Vacuuming early in life?

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Alan

Alan

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Since all of you love various vaccuums, I wonder if it started with helping with vacuuming in your childhood home, or did you just see something interesting and want to take it apart to see how it worked?
 
For most of my life a vacuum was just this noisemaker you had to push around to clean your home. No love for them. I was into my 50s when I developed an actual interest in them. When my parents passed I inherited their two old Kenmore canister vacuums, a 1969 Sears Best and another from 1982. Compared to the Hoover Caddy ( Crappy ) Vac I had at the time the two Kennys felt like luxury goods. But both needed some work, especially the older one, and in the process of finding parts and expertise I discovered this whole community of collectors. Who knew? And that set the hook.
 
My interest in vacuum cleaners started when I was a kid. Beginning at home, my parents had a Lux XXX that Mom used for regular cleaning, and a Kenmore torpedo tank for the basement and cleaning the cars. These were the first vacs I ever ran! By the time I was 4 or 5, I knew what vacs my aunts & uncles, grandparents, and family friends had, and where they kept them. The first Hoover 28 I ever saw (and ran) belonged to an aunt that I used to stay with occasionally on weekends, and the first Hoover Convertible I ever saw (and ran) belonged to another aunt, who also had a Westinghouse SC-1 canister that is now in my collection.
When I was 9 years old we spent Christmas with an aunt & uncle who lived near Chicago, and she had a model 66 Air-Way that I used to sweep up pine needles from the tree, and my uncle, who was selling Electrolux at the time, brought a model G in and demonstrated it. This was the same aunt & uncle that I've mentioned before, who met while he was selling Electro-Hygiene with another uncle years before that.
When I was in Jr. High school, I used to help my aunt clean at my paternal grandparents' house. Usually I vacuumed while she did their laundry. They had a model AE Lux and a Filtex, and when I had a choice, I always used the Lux! But even though my interest started early in life, I didn't start collecting until about 20 years ago! Never knew that people collected vacuums until I saw Charles Lester's old webpage, the Virtual Vacuum Cleaner Museum, and an article in the Mansfield News Journal about Luke Gebhart's collection, and I thought "I could do that!"
Jeff
 
Well, Mom told me that I would take her Electrolux AP280 out of the closet and play with it starting around 3 years old. And Mom also did have her own housekeeping service. So I think that was definitely a factor in me developing my interest in vacuums :)
 
I believe that my vacuum interest was initiated by my mother. She would let me ride on the vacuum when she would clean (usually every day with a border collie mix). I would also help my grandmother when she would vacuum the large anoint of carpets and floors in my grandparents home. My grandfather had some schooling in radios and electronics, and he would often bring the vacuums home from the office to repair. I also have a strong interest in cleaning, which might be influenced by the perfectionist trait of only children. I do enjoy doing some refurbishment ps on vacuums, but I primarily prefer new models. My interest in vacuums isn’t really related to the sound, but rather the actual vacuuming and experiencing the different models available.
 
Alan said:
Since all of you love various vaccuums, I wonder if it started with helping with vacuuming in your childhood home, or did you just see something interesting and want to take it apart to see how it worked?
Click to expand...
It started with me going up to my mom's old Fold Away when I was 2 and then getting inspired by another vacuum collector years later (2013).
 
Alan said:
Since all of you love various vaccuums, I wonder if it started with helping with vacuuming in your childhood home, or did you just see something interesting and want to take it apart to see how it worked?
Click to expand...
Playing with my Grt grandma's Electrolux Golden Jubilee and riding it around, watching it explode in a fireball when the motor died when my mom was vacuuming in the 90s. My mom had a Eureka World Vac then came the visit from the dreaded Kirby salesman. So I have a liking to Electrolux and Kirby products because of that.
 
huskyvacs said:
Vacmasterthegreat? He's still around. I just seen his channel yesterday. He deleted the username and changed it. I never knew it was him either until I seen the name. Looks like he's selling his vacuums and moving on.

https://www.youtube.com/@S15collector
Click to expand...
Oh, I wasn’t talking about that vacmaster. It was a different vacmaster. The first vacuum collecter I saw. 😌 i remember he had both the bagged and bagless versions of the Dirt Devil Breeze. However, Vacmasterthegreat was another collector that inspired me back in 2013.

Mr. Vacmaster’s channel was deleted and for its last years, it was some sort of advertisement channel for a fish tank system. All of his other vacuum videos were taken down. I forgot the URL to his YT channel, though
 
huskyvacs said:
Help me figure it out, then you wont need to buy so many :LOL:
Click to expand...
Join a Japan based proxy buying service called Buyee.jp. Their website gives you access to hundreds of on-line retailers in Japan as well as a couple of their on line flea markets like Mercari and JDirectItems Auctions. They also have access to JDirectItems Shopping and Rakuten where you can buy new vacuums and new parts for your Japanese vacuum. You join much like you would join Amazon or ebay. Once you have your account and password set up you shop the different sites. When you see something you like you click to buy it and Buyee buys it for you. They are your proxy in Japan. The service charges are very minimal and because of the Dollar-Yen relationship everything in Japan is very inexpensive.
After you select something and Buyee buys it the product is shipped to their warehouse in Osaka. You get an email notification of its arrival and you have 30 days of free storage. You can arrange to ship the product to the US immediately or if the items you are buying are small you can have them consolidate several packages into a single shipment. Shipping to the US has typically not been more expensive than shipping a vacuum across the US with UPS except for some heavy steel body Electroluxes and Tristars. The Japanese vacuums are small and very light so shipping is no big deal.
What has become a big deal are the tariffs. The shipper will email you for a tariff payment when the package hits US customs plus there will be a fee for the customs broker ( the only people really making money off these tariffs, business is booming for them ). As a result I am not buying so much from Japan now. I am stocked up on bags and crossing my fingers that the Supremes rule Jupiter's tariffs ( Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, an orange colored gas giant ) are not legal.
 
cheesewonton said:
Join a Japan based proxy buying service called Buyee.jp. Their website gives you access to hundreds of on-line retailers in Japan as well as a couple of their on line flea markets like Mercari and JDirectItems Auctions. They also have access to JDirectItems Shopping and Rakuten where you can buy new vacuums and new parts for your Japanese vacuum. You join much like you would join Amazon or ebay. Once you have your account and password set up you shop the different sites. When you see something you like you click to buy it and Buyee buys it for you. They are your proxy in Japan. The service charges are very minimal and because of the Dollar-Yen relationship everything in Japan is very inexpensive.
After you select something and Buyee buys it the product is shipped to their warehouse in Osaka. You get an email notification of its arrival and you have 30 days of free storage. You can arrange to ship the product to the US immediately or if the items you are buying are small you can have them consolidate several packages into a single shipment. Shipping to the US has typically not been more expensive than shipping a vacuum across the US with UPS except for some heavy steel body Electroluxes and Tristars. The Japanese vacuums are small and very light so shipping is no big deal.
What has become a big deal are the tariffs. The shipper will email you for a tariff payment when the package hits US customs plus there will be a fee for the customs broker ( the only people really making money off these tariffs, business is booming for them ). As a result I am not buying so much from Japan now. I am stocked up on bags and crossing my fingers that the Supremes rule Jupiter's tariffs ( Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, an orange colored gas giant ) are not legal.
Click to expand...
Yeah that's too much work and BS, forget it. When I buy on Mercari you are shown everything all at once and Mercari does all that. No tariffs or having to proxy or consolidate shipping couriers, its all included in the item cost on the site. One click and it's ordered and they do all of that. But Mercari doesnt sell vacuums. I use it to get diecast cars from Japan that USA doesn't get.

Also last time I imported something from Canada in July 2025 I had to pay $50 in tarrifs for 28 year old computer parts. There are people getting hit with $400 in tarrifs for importing clothes from Japan. If I do not know the entire price and fees all at once before bidding, no sale.
 
huskyvacs said:
Yeah that's too much work and BS, forget it. When I buy on Mercari you are shown everything all at once and Mercari does all that. No tariffs or having to proxy or consolidate shipping couriers, its all included in the item cost on the site. One click and it's ordered and they do all of that. But Mercari doesnt sell vacuums. I use it to get diecast cars from Japan that USA doesn't get.

Also last time I imported something from Canada in July 2025 I had to pay $50 in tarrifs for 28 year old computer parts. There are people getting hit with $400 in tarrifs for importing clothes from Japan. If I do not know the entire price and fees all at once before bidding, no sale.
Click to expand...
The Japanese version of Mercari is very different from what you get in the US. The Japanese site sells used merchandise and it a lot like ebay.

Jupiter's crazy tariff "schedulle" makes buying things from Canada more expensive than buying from Japan. The tariff on Japanese goods is 15%. 15% of a $25 dollar vacuum ( before shipping ) is only $3.75.
 

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