Frances Gabe (1915-2016) hated cleaning so much, she dreamt of building a house that could clean itself. Using her own money, her own hands, and several years, she built such a house. Her hope was to revolutionize housework so women wouldn’t continue to bear the brunt of it.
Frances Gabe (1915-2016) hated cleaning so much, she dreamt of building a house that could clean itself. Using her own money, her own hands, and several years, she built such a house. Her hope was to revolutionize housework so women wouldn’t continue to bear the brunt of it.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Womanica.
This month, we’re highlighting innovators - women who helped shape the world we live in today – from inventors to activists.
Our story today is about a woman who hated cleaning so much, she dreamt of building a house that could clean itself. Using her own money, her own hands, and several years she built such a house. Her hope was to revolutionize housework, so women wouldn’t continue to bear the brunt of it.
Let’s talk about the feminist inventor and artist, Frances Gabe.
In 1915, Frances was born Frances Grace Arnholz on a ranch near Boise, Idaho. Her mother died when she was young, and her father, Frederick Arnholz was an architect and builder. Over the years, he moved the family wherever his job took him: growing up Frances attended 18 different elementary schools.
She often accompanied her father on jobs, and found a sense of belonging and connection with the builders she met. But it was more than that: she was learning about their craft, too.
By the age of 16, Frances had graduated from Girls Polytechnic High School in Portland, Oregon. Just a year later, she married Herbert Grant Bateson, an electrical engineer. Herbert had trouble finding enough work to support the family, so Frances decided to start a home-repair and construction company. Frances ran the business, which kept her very busy. r.
Frances divorced her husband in the 1970s, and she went by a new last name: GABE, which was her initials, plus an E. The divorce, was hard on her. Later, she said, ''I was sitting here alone, crying as hard as I could cry. Then, I prayed. I said, 'Father, give me something so big, so all-consuming, so useful, that it would use all of me.' So I could keep going.''
Then came the fig jam. It was the late 70s and Frances, now a single mother, was sick of the scrubbing, dusting, and mopping it took to maintain a clean home. When a mysterious stain of fig jam appeared on her wall one day, likely from one of her children, she had had enough. She grabbed a garden hose. But, what if the house could just clean itself, instead?
It went from an idea, to a plan. She later said: ''I thought I was just doodling. Then I stopped and looked, and there was the self-cleaning house.''
Frances worked on the house for 12 years until it became the self-cleaning masterpiece she dreamed of. There was a cupboard that could clean dishes without needing to move them, and cabinets in which one could hang dirty clothes to be washed and dried.
In fact, the house itself was like a giant dishwasher: Every room had sprinklers in the ceiling that sprayed soap and water in circular motion, the sloped floors helped the water drain, and then hot-air vents dried everything off. Everything in the house was waterproofed, from the furniture and floors, to books and knick knacks.
Frances’s self-cleaning house was patented in 1984, and it included 68 separate devices she had invented to eliminate every part of the cleaning of her home. It was a dramatic departure from the average house. But, she hoped it might lead to a revolution in new self-cleaning buildings.
Frances sunk thousands of dollars of her savings into this invention. And she even toured the country, giving lectures and showing off a scale model of her self-cleaning house. In 1996, she told the Ottawa Citizen: “Housework is a thankless, unending job. It’s a nerve-twangling bore. Who wants it? Nobody!”
While Frances’s house design never took off, it captured the imagination of the country. She and her house were featured on Phil Donahue’s talk show, and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. In the early 2000s, a model of the house was exhibited at the Women’s Museum of Dallas. Frances also gave tours of her house in Oregon, charging a sliding scale rate by appointment.
By 2002, the house was impossible for Frances to maintain with proceeds from her tours. Her patents lapsed, and earthquakes in the area left the home damaged.
In 2009, Frances moved into a nursing home, at the urging of her grandchildren. She didn’t go quietly. After that, her quirky home was purchased and most of the self-cleaning features were dismantled.
Frances Gabe died in 2016 at the age of 101.
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Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator.
As always, we’ll be taking a break for the weekend! Talk to you Monday!