‘It worked perfectly’: The household appliance that will still work in 50 years

“They don’t make appliances like they used to”, the fact is they don’t make appliances like they used to,” writes Frances Whiting on the debate if old appliances are superior to modern ones.

Hello, and first of all thank you to all of you who wrote to me about last week’s rain column, including the reader who sent me a clip of her going full Drew Barrymore in the rain, which may or may not have occurred after lunch with the girls.

And can I just say, Diana S, you would give Stevie Nicks a run for her money in the twirling department.

Meantime, I’d like to take you on a nostalgic stroll with me, visiting the Ghosts of Appliances Past, by way of a Sunbeam electric frying pan.

Because my friend Andrea just hauled her mother’s out of storage and showed it to me, and I instantly went hurtling back to my childhood and my mother plugging it in, turning that big dial, and cooking lamb chops in hers. In lashings of butter and mountains of salt.

I don’t really eat meat anymore, but let me tell you, my mother’s lamb chops were the best in the world.

Not the healthiest, but the best, and do not come at me with tales of your own mother’s glorious lamb chops because my mother’s remain the indisputable champions. Also her roast potatoes, but that’s a battle for another day. Which my mother’s potatoes would win. Because of their golden, crispy outsides and soft, fluffy insides.

Anyway, Andrea said to me, “Should we see if it still works?”, and I said, “Absolutely”, and so we turned it on, threw on a piece of halloumi (because this is 2023, not 1973) and it did work.

Frances Whiting discusses old vs new appliance. Picture: Tara Croser.

Because, at the risk of sounding like one of those curmudgeonly people who spend their lives grumbling, “They don’t make appliances like they used to”, the fact is they don’t make appliances like they used to.

It worked perfectly, and I’m thinking it was circa late 70s/early 80s and it got me thinking about other appliances that have lasted the distance. So I asked some friends of mine and also Googled it, and discovered there’s a whole world out there of decades-old Kenwood Chefs and Moulinex mixers still going strong.

And in a world where guarantees are, on average, for one to two years, I found this astounding.

A friend told me of her holiday shack on a tiny little island that’s mostly mudflats, and mostly no one wants to go to, and of the fibro shack’s tiny kitchen and gas stove that’s still in working order, at least 40 years after her grandfather installed it.

It only has two cooktop rings, instead of six or eight because, as she said, “We are not actually a teppanyaki bar.”

My friend Lulu still has her grandmother’s old Hoover under the stairs that’s also in great nick, although Lulu says that could be more to do with the amount of time she vacuums, rather than the machine itself.

As for me, I don’t have any old whitegoods but I do have a potato masher, of indeterminate age, that once belonged to my grandmother.

She died when I was very young, and I don’t remember her very much, to be honest, but I think of her every time I use it. I like to think of her hands, then my mother’s, then mine wrapped around its handle, our family, just like that potato masher, also still going strong.

Originally published as ‘It worked perfectly’: The household appliance that will still work in 50 years