Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Owww, I forgot to mention the heating pad my husband had when we got together with the fabric cord too that belonged to his mother who had passed away in 1984 and he thinks they had it when he was a kid and he is 60 now! It is probably a bit of a fire hazard but still heats up hot as can be.
My mother has a 19" RCA color TV that is 16 years old. I've got a 25 to 30 year old black and white portable that still works but is sitting in the basement and hardly ever gets used. It picks up phone conversations on one or two of the higher channels and was fun to mess around with 10 to 15 years ago. I think its a Zenith or GE.
I had a 25 inch Sanyo that died after 3 or 4 years. This computer I'm on now is 6 years old and can still play a few favorite games. That's like 60 years old in people years.
Well I have an electric can opener that I bought at a dollar store 9 years ago. It's still working great. On a side note, the blender and mini food processor that I also bought at the dollar store 9 years ago both broke down a few months ago. (they got a lot more use than the can opener though)
Last year I bought my mom and dad a new refrigerator for Christmas because theirs died. They had used the same refrigerator since I was a child - it lasted over 40 years!
My washing machine is over twenty years old and still runs great.
My mother had a fridgidare refigerator that was bought in the 60's. I still use it in the garage.I can still remember that it cost alittle over 1200 dollars even then;but has been really good.mky mother in ;law has a magtag washer and dryer that was puirchased in teh early 70's still works great. The last of the outside central air conditionong unit that would last 25+ years are startign to disappear.
The Singer Featherweight sewing machine that my mom bought when she was in high school (circa 1945-46) is in my possession and still going strong. She ran a custom tailoring and sewing business out of the home in the late 50's/early 60's on that machine, sewed all her own clothes, mine and my sister's, as well as re-upholstering several pieces of furniture and repairing her down-filled sleeping bag and her back-packing tent before she died; that machine has sewn many thousand miles at this point. My daughter (age 25) is now using it to construct Hallowe'en costumes for herself, her sig-other and the sig-other's daughter, and I expect that she'll inherit it from me as I did from my mom. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if she in turn passes it on to the next generation; they knew how to make a piece of machinery back in the 40's.
And our son, off in college at this point, has the Sony Trinitron TV set that my dad bought in, oh, 1974 or 1975 or so, right after they first came on the market. The last time he took it in for repair before he died, the fellow at the repair shop told him that based on the serial number, he had one of the first 100,00 or so sets that were ever produced in that series. And you know what? The picture it gets is still as good as the Sony Wega flat-panel that my spouse watches today.
This thread reminds me that I have learned to take lifespan into consideration when buying any appliance or tool. I still have a compressor that I bought as a kid, and that tool has lasted through at least six cars.
Sadly, new appliances have self-destruction built in. Electronic circuits made with lead free solder develop filaments of tin that can destroy them, capacitors "dry out" over time, plastics become brittle and break, and so forth. The more complex the appliance, the shorter the life generally is. Considering that the most complex appliances are often the most costly, that can be a problem.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
On a side note, the blender and mini food processor that I also bought at the dollar store 9 years ago both broke down a few months ago. (they got a lot more use than the can opener though)
