Fun fact: When she remodeled her kitchen, my grandmother had her old refrigerator (very similar to the one in the meme) hauled to an automotive paint shop and repainted to match the new kitchen. She couldn’t find a new one she liked, and ‘didn’t trust them’.
My last refrigerator lasted 8 years, which was a fact I complained about when shopping for a new one. The guys at the local appliance/furniture store were flabbergasted that it lasted longer than 5.
I also just replaced a 6 year old dishwasher last weekend...
I finished building my house and bought all new appliances in 22. This year both the dishwasher and the fridge stopped working. Didn't even make it a full 3 years.
I wish we still had my grandmother’s appliances and those from the house I grew up in up in. They lasted and could be repaired. No “smart home”, just reliability.
My grandparents had probably 10 - 15 of these. If one broke we just swapped one out. My grandpa was a repairman and people would just dump their broken appliances off at our place.
Oh! That's a good idea. I have my grandma's fridge from the 80s, still going strong. I'm not going to replace it, but I wish it matched the rest of my kitchen.
We replaced our fridge every 1-2 decades for power consumption reasons. Same amount of cooling power but lower electricity use.
Our TV every decade due to video resolution improvements from 480i in 1986, 480p in 1996, 1080p in 2006 and 4K in 2016.
Computers, smartwatch & tablets were replaced after the final Security Update. So that comes out as about every decade, 6 years and 8 years respectively. I don't video game or code so only do advanced upgrades based on use case.
Yep. My parents this year finally got rid of a giant chest freezer they'd had since '84. Nothing wrong with it. Could stack 3-4 6ft+ men in it, sounded like a jet engine cycling 24 hours a day. Meat in there from the civil war. But nothing wrong with it. Things used to be made to last.
Oh no did you see that super sad black and white movie on TV as a kid too? Thats what your comment made me think of. I looked it up it was called Ladybug Ladybug
The premise is a nuclear bomb has been deployed and a school gets notice they have so many hours before its hits and sends the kids home. Long story short a group of kids force a girl to leave the house they were at right before the bomb was supposed to drop, and she leaves crying, finds a freezer/fridge in a field and climbs in and locks herself in with no way to get out. I read all this recently when trying to find the name of the movie, the only thing that stuck out to me was a girl crying and locking herself in a freezer when I was a kid.
10 years ago I bought a house built in the 60's and the original fridge is still going strong. No need to 'upgrade' to a snazzy new model that is of lesser quality and far more expensive. Just because it's cute doesn't mean it's worth it.
Guess that could refer to a lot of things lol but still.. waste not want not.
In my area it's not uncommon to find one of those just tossed away in a field. They worked just fine, I know people who have gone and just taken them home and used them for years with no problems.
The specific fridge in the photo is actually a '70s model. My grandmother had that exact model in her apartment until she passed away in 2011, and the fridge was still going strong. AFAIK, it never had a single issue in over 30 years of service.
I also consume energy like I have a direct connection to a nuclear plant and sound like a car in your kitchen when I run my compressor
That's why we replace our AC & refrigerator every decade to improve power consumption. Power rates will always go up so better to replace them with more power efficient models when it becomes available.
That's what many people do not appreciate.
Last night I looked up what was the most powerful Intel Mac and what is its at par Mac with Apple Silicon equivalent and came out with this.
2019 Mac Pro Xeon 14nm (most powerful config) @ ~902 W max, 302 W idle (Xeon + dual Radeon Vega II)
vs
2023 Mac Studio M2 Ultra 5nm @ ~10 W idle – ~295 W max
At least it didn't have you relying on a door dispenser that gives up the ghost right as your in-laws come to visit and costs more to repair than an entirely new fridge could be had.
From what Ive read they didn’t really become huge power sucks until automatic defrosters became a thing. If it’s a got a freezer that needs manual defrosting it probably doesn’t use that much power.
I mean maybe you're right, however, automatic defrost just uses a time lock with a resistive heater to defrost the coil. The thing still has a compressor.
Your home central air conditioner has a compressor and no automatic defrost but it's still your biggest power using appliance.
1980s TVs, I come with wood decoration to fit right in with your living room furniture. I'll never break. And your kids throwing Atari controllers at me? I laugh in their face.
Absolutely. Allow me to present my grandparents 1948 fridge—it’s outlived both its original owners by 20+ years and still gets cold enough that we find little bits of ice in drinks. I’m convinced it’s indestructible.
1950 would like a word....these babies will run past the apocalypse. Especially since back then they built airplanes that could stay at the bottom of the ocean for 40 years and still come up fully intact except for the propeller
No. Reddit always does this. It's survivorship bias. You see your grandma has a fridge from the 70s/80s and assume everything was made better back then. But they weren't. Are most things a less reliable now? Yes. But not everything made in decades past was amazing. If it was, everyone's mom and grandma would still have houses full of these things, but they don't. 99.9% of them are in landfills. You think they didn't make cheap crap that broke within a year back then? Of course they did. We also consider things a lot more disposable now than other generations. Your grandpa born in 1935 sure as shit wasn't gonna throw that fridge out, he was gonna take it apart and fix it himself.
So yes, it's a combination of survivorship bias and the fact that things like fridges were less complex and made with more durable parts simply because the tech to make everything lighter and cheaper wasn't there. Modern stuff is often made to be disposable, as you said, so the emphasis is on features and performance, not longevity. There are many "survivors" because while many died young as well, those that didn't just chug along forever with maybe a bit of maintenance.
But also, those old beasts, be them fridges or cars, are inefficient as all heck.
We have an old fridge in our garage for drinks and extra storage. It’s gotta be from 1990 and still works great. We got it for free off Craigslist, we just had to move it
Every house I'd ever been to in the 80s and 90s (and even 00s) had 70s and 60s appliances.
Could be location-based. I grew up in a very poor, small town full of old-ass buildings and furnishings, because no one could afford anything newer.
And many people upvote this because nearly 90% of any country's population are in that position right now. It makes them feel good that life doesnt change all that much.
My dad has one from the 80s. It does work still but it has a lot of problems. I’ve got one in my house from the early 2000s that works great still. I’m not sure when they went to shit, but it’s sad the state of modern appliances.
I still have my harvest gold clothes dryer. Just an honest to goodness American made plate steel box housing a rotating drum, an egg timer, and a blowtorch.
I’ve got one from the early 50’s that my grandma pulled out of her sister’s yard. She had to get a new compressor at some point. It was the garage soda fridge. I’ve inherited it 10+ years ago, and it’s been my photo studio fridge. I hope to keep it forever. It’s too small for a main fridge, but I can use it for drinks, film, drugs, etc.
I used to sell appliances. Had an elderly woman come in to replace her 50yo refrigerator. She had been paying for Sears extended warranty for 50years! Sure she got a free refrigerator, but she probably could have bought 20 for what she paid in warranty fees.
My parents had a fridge like this that they moved to a non-temperature-controlled space around the turn of the century, and it finally died about 8 years ago.
I have a freezer from '85 that's been chugging along flawlessly for forty years. My most recent refrigerator only lasted five years and was unrepairable.
I had one that came with a house I bought in 2017. It finally went out in 2020. I saw the manufacturer date was 1991!! 🤯 bought a brand new high tech one from a big box store to replace it. ….fast forward to 2024, the frickin icemaker had already went out on the 4-yr old fancy one!!! 😠
I’ll take the performance of the baby 💩 yellow one any day!!!
My grandparents had an early 80’s (maybe even late 70’s) Frigidaire and the MFer was still working like brand new when we cleaned out their house after my grandfather passed at 92 years old in 2019.
We had one! Same color too. It lived out in our garage for extra food storage after my mom remarried and we moved in with my stepdad.
I just saw on a recent visit home a few weeks ago that it’s no longer in the garage, so apparently it didn’t outlive us after all. Gave an insanely good run for the money though! FTR, so did my stepdad’s microwave—he bought it in 1983, and it finally died earlier this year. Appliances from the ‘80s were built to last.
I'm still using a deep freezer from the 70's that I inherited from my grandparents, I've done nothing but defrost it. In that time I've replaced a late 2000's refrigerator that died and have done several repairs on our 8 year old whirlpool.
We had a refrigerator almost exactly like this one! Also in a kitchen with orange floral wallpaper. We moved out of that house in 1993 so for all I know that fridge is still alive and kicking!
When I was a kid my grandparents had this fridge in what I thought was this color. When they passed and we were cleaning out the house someone was cleaning the fridge and realized it was a white fridge stained with god knows how many years of tobacco stains from how much they smoked.
Fact. I have a new fridge in my kitchen and an 80s fridge in my garage. The kitchen fridge has needed replacement parts twice now. And the garage fridge not once.
That wallpaper is REALLY close to the wallpaper that was installed in my parents’ brand-new tract home kitchen when they bought the house in 1973. My mom liked it so much she even had them wallpaper the kitchen ceiling. I remember we took it down when I was in middle school, and I was SO RELIEVED that we didn’t have a Brady Bunch kitchen anymore!
a former coworker of mine had an insulated room in his basement of a farm house that was essentially a walk in cooler, that was chilled by an old fridge that had been built into the wall. the doors had been removed, and that old fridge kept the entire 8'×8' room fridge cold. he wasn't sure why a previous owner had gone through the effort, but he took full advantage of it as a home brewer.
The only reason my parents got rid of theirs was because it didn’t physically fit in their new house’s kitchen. They sold it to a young couple from their church about 10 years ago. My dad recently asked the guy if they still had it and the guy said they did and it still works like a new fridge.
In the late 90s I moved into a bungalow that had the original 60s kitchen in. Every appliance still worked perfectly. Fridge freezer, waste disposal, oven, hob and rotisserie. It was also orange. Missed a trick not putting it in storage. would be worth a mint today
Having gone through a renovation and buying appliances that I thought were good, in the future I plan to exclusively purchase low-tech Maytag-ish push button appliances. I simply don’t need the “features” most new appliances offer. I’ve replaced master boards and displays on my dishwasher twice. I bought a new dryer because it was cheaper than repairing the current dryer. I long for the 80s built-like-a-brick-shit-house consumer options.
My mom bought her house about 30 years ago and it came with the 2 units: a giant fridge then a separate giant freezer right next to it so it’s like a side by side that the previous owners bought in the 80s. Mom has been holding money back for years in preparation for them to go. She Has used that fund for a lawnmower and various other things because she keeps adding to it and time goes on and they JUST DONT DIE! I love them.
It's true. I used my old townhouse as a rental for a few years and had a tenant leave the fridge full of food and the power got shut off.
When I got over, there was a slight funk in the air but not terrible. And then I opened the fridge and it smelled like a dead body. I almost barfed on the floor.
The fridge though was from the late 70s or early 80s and had been working since then. I have no doubts that it would have continued working but I had zero desire to dump it, attempt to clean all the goo and maggots out of it and then hope that it didn't continue to stink forever because of decomposition that soaked into the internals.
So I smeared a few big globs of Vicks Vaporub up my nose dragged the fridge outside and emptied it. Took the doors off and threw away an otherwise perfectly functional fridge.
I had an old freezer that matched the fridge. We had to replace the door gasket and rubber mounts for the motor. All main parts still worked perfectly.
They built things to survive a nuclear bomb back then.
We could fit two bodies in that thing it was so big. 6 feet long, 3 foot wide, 3 feet deep. A butcher bought it when we moved and didn't need the size anymore.
My early 2000s Miele fridge+freezer had its 20th birthday two years ago. Eventually I will replace it for a more energy efficient one, but it just does its thing.
Yes, the problem is the public expects pretty amd fancy appliances now so to meet those expectations they use cheap, low quality parts to keep prices competitive. If we stopped asking for pretty appliances in trade for good quality, new appliances would live longer too.
We bought our house 13 years ago and it came with all the original almond coloured 1981 appliances (except the dishwasher which was about 10 years old since the original kitchen didn’t have one). First the stove went in 2020, then the washing machine in 2023… but the fridge is still kicking.
Yeah my parents still have the one from my childhood out in the garage as a beverage and secondary refrigerator. I believe it's been running since 1979 with one compressor replacement in like 2006.
We had this exact fridge growing up. My parents bought it when they built the house in the 70s and finally had to replace it sometime in the 2010s, so that bitch lasted about 40 years. Wild.
Things made today are made to break. It started with lightbulbs. The phoebus cartel in the 1920s found that lightbulbs were lasting way too long and people weren’t buying enough. So they crippled them. Now it’s in everything from fridges to cars to computers and phones.
It's true. I still have that exact fridge as my secondary basement fridge. My grandmother used a ww2 era fridge until she passed a few years ago. Fridges were built to last until they weren't
It was in our shop till 2010 when w ehad to change it cause the employees were clumsy enough that they would let heavy stuff fall right on the cusp at the bottom and it broke a piece, nothing big, but enouhg that when we were defrosting it over time, water would go under the fridge and start to rust the steel.
And since having a rusty bottom fridge in a Dinner wasn't an option, we had to replace it.
But evne then we kept it, put it in the garage home and it still served for a good 10 years.
Till a family of mices decided to make their nest under it and chew the cables and pipes.
RiP good old Bosch fridge that my grandparents bought when newly wed in 1956 and that as served us till now...
Really thats the ONLY reason we replaced it, cause if it was not for this i still would use it.
Back when appliances were built were functionality instead of made to break and cost a couple grand every few years. When I look back on the appliances and innovations we were dicked out of for the sake of "resale value," I get so mad.
We have the one that came with our house: a Kenmore identical to the one my parents bought in 1980. Almond colored, fancy-shmancy woodgrain handles and interior drawer pulls, built-in egg holders, light in the fridge AND the freezer; the works. We got a new one for the kitchen because the freezer doesn’t really get below 30 degrees. Hauling it down the stairs to the garage nearly killed me as it slipped and squashed me against a wall, and it weighs as much as a Buick LeSabre. I ended up with bruised ribs.
But, 5 years later it’s still humming along keeping beer, soda, and leftovers cold in the garage. The not-so-cold freezer has turned out to be perfect for vodka, pastries, and bread storage.
My 80s fridge is still going strong. Everyone I know with a modern fridge has had so many headaches with repairs and returns. I'll stick with this ugly white thing until it quits on me.
Dude, I have away the fridge I grew up with in 2015 still running but dated decor-wise. Just needed a new seal but that is a normal repair. I was 33. It was not even sounding bad or anything. It was just dated and I was selling the house.
Fun fact: When she remodeled her kitchen, my grandmother had her old refrigerator (very similar to the one in the meme) hauled to an automotive paint shop and repainted to match the new kitchen. She couldn’t find a new one she liked, and ‘didn’t trust them’.
Love your grandma, and your user name. Hope you have a doo-whacka-day
Thanks, lol. She was pretty awesome!
I don’t trust them either.
cool but i'll bet that old fridge was killing the power bill. my mom's old kenmore was using about $100 a month of electricity alone.
True but with new fridges break down every five years. So you probably spend more on constantly replacing fridges.
what are you doing to your refrigerators that they breakdown every 5 years?
Planned Obsolescence.
My last refrigerator lasted 8 years, which was a fact I complained about when shopping for a new one. The guys at the local appliance/furniture store were flabbergasted that it lasted longer than 5.
I also just replaced a 6 year old dishwasher last weekend...
I'm pretty sure my dishwasher is from the late 70s, when our townhouse was built. It's showing no signs of quitting.
I finished building my house and bought all new appliances in 22. This year both the dishwasher and the fridge stopped working. Didn't even make it a full 3 years.
It’s almost necessary to buy the warrantees nowadays. I assume they bank on people forgetting about them, which I have done re: small electronics.
I wish we still had my grandmother’s appliances and those from the house I grew up in up in. They lasted and could be repaired. No “smart home”, just reliability.
My grandparents had probably 10 - 15 of these. If one broke we just swapped one out. My grandpa was a repairman and people would just dump their broken appliances off at our place.
Oh! That's a good idea. I have my grandma's fridge from the 80s, still going strong. I'm not going to replace it, but I wish it matched the rest of my kitchen.
We replaced our fridge every 1-2 decades for power consumption reasons. Same amount of cooling power but lower electricity use.
Our TV every decade due to video resolution improvements from 480i in 1986, 480p in 1996, 1080p in 2006 and 4K in 2016.
Computers, smartwatch & tablets were replaced after the final Security Update. So that comes out as about every decade, 6 years and 8 years respectively. I don't video game or code so only do advanced upgrades based on use case.
My 2016 sedan's up for replacement next year.
That’s freaking epic and I love it. Honestly capitalism is ruining everything. Planned obsolescence sucks.
Very true. And it's a good thing, too. That bad boy will take 4 grown men and a crane to move.
Yep. My parents this year finally got rid of a giant chest freezer they'd had since '84. Nothing wrong with it. Could stack 3-4 6ft+ men in it, sounded like a jet engine cycling 24 hours a day. Meat in there from the civil war. But nothing wrong with it. Things used to be made to last.
My mom still has hers from the 70's. I think we might bury her in it.
You should. Once its closed, that bad boy's got an airtight seal. Your mom'll keep 'til the next Millennium.
She would survive a nuclear blast.
We have proof.
https://preview.redd.it/drtc74a6p07g1.jpeg?width=480&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05b3266439ca3937a0b2aa3406ff5bcac97aa686
This made me smile. Thanks
Oh no did you see that super sad black and white movie on TV as a kid too? Thats what your comment made me think of. I looked it up it was called Ladybug Ladybug
I did not, this was an Indiana Jones reference. What was it about?
The premise is a nuclear bomb has been deployed and a school gets notice they have so many hours before its hits and sends the kids home. Long story short a group of kids force a girl to leave the house they were at right before the bomb was supposed to drop, and she leaves crying, finds a freezer/fridge in a field and climbs in and locks herself in with no way to get out. I read all this recently when trying to find the name of the movie, the only thing that stuck out to me was a girl crying and locking herself in a freezer when I was a kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybug_Ladybug_(film))
She clearly missed the very special episode of Punky Brewster!
Oh wow! Thank you for sending that. Seems the points are too similar to be a coincidence.
10 years ago I bought a house built in the 60's and the original fridge is still going strong. No need to 'upgrade' to a snazzy new model that is of lesser quality and far more expensive. Just because it's cute doesn't mean it's worth it. Guess that could refer to a lot of things lol but still.. waste not want not.
In my area it's not uncommon to find one of those just tossed away in a field. They worked just fine, I know people who have gone and just taken them home and used them for years with no problems.
How much did their electric bill change. I got rid of my parents one and no joke. Electric bill went down like 30 bucks per month 🤣🤣
I inherited one of those. I keep cheap frozen crap in it for when I'm home alone and dont want to cook.
It can stay in the house memorialized next to the 600 lb gold 3 seat hide-a-bed
in front of the 400 lb rear projection TV and cabinet.
Had to move one of those out of a 3rd Floor walk up. Got to the ground, we set it down and collapsed on it.
We had a second hand store growing up. I moved way to many of them. My back still hurts.
And put a hole 10 miles wide in the ozone layer with the CFCs...
And use 10x the electricity 😁
You'd also want to believe someone could make a compressor that is more efficient, but then you get into the ship of thesus...
That's why so many ended up in the garage. Once we got it out of the kitchen, we said fuck this. It lives here now.
Most impressive thing I've seen was my old roommate pick one up alone and clear 3 or 4 steps with it on to the porch.
My BIL took the door off one and carried to the third floor. He put it on his back like a turtle shell and climbed up on his hands and knees.
Ish. The mechanical parts will work just fine. But seals and parts can be hard to find, and some of them don’t play nicely with newer refrigerants.
The specific fridge in the photo is actually a '70s model. My grandmother had that exact model in her apartment until she passed away in 2011, and the fridge was still going strong. AFAIK, it never had a single issue in over 30 years of service.
Just said similar thing above. Grew up with that beast and lasted about 40 years.
I also consume energy like I have a direct connection to a nuclear plant and sound like a car in your kitchen when I run my compressor
When my parents replaced a very similar looking fridge in the mid 90s their electric bill dropped by over 15 dollars a month.
Yup. Replacing that thing would pay for itself in just a couple years.
That's why we replace our AC & refrigerator every decade to improve power consumption. Power rates will always go up so better to replace them with more power efficient models when it becomes available.
That's what many people do not appreciate.
Last night I looked up what was the most powerful Intel Mac and what is its at par Mac with Apple Silicon equivalent and came out with this.
vs
For the most part but when your brother used all the ice and didn’t refill the trays the murder was justified.
At least it didn't have you relying on a door dispenser that gives up the ghost right as your in-laws come to visit and costs more to repair than an entirely new fridge could be had.
Looking at every single LG fridge that exists.
I have a fridge from the 1960's in my garage that's still working
How much does that bad boy cost you per month?
Don't really notice it.. it cools by making a big block of ice at the top, and iy hardly turns on.
Looked a little closer, the freezer would be called a Freezette... so this thing actually dates back to the 50's
From what Ive read they didn’t really become huge power sucks until automatic defrosters became a thing. If it’s a got a freezer that needs manual defrosting it probably doesn’t use that much power.
I mean maybe you're right, however, automatic defrost just uses a time lock with a resistive heater to defrost the coil. The thing still has a compressor.
Your home central air conditioner has a compressor and no automatic defrost but it's still your biggest power using appliance.
My parents bought their house in 1980 with a fridge in the basement. It's still there and working fine.
1980s TVs, I come with wood decoration to fit right in with your living room furniture. I'll never break. And your kids throwing Atari controllers at me? I laugh in their face.
There were fewer parts to break. No filters to replace. Made ice the old fashioned way.
Absolutely. Allow me to present my grandparents 1948 fridge—it’s outlived both its original owners by 20+ years and still gets cold enough that we find little bits of ice in drinks. I’m convinced it’s indestructible.
https://preview.redd.it/j8m6cdg7807g1.jpeg?width=2213&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0593b21f3922174d6b74c74da9897cd5184a6c5d
If I had money I'd offer to buy that. Coolest fridge I've ever seen.
I had one in my first apartment, that thing was noisy and cost a fortune in electricity. But it worked.
My parents had an old yellow fridge like that in the '70s and '80s, but it died after 20 years.
https://preview.redd.it/50betfy5027g1.jpeg?width=1950&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61f29689a7625fe278ba9192d31c3c673fda17cd
1950 would like a word....these babies will run past the apocalypse. Especially since back then they built airplanes that could stay at the bottom of the ocean for 40 years and still come up fully intact except for the propeller
No. Reddit always does this. It's survivorship bias. You see your grandma has a fridge from the 70s/80s and assume everything was made better back then. But they weren't. Are most things a less reliable now? Yes. But not everything made in decades past was amazing. If it was, everyone's mom and grandma would still have houses full of these things, but they don't. 99.9% of them are in landfills. You think they didn't make cheap crap that broke within a year back then? Of course they did. We also consider things a lot more disposable now than other generations. Your grandpa born in 1935 sure as shit wasn't gonna throw that fridge out, he was gonna take it apart and fix it himself.
So yes, it's a combination of survivorship bias and the fact that things like fridges were less complex and made with more durable parts simply because the tech to make everything lighter and cheaper wasn't there. Modern stuff is often made to be disposable, as you said, so the emphasis is on features and performance, not longevity. There are many "survivors" because while many died young as well, those that didn't just chug along forever with maybe a bit of maintenance.
But also, those old beasts, be them fridges or cars, are inefficient as all heck.
ctrl+f; surviv... there it is!
100% agree with you.
A LOT more survived from back then though.
We have an old fridge in our garage for drinks and extra storage. It’s gotta be from 1990 and still works great. We got it for free off Craigslist, we just had to move it
Every house I'd ever been to in the 80s and 90s (and even 00s) had 70s and 60s appliances.
Could be location-based. I grew up in a very poor, small town full of old-ass buildings and furnishings, because no one could afford anything newer.
And many people upvote this because nearly 90% of any country's population are in that position right now. It makes them feel good that life doesnt change all that much.
My dad has one from the 80s. It does work still but it has a lot of problems. I’ve got one in my house from the early 2000s that works great still. I’m not sure when they went to shit, but it’s sad the state of modern appliances.
Kelvinator deep freeze in the basement from the late 60s. Never had an issue.
Thats a cool name kelvinator
Throw me away and I will tear a hole in the ozone layer with my og cfcs
I still have my harvest gold clothes dryer. Just an honest to goodness American made plate steel box housing a rotating drum, an egg timer, and a blowtorch.
My parents have a can opener / ice crusher that is older than me. Still works
you could probably feed it an old car bumper and it wouldn't care
I’ve got one from the early 50’s that my grandma pulled out of her sister’s yard. She had to get a new compressor at some point. It was the garage soda fridge. I’ve inherited it 10+ years ago, and it’s been my photo studio fridge. I hope to keep it forever. It’s too small for a main fridge, but I can use it for drinks, film, drugs, etc.
It will, but it'll be a heck of a lot noisier and less energy efficient than anything modern.
I just bought a house from the 60s. It has one in the basement. Still works.
I used to sell appliances. Had an elderly woman come in to replace her 50yo refrigerator. She had been paying for Sears extended warranty for 50years! Sure she got a free refrigerator, but she probably could have bought 20 for what she paid in warranty fees.
My parents had a fridge like this that they moved to a non-temperature-controlled space around the turn of the century, and it finally died about 8 years ago.
Yep. My dad still has one.
Back when everything was yellow cigarettes
The fridge forever. The oven however will break one day and be a giant pain.
https://preview.redd.it/awran2zwi07g1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=715a4e0f61b4a41dfd2eb9e96ded06e73d90ee2e
1946 Dutch Maytag. We had a safety system put in but no other changes and it’s our reliable daily driver.
tru!
My Grandparents had the same oven and fridge from the 50s to the 00s.
It has to, otherwise you have to rip out the upper cabinets to replace it because modern fridges are two inches too tall (at least).
I have a freezer from '85 that's been chugging along flawlessly for forty years. My most recent refrigerator only lasted five years and was unrepairable.
Ah yes, the beer fridge.
In avocado green.
I had one that came with a house I bought in 2017. It finally went out in 2020. I saw the manufacturer date was 1991!! 🤯 bought a brand new high tech one from a big box store to replace it. ….fast forward to 2024, the frickin icemaker had already went out on the 4-yr old fancy one!!! 😠 I’ll take the performance of the baby 💩 yellow one any day!!!
I have tha same model in my basement I inherited from a friend and it’s colder then the piece of shit side by side I have.
My dad still has his in the garage. The thing is older than me and I am 47!
This is still our "basement" fridge!
My grandparents had an early 80’s (maybe even late 70’s) Frigidaire and the MFer was still working like brand new when we cleaned out their house after my grandfather passed at 92 years old in 2019.
But my shelves will also disintegrate and I will cost you about $20 more on your monthly power bill than a fridge from 1996
We had one! Same color too. It lived out in our garage for extra food storage after my mom remarried and we moved in with my stepdad.
I just saw on a recent visit home a few weeks ago that it’s no longer in the garage, so apparently it didn’t outlive us after all. Gave an insanely good run for the money though! FTR, so did my stepdad’s microwave—he bought it in 1983, and it finally died earlier this year. Appliances from the ‘80s were built to last.
We had that exact refrigerator in the 80s. It was probably at least 20 years old.
I've got an Amana fridge in the garage that was built in 74 and still runs incredibly well.
I'm still using a deep freezer from the 70's that I inherited from my grandparents, I've done nothing but defrost it. In that time I've replaced a late 2000's refrigerator that died and have done several repairs on our 8 year old whirlpool.
There are whole civilizations inside that thing... Grandma's meatloaf way in the back from the mid 1990s just launched an expedition to the ice tray
I have the fridge my grandfather bought a month before my dad was born. Still going, never been serviced. 1952 Frigidaire by General Motors.
We had a refrigerator almost exactly like this one! Also in a kitchen with orange floral wallpaper. We moved out of that house in 1993 so for all I know that fridge is still alive and kicking!
Yes, I still have my parents in the basement.
When I was a kid my grandparents had this fridge in what I thought was this color. When they passed and we were cleaning out the house someone was cleaning the fridge and realized it was a white fridge stained with god knows how many years of tobacco stains from how much they smoked.
Just double check that Cherie isn’t stuck in it!
Nah those will crap out eventually….My General Electric from the fifties however is truly eternal!
Fact. I have a new fridge in my kitchen and an 80s fridge in my garage. The kitchen fridge has needed replacement parts twice now. And the garage fridge not once.
I used one as my beer fridge in the garage until this year. RIP 1988 fridge.
My mom had one in her garage until I was grown and married 😫🤣
That wallpaper is REALLY close to the wallpaper that was installed in my parents’ brand-new tract home kitchen when they bought the house in 1973. My mom liked it so much she even had them wallpaper the kitchen ceiling. I remember we took it down when I was in middle school, and I was SO RELIEVED that we didn’t have a Brady Bunch kitchen anymore!
Washing machines too
My mom still uses the washing machine she bought in the 80s
Aww I miss those sweet plastic egg trays that always broke my eggs. Worth it
A true DIY emergency nuclear fallout shelter !!!
a former coworker of mine had an insulated room in his basement of a farm house that was essentially a walk in cooler, that was chilled by an old fridge that had been built into the wall. the doors had been removed, and that old fridge kept the entire 8'×8' room fridge cold. he wasn't sure why a previous owner had gone through the effort, but he took full advantage of it as a home brewer.
With the little water fountain inside to fill glasses, I miss this damn fridge.
Yea but you have been banished to the garage or basement and are now for beer and holiday over flow
The only reason my parents got rid of theirs was because it didn’t physically fit in their new house’s kitchen. They sold it to a young couple from their church about 10 years ago. My dad recently asked the guy if they still had it and the guy said they did and it still works like a new fridge.
Very true. The best part is the easiness of fixing those things, even if you don't have the replacement part.
And if you laid in front of it you got some nice warm air
That fridge is from the 70s. I'd recognize that "avocado green" anywhere..
But yes, they could use it to cryogenically freeze my corpse and it would run forever.
In the late 90s I moved into a bungalow that had the original 60s kitchen in. Every appliance still worked perfectly. Fridge freezer, waste disposal, oven, hob and rotisserie. It was also orange. Missed a trick not putting it in storage. would be worth a mint today
Having gone through a renovation and buying appliances that I thought were good, in the future I plan to exclusively purchase low-tech Maytag-ish push button appliances. I simply don’t need the “features” most new appliances offer. I’ve replaced master boards and displays on my dishwasher twice. I bought a new dryer because it was cheaper than repairing the current dryer. I long for the 80s built-like-a-brick-shit-house consumer options.
My mom bought her house about 30 years ago and it came with the 2 units: a giant fridge then a separate giant freezer right next to it so it’s like a side by side that the previous owners bought in the 80s. Mom has been holding money back for years in preparation for them to go. She Has used that fund for a lawnmower and various other things because she keeps adding to it and time goes on and they JUST DONT DIE! I love them.
It's true. I used my old townhouse as a rental for a few years and had a tenant leave the fridge full of food and the power got shut off.
When I got over, there was a slight funk in the air but not terrible. And then I opened the fridge and it smelled like a dead body. I almost barfed on the floor.
The fridge though was from the late 70s or early 80s and had been working since then. I have no doubts that it would have continued working but I had zero desire to dump it, attempt to clean all the goo and maggots out of it and then hope that it didn't continue to stink forever because of decomposition that soaked into the internals.
So I smeared a few big globs of Vicks Vaporub up my nose dragged the fridge outside and emptied it. Took the doors off and threw away an otherwise perfectly functional fridge.
I have a microwave oven that's as old as I am and just won't break.
Still have my parents original deep freezer from 1980. Still kicking strong.
https://preview.redd.it/a56x9y4td07g1.jpeg?width=2104&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8bc048c358cb2fb5ff6c3a3aa9917675fbe6deda
This was once my grandpa's fridge witch is now my beer fridge in the basement. Still pumping out the coldest beers known to man.
A time before planned obsolescence.
I had an old freezer that matched the fridge. We had to replace the door gasket and rubber mounts for the motor. All main parts still worked perfectly.
They built things to survive a nuclear bomb back then.
We could fit two bodies in that thing it was so big. 6 feet long, 3 foot wide, 3 feet deep. A butcher bought it when we moved and didn't need the size anymore.
I just had my apartment's 80s fridge die. So almost.
https://preview.redd.it/fed8q5eye07g1.png?width=1104&format=png&auto=webp&s=2197351d9397e812565072b8d5ee608b84e987b7
My grandmother's fridge was 45 years old when they got rid of it and the only thing wrong with it was the pea green color and a burnt out lightbulb
I have one the same color in my garage...works great
My early 2000s Miele fridge+freezer had its 20th birthday two years ago. Eventually I will replace it for a more energy efficient one, but it just does its thing.
Its still in the beach house from 1950...
Yes. And if you want to move that fridge out of the house… it might be easier to take the house apart and then move the fridge. 🤣🤣😂
No refrigerator we owned in the 80s or 90s out lived me or any of my siblings.
Yes, the problem is the public expects pretty amd fancy appliances now so to meet those expectations they use cheap, low quality parts to keep prices competitive. If we stopped asking for pretty appliances in trade for good quality, new appliances would live longer too.
You're not an 80s kid, yet your profile picture depicts a scene from 'Goonies', an 80s movie
https://preview.redd.it/xpchvmkuh07g1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3567dc99c26828a5a416fcf5c7da7fe30ec2b8a1
We have the matching oven!
My parents bought a refrigerator used in 1984. It has a Montgomery Ward sale sticker on the side. It's still chugging along in their garage.
This should have been the real villain in Stranger Things.
And I use enough power to turn the final gear.
I’m okay with that
Church
Mine is still running in my garage.
No, they broke down all the time. That’s why there were so many Appliance Repair people back in the day.
Sure there are definitely a few survivors out there, but that’s not the norm
Then there was the 1960's deep freezer, banished to the basement. Passed down from our grandparents. That thing is still running at my folk's house.
Where did you find this picture of my childhood kitchen?
Holy shit that was our fridge AND our wallpaper
My parents have this same fridge in their basement. It belonged to my grandpa, who died in 2005. It still works perfectly.
Grew up with exact same fridge and identical cabinets with almost same hardware. The oven was stainless though I think or maybe black.
Yes. I traced the serial number on mine and it was born in 1982.
I've got one in the garage we call the booger fridge because of it's color. Been out there for 13 years and it was a hand me down before that.
Its not true. Its evident that there not everywhere. There is always a few that will last a lot longer then others.
Its called survivorship bias, don't become a boomer
We have an oven from 1960.
We had a fridge that made it to 49 years without ever needing repairs.
It's really fucking creepy how this looks 99% like a part of my grandparents kitchen.
Cabinets, including handles, over above a cabinet, and i wouldn't be surprised if that had that same refrigerator
My dads 1950's GE was serviced ONCE in 1978.
The only time in the last 75 years it hasn't been running is if they moved, or the power was out.
Absolutely, we have a second fridge on our backyard patio that's at least 30 years old, and it's a goddamn tank.
Damn straight. At the end of the day all I want is a solid Amana like this. I can make my own ice in trays if it comes to that.
What’s best in life is if you have one of these in tbe kitchen and one of these in the garage where where you can keep the beer.
Shoot even my 1994 college mini fridge is still going strong.
The one my family had, died around 2003.
In 2016, I rented a small town house for a year, and the fridge there was the exact model Kenmore that was in my first childhood home in the mid 80’s.
It probably still works better than our $3500 Samsung. We hate our fridge 🤣
We bought our house 13 years ago and it came with all the original almond coloured 1981 appliances (except the dishwasher which was about 10 years old since the original kitchen didn’t have one). First the stove went in 2020, then the washing machine in 2023… but the fridge is still kicking.
Yeah my parents still have the one from my childhood out in the garage as a beverage and secondary refrigerator. I believe it's been running since 1979 with one compressor replacement in like 2006.
Nope we had one in a rental place in 2013 that started leaking fluid.
This could have been a picture of my grandmas kitchen. It looked just like this!
We had this exact fridge growing up. My parents bought it when they built the house in the 70s and finally had to replace it sometime in the 2010s, so that bitch lasted about 40 years. Wild.
This fridge came with my house; it just died last year.
I have a fridge in my garage that rolled off the line when Reagan was president. Works like a champ.
We had the matching washer and dryer to go with …
Things made today are made to break. It started with lightbulbs. The phoebus cartel in the 1920s found that lightbulbs were lasting way too long and people weren’t buying enough. So they crippled them. Now it’s in everything from fridges to cars to computers and phones.
It's true. I still have that exact fridge as my secondary basement fridge. My grandmother used a ww2 era fridge until she passed a few years ago. Fridges were built to last until they weren't
I firmly believe that all appliances that came in the Harvest Gold colour are still running, and will run, forever.
My parents had the same fridge 1993-2023 across 3 houses
We had a Fridge from the 60's
It was in our shop till 2010 when w ehad to change it cause the employees were clumsy enough that they would let heavy stuff fall right on the cusp at the bottom and it broke a piece, nothing big, but enouhg that when we were defrosting it over time, water would go under the fridge and start to rust the steel.
And since having a rusty bottom fridge in a Dinner wasn't an option, we had to replace it.
But evne then we kept it, put it in the garage home and it still served for a good 10 years.
Till a family of mices decided to make their nest under it and chew the cables and pipes.
RiP good old Bosch fridge that my grandparents bought when newly wed in 1956 and that as served us till now...
Really thats the ONLY reason we replaced it, cause if it was not for this i still would use it.
Back when appliances were built were functionality instead of made to break and cost a couple grand every few years. When I look back on the appliances and innovations we were dicked out of for the sake of "resale value," I get so mad.
We got rid of ours in the 90s, it was still working though
https://preview.redd.it/gp478xt2717g1.png?width=1280&format=png&auto=webp&s=24e2ba5bd67c85f313c072b3517ae2c1bd76f1f5
I really miss fun colored appliances. I’m seriously considering olive green stuff, if I can find it, for my next set…
yep, can’t kill them. everything stays cold. I think they use a refrigerant that isn’t ecologically friendly, heavy to move also.
We have the one that came with our house: a Kenmore identical to the one my parents bought in 1980. Almond colored, fancy-shmancy woodgrain handles and interior drawer pulls, built-in egg holders, light in the fridge AND the freezer; the works. We got a new one for the kitchen because the freezer doesn’t really get below 30 degrees. Hauling it down the stairs to the garage nearly killed me as it slipped and squashed me against a wall, and it weighs as much as a Buick LeSabre. I ended up with bruised ribs. But, 5 years later it’s still humming along keeping beer, soda, and leftovers cold in the garage. The not-so-cold freezer has turned out to be perfect for vodka, pastries, and bread storage.
My 80s fridge is still going strong. Everyone I know with a modern fridge has had so many headaches with repairs and returns. I'll stick with this ugly white thing until it quits on me.
Dude, I have away the fridge I grew up with in 2015 still running but dated decor-wise. Just needed a new seal but that is a normal repair. I was 33. It was not even sounding bad or anything. It was just dated and I was selling the house.
That refrigerator is still at my family’s cabin
Troof