Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Electrolux Encounters

by Pa Rock
Happy Homemaker

Taking a walk through COSTCO can be expensive exercise.

While packing to move into a home with two floors of new carpeting, I knew that sooner or later I would have to break loose and buy a vacuum cleaner.  (How I managed to get through the last couple of years without one is another tale entirely.)

I don't know a lot about vacuums and tend to get easily bewildered when there are several of anything to choose from.  There are so many things to be considered in the purchase of a rug-sucker:  push or pull, bag or bag-less, turns on a ball or not, horsepower, warranties, and now they even come in a variety of colors.  I wasn't anxious to engage in the full mental pursuit of trying to determine which was the best product for my needs - sooner or later God would send a sign.

That happened Sunday as I was making a quick pass through COSTCO.  There, impeding my path, was a monster stack of boxed Electrolux vacuum cleaners.

The only vacuum that I remember my mother ever having was a long, grey, cylindrical Electrolux on gliders that was pulled from room-to-room.  She bought it, if I am not mistaken, from a traveling salesman shortly after she and Dad were married.  I'm sure she had the workhorse well over twenty years.

As I was growing up my father had a small appliance store where, among other things, he sold Hoover vacuum cleaners, and while Dad spoke highly of Hoovers to his customers, he always proffered in private that nothing compared to an Electrolux.

My next Electrolux experience came while on a visit to Stockholm, Sweden, in 1999, where I took a boat ride down through the many beautiful islands of the Stockholm Archipelago.  My destination was Birka, an island that had once been a vital Viking community.  Most of the people on the boat were headed to Birka, but a few were using the transport as a shuttle service and got off on some of the many islands along the way.  One of those stops was next to a small Electrolux factory nestled among a grove of trees.  It was perhaps the most idyllic setting for a factory that I have ever happened upon.

Armed with those most excellent Electrolux encounters - and the knowledge that this particular model had a thirty-foot cord, I didn't need to double-check with Consumer Reports in order to make a decision.  I lifted one into my shopping cart and headed on down the aisle.

Mission accomplished!

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