Back in 1997 a gypsy lady went door to door selling junk in my Dad’s street. I don’t know that she was a real gypsy, but that is exactly how Dad described her. A gypsy. The debate about her being or not being a real gypsy is not the point here. The point is, that Dad bought an old vacuum cleaner off her for $20. It was an orange dirty looking thing, an electrolux volta. It took me a while but I finally found a photo of one.

It’s the one hanging in the far left corner. If you zoom right in on the little name tag underneath it you can see it was a model from way back in 1982. When it came in to Dad’s possession it was 15 years old, and still working. Not only was it working, but it was doing a really good job. It picked up our dog hair, it picked up anything we asked it to pick up. It was the best vacuum cleaner I’d ever used.

Somehow the vacuum cleaner became mine. I’m not entirely sure how, but it ended up with me. When I finally and regretfully let it go, it was 2004. Twenty two years old, and still going strong. Tim and I were moving states and we were trying to minimize the junk that we took with us. Unfortunately, we thought we could buy a new vacuum cleaner and left this one in the junk pile.

Fast forward to 2006, when we finally did buy a new vacuum cleaner (please note, we used someone else’s in the mean time) It’s a Hoover of some sort and has a power head, and it cost us over $500.

I LOVE my vacuum cleaner. Like the old Volta, it picks up dog hair and it picks up dust and anything else thats in it’s path. It’s everything a vacuum cleaner should be.

Or it was. Now it’s dead. Broken. It just up and died on us, at the tender age of just TWO years old. Now I ask you. If things are being built bigger and stronger and more superior to their ancestors in this day and age, then why is my relatively new vacuum cleaner not vacuuming? Is nothing built to last anymore?