When I moved back to Iowa I brought with me two new Shark vacuum cleaners. I was in love with them. They were of the upright type, were bagless and had a seemingly endless amount of configuration options. They were light, nimble and My mom kinda scoffed at them and told me she preferred her Electrolux Epic 6500. But mine were new, I thought. Why would she like an old, heavy, and let me say it ugly vacuum that still took bags that needed to be replaced.
Well now that my mom is gone and so are the Sharks, I have begun to understand her love of her Electrolux. I was smart enough not to get rid of it (or the similar one she had upstairs) and when my Sharks both bit the dust I started using it. These machines just keep sucking until all of the dirt in gone.
Gone are the days of products that last. I look around the farm and see lots of things that I remember being there as a kid that belonged to my grand-parents (maybe even my great-grandparents) – hoses, garden tools, lawn chairs (all metal), lawn mower (the kind without a motor), hedge trimmers, coffee pots and a whole lot more. When you bought something back then, you didn’t have to replace it – ever. This stuff still works two generations later. Now, everything is shit – and designed that way on purpose so you have to purchase it again. You’d think that with as much competition out there that quality products would be easy to come by, but I guess selling a product once to a customer isn’t enough anymore. Keeping anything in good working order anymore is virtually impossible.
Those vacuum cleaners built 30-50 years ago are still selling for $500, probably more than they were originally sold for. Why? Because even at 50 years old, that thing will last infinitely longer than a brand new one bought today.
Find one laying around? Don’t ditch it even if it doesn’t work – they are easily repaired and work better than anything you can buy today.