# Do you have a super-powered household item? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 13, 2007, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823 "2007-12-13T05:12:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Agent\_Foxtrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc29f/32.png) [@Agent\_Foxtrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agent_Foxtrot)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2007, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/41 "2007-12-13T23:49:33Z")
[QUOTE=MaxTheVool] It has made toast more or less every day from then until today, a fairly impressive **72 years**. Furthermore, in the spirit of being “super-powered”, for many years it would pop up with such force that it would actually throw the bread fully out of the toaster and you’d have to catch it on a plate (which sounds like a hassle, but was incredibly entertaining for grandchildren). [/QUOTE] A _hassle_?! I would pay dearly for a toaster that did that! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/42 "2007-12-14T06:45:08Z")
My wooden spoon is older than I am. It was the one thing I insisted on taking when I moved out of my parent’s house and I can’t think of many times I’ve been separated from it in the last 10 years. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 7:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/43 "2007-12-14T07:54:09Z")
I have my great-grandfather’s axe. My grandfather replaced the handle, and my father replaced the head. But it’s still my great-grandfather’s axe. Right? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/44 "2007-12-14T13:34:35Z")
Sitting at my elbow at work is my IBM Selectric II typewriter. It gets serviced once a year, but has only needed two repairs. I wouldn’t part with it for anything. We bought it used in 1985 when I first started working here. I insisted on it, ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/45 "2007-12-14T21:56:56Z")
I have an old Singer sewing machine. I did a bit of research on it when I got it from my grandmother; the thing was built in 1941. I had to get it serviced a couple of years ago to do a small sewing job (some thread had gotten into it and jammed it up in a way that I couldn’t solve) and the lady was certain that the rubber band that goes on part of it was the original rubber, and that it was in amazingly good shape for something that might not have been oiled in over 30 years. I don’t really use it much (I don’t really sew) but it seems that this machine will last forever. The fun thing is that I still have the original case, with key, all the different parts that come with it, as well the the original tube of oil that came in the kit. Even the gilding is in great shape! It isn’t worth much at the moment, but eventually, who knows? I also replaced my car battery this past year, at the insistence of my husband. I had never had trouble starting the car, or anything, but he firmly believed that a 10+ year old battery (yes, it was the original one in the car) was a bad thing. Seeing as the car has 276 000km on it, I thought it was pretty impressive and I wanted to see how long it would go until it died, but I caved into the pressure of my husband and my mechanic! The mechanic couldn’t believe it was the original battery - he even cleaned it off to read the label! ---
**Author:** ![Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tastes_of_chocolate/32/3232_2.png) [@Tastes\_of\_Chocolate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tastes_of_Chocolate)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/46 "2007-12-14T22:37:58Z")
Back in the early '90s we bought a used microwave oven from a Rent-a-center store. So it was originally a rental microwave oven, from the last 1980s. That makes it a 20year old microwave oven that gets used all the time, and other then a bit of a rattle to it, it works just fine. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/47 "2007-12-14T23:01:33Z")
I have a Lady Norelco electric shaver that I’ve had for 30 years! It’s falling apart at the seams, but it still works perfectly, and in fact, better than any other, newer, electric razor I’ve tried since then. I had a Lady Kenmore portable washer and dryer that I bought used (it was 10 years old at the time, no less) in 1983. The washer only gave up the ghost in 2003, which made it 30 years old, but the dryer still worked just fine. ---
**Author:** ![SmartAleq](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smartaleq/32/163_2.png) [@SmartAleq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmartAleq)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/48 "2007-12-14T23:20:49Z")
I have the Devil’s Sewing Machine™ which in addition to being probably over 70 years old, tough as nails and able to sew multiple layers of leather, is also apparently fireproof. I figured this one out when it survived a catastrophic fire unscathed–a fire which literally MELTED other sewing machines including the one it was sitting next to at the repair shop. Mine didn’t get so much as a melted spot on the electric cord. The CD player/boombox my SO bought me in 1990 is still working fine and will actually play burned CDs, which is VERY unusual for a player of that era. I had a Conair hair dryer that was over fifteen years old when it finally quit–subsequent hair dryers have never lasted longer than two years. :rolleyes: The real winner in the longevity sweepstakes, however, is the windup Wesclox alarm clock I use to time my hair coloring. I know for a fact that I personally have owned it since the age of three and it was fairly old then. I figure the thing has to be well over sixty years old and it still works just fine in spite of having been dropped, kicked, dunked in a bathtub and disassembled/reassembled by a small child. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/49 "2007-12-14T23:30:32Z")
My K-Mart room fan, purchased in 1976, is still turned on in our bedroom every night, to provide air motion and background noise for the Mrs. and I. The control knob is gone, and we use a vise-grip worth more than the fan to turn it on and off, but it just keeps running on demand. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/50 "2007-12-14T23:44:44Z")
Not exactly on the level of some of things mentioned here, but when I moved to my current apartment, about 8 years ago, I bought an old cheap (75 euros) second-hand washing machine that looks designed in the late 70s or early 80s (it’s a nasty shade of brown with white). It’s broken down once due to a wire disconnecting from its screw contact (easy to fix, just flip open the top and screw in the screw) and once due to a hair pin getting stuck in the water pump (which meant I had removed most of the bottom half of the thing before I found what was wrong, but actually also easy to fix once I got around to disconnecting the pump). One advantage of getting cheap equipment is that you’re not at all afraid to break by messing with it yourself it since it’s probably about as expensive to get a new old one instead of getting a mechanic in. Plus messing with machines is fun 🙂 In the mean time the residents on the floor below (our washing machines are in the same space) have replaced their machine 2 times and their current one (which isn’t even a year old) is broken too. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2007, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/51 "2007-12-14T23:53:07Z")
I’ve a hairdryer I bought in 1991 before leaving for college which still works and sees near daily use. I spent less than $10 on it at Target at the time. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2007, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/52 "2007-12-15T00:17:55Z")
Who needs all these fancy PC speaker systems…I’ve got my external soundcard playing through a boombox my sister bought in the late eighties. It simply makes a fantastic sound for its size, the bass being quite astonishing. And the synthesiser I use solely as a MIDI keyboard is also a late '80s thing, and something of a collectable. More impressive, though, is the way I’ve got it powered. All it needs is 12v DC, I had no adaptor but had the correct connector, and with a spark of ingenuity fetched the controller from the toy train set stashed away in the attic. Which must be over twenty years old itself. Not exactly a household item…but anyway…I got my violin in, if I remember correctly, 1994. It still has the bridge it had been fitten with then. And it’s still not bent or warped _at all_. This is a piece of wood a couple of millimetres thick, under enourmous pressure, which has also been subjected to various additional punishments along the way, and it’s still not only usable, but as good as new. The guy who fitted it double-takes every time he sees it, not quite able to believe it. [QUOTE=Chefguy] My wife has a portable Singer that her mother gave her in high school, which would make it over 40 years old and still running. My sister has my mother’s old black Singer in the wood cabinet, which has to be at least 60 years old or more. [/QUOTE] My mother has a Singer somewhere which she uses for detailed work, which is a similar age to your sister’s one (it originally was my grandmother’s). ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2007, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/53 "2007-12-15T01:05:15Z")
**Swallowed My Cellphone** , autoparts stores sell and rent a tail pipe straightener. You insert it into the pipe and use a socket wrench (usually with extensions) to cause it to widen. Should easially take care of that vaccume tube ---
**Author:** ![Scarlett67](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scarlett67/32/7387_2.png) [@Scarlett67](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scarlett67)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2007, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/54 "2007-12-15T01:08:37Z")
I’ve been informed that I forgot to list our under-counter refrigerator, which Mr. S bought in 1983. We use it for drinks only to open up room in the regular fridge. Still going strong. ---
**Author:** ![ianzin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ed655f/32.png) [@ianzin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ianzin)\ **Post date:** [December 15, 2007, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/55 "2007-12-15T12:57:54Z")
Not a record-breaker like some of the examples here, but still a star performer. I bought a very early, relatively primitive Nokia cell phone. I persisted with it for about 12 years, long after it had become technologically obsolete and deeply unfashionable. During this time, due to my own carelessness, it was dropped, knocked and smashed countless times, and given a good soaking more than once. I was world champion at that trick where you tuck the phone into your top pocket, then lean over to pick something up, and the phone goes slithering out on to the floor. It just kept on working, working, working. I did wonder if it would ever die. This year, finally, it was still working although I did replace it with a newer one. The guy in the store asked me if I had any preferences. I said I felt I ought to buy a Nokia. I felt they had earned the repeat purchase. ---
**Author:** ![Rocketeer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocketeer/32/4437_2.png) [@Rocketeer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rocketeer)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2007, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/56 "2007-12-16T00:57:05Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] My K-Mart room fan, purchased in 1976, is still turned on in our bedroom every night, to provide air motion and background noise for the Mrs. and I. The control knob is gone, and we use a vise-grip worth more than the fan to turn it on and off, but it just keeps running on demand. [/QUOTE] Radio Shack sells knobs with set-screws; perhaps you could find one to fit. Most switch shafts are the same size. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2007, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/57 "2007-12-16T01:30:23Z")
[QUOTE=Rocketeer] Radio Shack sells knobs with set-screws; perhaps you could find one to fit. Most switch shafts are the same size. [/QUOTE] The switch shaft cracked and won’t hold a knob anymore. The vise grip holds onto the shaft nicely. But thanks for thinkin’ of me! 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2007, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/58 "2007-12-16T03:09:25Z")
Well, I have my parents’ old HP 4 series laser jet laser printer. I think it dates from 1995, but I can’t swear to it. It works well, still, delivering high quality pages. I also have my grandmother’s old KitchenAid stand mixer. I think it’s a K45 model, but I won’t swear to that. I do know it’s older than I am. It’s starting to need some replacement parts - the base plate that holds the mixing bowl finally gave up the ghost last week while I was kneading some pizza dough, and the hinge pin needs to be pushed back into place. But it still works. Gets hot as Hell when kneading dough, but it still works fine. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2007, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/59 "2007-12-16T03:59:05Z")
I have a 1962 South Bend Lathe. I can chuck up an ugly piece of aluminum in it and turn it to a diameter that varies less than 0.002" across a 2 foot length. Since it’s no longer in a production environment, I fully expect my kids will have to figure out which of their kids to will it to. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [December 16, 2007, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823/60 "2007-12-16T04:15:30Z")
[QUOTE=Agent Foxtrot] I also have a Mitsubishi TV with picture quality about as sharp as the day my family bought it **23 years ago**. It’s a heavy, faux-wood-cabinet relic, and I love it. Serves a function _and_ as a conversation piece. [/QUOTE] 32 year old Mitsubishi TV that fell 3 1/2 feet onto a concrete floor. Pictures a little fuzzy, but it works. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-have-a-super-powered-household-item/429823.md?page=4)