for plastic buttons & polyester cloth)

Most of mankinds time on Earth has been spent without electricity ... so we dont need it to survive but I sure am glad I live in the time that its available!

Answer 2

You worked in the day when there was light to see and you slept at night (or watched the stars) when it was too dark to see. Torches, candles, oil lamps, gas lights, etc. provided limited and flickery light by which simple tasks could be done but reading was difficult with such lights. If you wanted to listen to music it was a live performance and you were frequently one of the performers. Work required significant human labor and drudgery; although animals, water wheels, windmills, and steam engines eventually provided assistance as we learned how to control their power for our purposes, but such power sources had to be available where the power was needed (without electricity there is no practical means to transport power for long distances from where it is generated). Cooking was done directly over a fire, although the development of the hearth and the cast iron wood/coal kitchen stove made it less and less necessary for the cook to stand in the smoke of the fire breathing the smoke the entire time they cooked.

There are many other things that could be mentioned, but hopefully this gives some ideas.

Answer 3

Before the widespread use of electricity, life was largely centered around daylight hours. People relied on natural light for visibility, and activities were limited after dark. Cooking and heating were done using open flames or wood stoves, and communication was slower without instant electronic means.

Answer 4

A lot darker. Once petroleum was found and refined, oil lamps could be made quite bright and efficient. Before that people had only candles.