"The same goes for chores: in her book More Work for Mother, the historian [[Ruth Schwartz Cowan]] shows that **when housewives first got access to “labor-saving” devices like washing machines and vacuum cleaners, no time was saved at all, because society’s standards of cleanliness simply rose to offset the benefits**; now that you could return each of your husband’s shirts to a spotless condition after a single wearing, it began to feel like you should, to show how much you loved him. “**Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion**,” the English humorist and historian [[Cyril Northcote Parkinson]] wrote in 1955, coining what became known as Parkinson’s law. **But it’s not merely a joke, and it doesn’t apply only to work**. --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[parkinsons-law]], [[feminism]], [[ever-present-now]], [[infinite-scroll]], [[self-control]], [[counter-intuitive-thinking]], **Source** -- [[202410130434 - B - Four Thousand Weeks]]