When I first wrote about domestic robots in Three-Armed Spot, I argued that we didn’t need humanoid butlers, but a practical, Spot-like creature with three arms to do the dirty work. I still believe that. But let’s imagine we’ve already got it. What changes then?
The first thing that disappears is the pile. For centuries, piles have structured our homes: the laundry pile in the basket, the dishes pile in the sink, the stack of papers and unopened letters by the front door. We pile things because we batch work.
It isn’t worth doing the laundry until there’s enough of it. It isn’t worth switching on the dishwasher for two plates. But an android that never gets tired has no such logic. It just acts. The moment you set down a plate, it is rinsed, washed, dried, shelved. The moment you take off a shirt, it vanishes into a quiet cycle and is folded back into the drawer before morning. There’s no more “laundry day” or “cleaning Sunday.” The weekly rhythm we have built up around chores evaporates. Life becomes perpetually reset, with the background noise of order maintained at all times.
This in turn changes the night. Humans sleep; androids don’t. So while we’re dreaming, they’re working. They run the laundry when the power is cheapest, they deep-clean the bathroom tiles, they burp the kimchi jar and log the pH, they roll croissants and proof sourdough so that the smell of Paris greets you at seven in the morning. They check the pantry, notice that you’re low on coffee beans, accept a delivery drone at 5 a.m., and have the bag already shelved by the time you stumble into the kitchen. The house improves while you’re unconscious. You wake up not to chaos but to breakfast. The dream of the self-maintaining home becomes reality, and we’ll quickly find it impossible to imagine living any other way.
Even something as ordinary as the fridge is transformed. The giant, coffin-sized refrigerator that dominates so many kitchens is really an artefact of the weekly shop. It exists because we only want to trudge to the supermarket once a week. But if your android is ordering groceries twice a day and unpacking them immediately, the giant fridge is redundant. Instead you get a few small drawers: one for milk and greens, one for fish or meat, a pod for ferments, perhaps a tiny freezer for ice and emergencies. Food is not warehoused any more; it arrives, it is prepared, it is eaten. Freshness becomes normal. Food waste plummets. And instead of a big humming box, the kitchen fills with other possibilities: space for prep, for fermentation, for conviviality.
Cooking itself changes too. You don’t need to stop cooking – you might still want to stir, to taste, to flambé, to take credit for the meal. But now you cook like a chef with a sous-chef. Your android handles the mise en place, has the herbs washed and ready, has the knives sharp and the bowls set out, clears each pan the moment you’re done with it, and wipes the counter while you garnish. It can fetch ingredients on demand, stir the risotto while you pour wine, or recite Lorca while it juliennes carrots. It can even roll its metaphorical eyes about the neighbour’s rhyming lawn-bot. Cooking stops being drudgery and becomes performance again – a duet, not a slog.
Once you have a machine with that degree of precision, it would be wasted if it only did chores. Of course it would also be your valet, laying out clothes for the day, pressing jackets, polishing shoes, keeping track of what needs dry-cleaning. It could quietly correct your taste, swapping in a better tie for the mood of the meeting, or tactfully suggesting the weather is against those suede shoes. And it would also be your physiotherapist, guiding you through stretches in the morning, adjusting your posture when you slump, massaging sore muscles in the evening, keeping you limber enough to enjoy your increased leisure. It doesn’t need a human face to do this. It can show encouragement in tone, in timing, in the pressure of its touch. It’s Jeeves and your physio rolled into one, but faster, more precise and less sarcastic (or more, depending on your taste).
But here’s the real revolution: once all the chores are gone, so too is the scaffolding of daily life. We may not notice it, but chores give rhythm to the week. They provide a reason to get up early on a Saturday, an excuse to stay in on a Tuesday, a structure around which we organise the rest. Once the piles vanish, the whole calendar shifts. Suddenly there is time, and not just scraps of it but oceans. We face time abundance on a scale we’ve never known.
Historically, only the leisured classes had that problem, and they filled it with letter-writing, salons, botany, amateur astronomy, horse-breeding, painting, the Grand Tour, eccentric hobbies, gossip, philosophy. They found meaning in conversation, creation, and exploration, because they could. Everyone else was too busy scrubbing. Now, for the first time, everyone might be free in that way. That’s exhilarating, but also disorienting. Without laundry day or cleaning Sunday, what anchors the week? Without chores, what gives structure to the ordinary?
The danger is that we replace drudgery with scrolling. The opportunity is that we create a genuine cultural renaissance, where anyone can write poems, play music, build fiddles, argue about philosophy, plant trees, or simply wander without guilt. To reach that, though, we’ll need new rhythms and rituals, new ways of inhabiting time. We’ll need to grant ourselves permission to be idle, frivolous, strange, serious, creative. We’ll need to stop measuring time only in productivity, and start treating it as a canvas.
The Last Revolution isn’t just about freedom from chores. It’s about freedom for everything that comes next. A world where the kitchen always smells of fresh bread, the laundry is always folded, and the house is always clean is not just a world with fewer burdens – it is a world where we can finally ask ourselves what we truly want to do with our days. And if, while you’re deciding, the android gossips about Bernard next door as it irons your shirt, well, that’s just a bonus.