ever spoke with an elderly person about their appliances?

[Cybrvanr]

I hooked up a new stove for my grandmother this past weekend, and the subject came up about many of the family gatherings and dinners we had over there. She mentioned that she never thought when they scraped together their few dimes back in the fifties to buy her stove for the house that she would have ever made as many wonderful meals. She then went on ab out how she enjoyed the day Grandpa came home with a dishwasher for her back in the seventies. Eventually we continued chatting, and we came to talk about automobiles, and she spoke fondly of the old cars she had, and all the fun road trips the family took in them.

I think it's neat to listen to older people talk about the things like their home, appliances, cars and other big-ticket items, especially someone like her, who grew up during the great depression. They appreciate these things much more than we do in this day and age, since they have become disposable. My grandparents are always meticulous about maintaining their home and the things in it, much more so it seems than many people my age. I remember coming over as a child one time, and he had the dishwasher taken apart into hundreds of parts on the floor of the kitchen. I cannot remember what was wrong with it, but he got it back working, and it continues to run today. Not only did he not buy a new dishwasher, but he also didn't hire a tech to repair it, he repaired it himself.

I wish young people of today had the same pride of ownership in the things they buy and use... maybe then, we wouldn't see the troubles in the economy we see today.

 

[pulsator]

My grandma and grandpa told me all about their appliances when they were raising my dad, aunt, and uncles. They have a 1,000 square foot house and raised 5 kids in it with one bathroom! My grandpa told me that they got an Easy twin tub second hand for their first washer and they had it in the kitchen. My grandma would wash and my grandpa would spin and rinse because the spin drier terrified my grandma! Sometime in the early 70's, they got a Kenmore pair, my grandma's first automatic! Those were installed in the basement where their second bathroom is now. After the washer died, they got one of the very first DD Kenmores with the spin drain, they still have that washer today. They got a WCI Frigidaire dryer when the Kenmore dryer died. That dryer died about 5 years ago though, they now have a Whirlpool dryer. My grandma used to also tell me that having 5 kids and no dishwasher, they were desperate for minimizing dish usage, so they would eat dinner and then turn their plates upside and eat dessert on the other side of the plates! They received a used KitchenAid topload dishwasher sometime in the 70's and, having no room in the kitchen for a dishwasher, it sat next to the Kenmore set in the basement and everyone had to carry their dishes down to the basement when they were done eating and put them in the dishwasher. My grandma said it was almost as bad as doing the dishes by hand because she then had to carry everything back upstairs when the thing was done, but, it helped her hands a lot so she did it anyway. In the 80's my grandpa surprised my grandma, after all the kids had moved out (my dad was the last) he emptied the cupboard next to the sink and ripped it out and put in a brand new Maytag dishwasher which they still have. My grandpa takes that dishwasher apart every single year to check that everything is working properly and to give it a good cleaning!

My grandparents on my mom's side had a very different appliance history because my grandpa worked for Whirlpool. They got all brand new TOL appliances every six months in coppertone. Most of which had some new feature that was being tested. My grandpa doesn't like to talk about Whirlpool for some reason and I haven't spoken to him in years due to some family issues sadly. I never really got a chance to talk to my grandma about such things, by the time I was old enough to wonder about past appliances and sit still enough to listen to her talk about something, her Alzheimer's had taken away her ability to remember how to start any of her current appliances let alone remember past ones and she has since passed away. So, I have to rely on what my mom recalls. She tells me that it was always a big PIA for my grandma to have to learn all her appliances over again every 6 months and not to mention the inevitable, new untested features will break! She recalls dishwashers that forgot to fill before going into the dry cycle, smoking dryers, flooding washers, warm refrigerators, etc. My grandpa designed special features for washing machines and holds a patent on the infinite water level control, which I guess took a lot of perfecting. According to my mom, grandma would explode at my grandpa when the washer overflowed because, technically, it was his fault! this happened on more than one ocassion too...

 

[electron800]

I hate the way people take thigs for granted now

When my grandparents first got married in 1959 they lived in a 1 room bedsit with shared kitchen and an outside toilet. Just before my mum was born in 1968 they moved into a 13th floor flat in a tower block. Until the mid 70's they had nothing but a Creda Debonair spin dryer. Everything was handwashed and spun dry in that (even filthy baby clothes!). Then in about 1974 they got a Hoovermatic twin tub which my granma loved! In the early 80's they got a Candy twin tub (so I'm told) which they had up until about 1992. My earliest memories of washing are helping my grandma put the clothes into the spinner. They've never had a dishwasher and we still don't to this day. For about 5 years after we got the Hoover my grandma refused the drying cycle because she thought it was totally unecessary!

I don't know much about the appliances of my other Grandparents but I do know that up until 1972 they raised 4 kids in a 2 room miner's cottage with a tin bath and an earth toilet outside which they shared with the other houses in the street! It's hard to believe people still lived like this even into the 1970's!

Matt

 

[polkanut]

My Mom's parents were married in 1932. They lived in a 4 room flat until 1935, when they built their house. The appliances she used while renting were part of the building. She was thrilled to get her own appliances when the house was finished. She had a Skelgas propane stove, a used Speed Queen washer, and a used GE Monitor-top fridge. In 1950 she received a Sunbeam Mixmaster as a b-day present from her goddaughter who was working for the electric co. at the time. Also in 1950 my Grandpa bought the Speed Queen I have today because he was afraid of rationing during the Korean War, like WWII. My Uncle bought her a Westinghouse dryer in 1955, which lasted until 1970 when she bought a GE. The used Speed Queen finally died in '56, then she finally started using the one bought in '50. In 1962 they remodeled the kitchen, and she got all new appliances. The stove was a shaded coppertone Monarch gas range, and a matching GE fridge. They had natural gas installed at the same time, replacing their gravity coal furnace with an Iron Fireman furnace which was still in use 3yrs ago when the house was sold. My sister has the Mixmaster now. Grandma never wanted a dw, she thought it was a "water waster".

 

[iheartmaytag]

My mom is 75 now, though I still wouldn't use the word Elderly around her.

She has told stories over the years about the "Olden days"
She was the second youngest of 17 children. Grandma washed on a gas powered Maytag Wringer every Monday--Mondays were Beans and cornbread day because Grandma would have spent the entire day washing.
They never had electricity while my mother lived at home. The barn had been wired as they were going to get electricity the next week when Grandpa was killed in a farming accident in September 1948. Mom says she remembers Grandma got an electric iron from one of the older brothers that Christmas.

Grandma never had much until 1972 at the age of 76 she qualified for aging housing and moved into a brand new home that was hers for the rest of her days then went back to teh state of Missouri when she was finsihed with it for another older person to live in. They built it special for her with lowered cabinets and two bedrooms. And for the first time in her life Grandma had an Automatic washing machine and a stove you didn't have to put wood in, and something she had wanted for years and electric coffee pot. We got her a Mr. Coffee that year for Christmas. Sadly Grandma didn't get to stay in her home many years as Alzheimer's forced her to spend the last ten years of her life in a nursing facility. But for those six years she was there she felt like she had reached heaven. Grandma died at the age of 92 having lived through the Oklahoma land rush, two great wars, the death of two husbands, and outlived all but five of her children.

My mother tells when she was married in 1950, the first major purchase she and hubby #1 made when they moved to the city was a Kirby vacuum cleaner. She had never had an electric vacuum. It cost her $2 per month payments and she said she thought she would never get it paid for. BTW--That little vacuum lived for 11 years and was killed in a house fire. True to their word, Kirby replaced it with a brand new model that is still being used today.

Her second major appliance purchase was a Speed Queen electric wringer washer. She bought this from of all people a door-to-door salesman. She did this while #1 was at work, and cost her a $1.50 a week. Since he was only making $11 per week at Boeing at that time she took in ironings to pay for her washer.

Things got better for mom appliance wise, especially after #1 took off with the "Crusty-Dried-Up-Home-Wrecking-Old-Whore". She got her first dishwasher in 1971 a GE Mobile Maid. Mom has always prefered an electric range as do I, because she says it is more like cooking on the wood stove. She said the biggest problem she had when learning to cook after getting electric was with a wood stove she knew how much wood had to be put in for a certain item being cooked say biskets for example. Then the fire would start to die down. "Those electrics just kept on cooking and you would burn everything up if you didn't watch them."

 

[mattl]

Jamie, interesting contrast between both sides of your family. I have no idea what happened with your grandfather, but you are old enough now to speak to him on your own if you desire. You could regret not knowing him better later in your life. You two certainly have shared interests.

I guess I treat my appliances differently based on what I think of them. If it's just a MOL unit I may treat it with a bit of disregard in the hope it will die. If it's something I really like I, like many here, will go to extremes to keep it in top condition. I don't think the older generations looked at things that way. Now, most people treat EVERYTHING as disposable.

 

[goatfarmer]

Great stories!

 

[alr2903]

I had thrifty Grandparents and Parents, pretty much like the stories many of you were so kind to share. i do think many of the more mature adults were bamboozled by repairmen, that things could not be fixed, in order to sell them a new item. Today it's just hard to swallow the price of parts, versus a new item, kind of like throwing good money after bad. In my adult life i have never had a TV repairman as most of our parents had... of course that was in a time when appliances and electronics were purchased from a local dealer, with sales backed by service.

 

[mrboilwash]

My Grandma was hired for housekeeping and to look after the children by several American families after the war when Germany was occupied. That was long before I was born, but I when I was a kid in the 70`s she still used an American Kenmore "Automatic Popup" toaster from the 50`s along with a heavy duty 1600 Watts transformer. I still have them both today and I remember asking her a million questions about all appliances she ever had in the past.
She had loads of interesting stories to tell and didn`t mind me to play with her appliances.

 

[dixieland]

I remember my Grandmother on my mother's side had the first stacked/upright pair I'd ever seen - aside from some TV prize on "The Price is Right." She had her back porch converted into a utility room and it always smelled of either all tempurature Cheer or FAB (I believe the lemon incarnation).

My other Grandmother always had appliances from Kenmore in some sort of 70's or 80's fashionable color. These machines were also in a converted back porch that they also used as a den. They'd watch tv and such in that room. This Grandmother always had 3-4 different detergents to choose from. I blame her for my addiction to buying too much detergent. LOL

Mom was always a Kenmore kind of girl as well. Basic white washer/dryer but avacado green kitchen appliances. I can remember at one point she got a new side-by-side fridge and Dad had to change the panel out on the dishwasher to beige so they'd match. We kept the green stove for years because it was a double oven. Mom still misses and talks about that stove!

That reminds me... around my area people really don't call them laundry rooms so much as they call them utility rooms. I guess because there is usually a deep-freeze and other utilitarian items in them. Of course I did not grow up in a city so maybe out in the country there was more use for multi-purpose rooms.

 

[dalangdon]

My parents got married in 1952, and they borrowed a 20's-era "Detroit Jewel" electric stove from my Grandmother, and bought a GE refrigerator on time.

Mom hated that stove. It was one of those stoves with the oven off to the side, and it had very little control over the oven's temperature. As soon as they could afford it, they bought another stove, also by Detroit Jewel. (Not out of brand loyalty. Because it was cheap)

When they bought the house, it wasn't wired for an electric stove, so they bought a gas range (New!, on-time from the gas company), which they kept until they redid the kitchen, and bought a very mod 70's electric Tappan, and white-westinghouse side-by-side. Those lasted until the redid the kitchen again, and they got a BOL GE electric stove and the ugliest, most oversized side-by-side known to man, on the theory that they would be selling the house and didn't want anything fancy (twenty years later, mom still lives there, still hates that stupid refrigerator, and still tells the story of how "YOUR FATHER" bought it because it was the only one available at Sears after the salesman at Nebraska Furniture Mart was a jerk.)

Through all of this, the original GE refrigerator - relegated to the basement in 1972 - keeps chugging along, although she unplugged it a few years back, and keeps threatening to send it to the dump. That's when I threaten to not come home to visit. ;-) (The woman has no sense of sentiment)

As far as washer/dryers go, she's had a whole string of them through the years. Always a gas dryer, because there's no 240v outlet, and she's too cheap to have an outlet put in. She needs a new set, and a new water heater, but won't spend the money because, as she puts it, "I'm 84 years old. I'm going to try to get them to last longer than I do"

Those depression era folks know how to squeeze a dime.

 

[passatdoc]

My grandmother passed away in 1985. Her home in rural Connecticut was built in the 1930s. She had a KitchenAid KDS-2 and it was a sink-dishwasher combination model. I have never seen photos of the kitchen before the dishwasher was added in the 1950s, but I imagine she would have had one of those 42" or so wide double sinks for which the combination units were designed. No remodeling needed, just remove the sink and add the sink-dishwasher combination.

I don't know if the KDS-2 had been repaired, but it still ran until she died, so I would imagine she got over 30 years of service from it. Of course the machine looked dated, but it matched the style of the kitchen.

 

[MrX]

I asked my grandma

In the 1950s she had a strange Philips washer which operated with two jets of water sprayed in from the top causing the clothes to agitate in the drum. It had an electric wringer on the top. I think there's one on a French classic appliance site mentioned here.
She then moved on to a Hoovermatic twin-tub, followed in the 1960s by a Hotpoint automatic agitator top-loader (very much similar to a traditional US machine)
Then in the mid 1970s she got her first Siemens front loader.
That was replaced by a Miele in 1990 which is still in use today.

She had a Hoover Tumble Dryer De Lux with a blue panel (still in her garage) and a 1990 Miele dryer (Still in use)

Vacuums:
Hoover Junior (retired)
Hoover Constellation (retired)
Nilfisk GA 70 (now in use as a workshop vac!)
Nilfisk GM 90 (Still in use)

TVs:
1950s - PYE 405 line monochrome.
Replaced in the 1960s by a 405/625 line switchable model made by Telefunken (still monochrome)
1970s - Philips 625 line PAL colour 28"
1980s - Sony Trintron PAL colour 32"
late 1990s - Sony WEGA 32" PAL Plus wide screen.
Recently replaced by a 40" flat panel Sony LCD DVB-T (HDTV)

I know all the details because she kept all of her instruction manuals in a drawer! They're ALL there since about 1948!!

 

[sudsmaster]

The last time I tried to talk with my mom about our old laundry equipment was back in 1998 when I quizzed her about the old slab sided Bendix front loader we had bolted in our basement in the 50's. She really didn't want to talk about it, finally saying, "your father brought that in", and "why are you asking me about this?". Sometimes I think she'd have been just as happy living out of a suitcase, lol...

 

[passatdoc]

my mom's first washer

When I was born in 1956, my parents were in an apartment with a common laundry room. Shortly thereafter, they moved to a rented house with an equipped laundry room, so they still didn't have to buy a washer. When my sister was born in 1958, they bought a new house and moved to the first house they had ever owned. No laundry room would be complete without a GE Filter Flo washer and matching dryer (yes, it had the Air Freshener tablet dispenser, thought I never saw anyone use it). As far as I know, mom's washer did not have SudsSaver on it. The laundry area was in the garage and I don't remember if there was a laundry sink (i.e. not sure if the waste water went right into a built in drain pipe, as is the custom today, or whether it was dumped into a laundry sink.

If we had only a built in drainpipe, obviously SudsSaver would have been pointless. As laundry sinks became less ubiquitous, and people more prosperous (to where they didn't care about saving water, energy, or soap), it must have been the death knell for SudsSavers.

We moved to a larger but older (1930s) home three years later, this was the house in which I grew up. The laundry room had a laundry sink, there was no built in wall drainpipe, and the washer exhaust hose was clamped to the side of the sink....so SudsSaver would have worked with such a setup.

My parents divorced when I was in high school and my mother moved to a smaller condominium. The GE pair was working at least part way through my college years, so she got about twenty years of service from those machines. I don't remember when they were replaced and neither does she (she is an appliance maven today, with a pair of stacked Mieles, but she doesn't remember when the GE pair konked out for good. There was another washer pair that saw her into the new millenium.

 

[tuthill]

My grandparents first automatic was a Whirlpool combo!!! My grandma said they had to get rid of it when it kept having "lint problems". Boy you should've seen the look on their faces when I told them there was only one working model left in the world.