Hard Core: Even my vacuum cleaner is vintage.

Meet my vacuum cleaner.

She’s an early-1960s Electrolux canister that I bought at an estate sale six or seven years ago. She’s still going strong! I think I paid $12 or $15 for her, and it seemed like a lot at the time because I imagined that I wouldn’t get more than a year or two of use out of her. I had to visit Wal Mart yesterday to get some more canister bags — that’s the only place I can find them anymore, and it’s looking like they might not carry them for much longer. I had to search and search and finally bought the last two packages on the rack. I have wood floors, so the only thing I use a vacuum cleaner for is corners, base boards, and vacuuming the dry mop I use to sweep the apartment.

(Great merciful heavens, look at how dirty she is. It reminds me of the Friends episode where Monica said she needed a vacuum cleaner to vacuum her vacuum cleaner.) Every now and then — like yesterday, when I sense her canister bags aren’t long for this world — I think maybe it’s time to move on and get a new one. I even put the Tech Expert (also known as my husband) on the trail a couple of months ago — I asked him to research how much it would cost to get a well-made vacuum cleaner that’s great on wood floors. He tells me that we should get a Miele for $1000. Um, WHAT? $1000 for a vacuum cleaner? Dude, no, sorry, that’s not going to happen. Although, this Electrolux that I have was probably the Miele of its time in terms of expense — my Mom bought an Electrolux when I was — seven? or eight? — sometime around then — from a door-to-door salesman, and I remember the price being quite a discussion between her and my father. I think it was around $600 or $700, but she might correct me on that. I remember her telling him that it would last forever, and, sure enough, it’s still in use at my parents’ house, thirty years later. So maybe there’s something to be said for paying for quality. But I think I’m going to wait until she gives up the ghost before I upgrade. That color…the typography…her little metal wheels…it makes me happy every time I pull her out of the closet. She’s from a time before planned obsolescence, when people expected things to last a lifetime. And she’s already outlived one owner.