Examples of our "throw away" culture.

Last month my wife was walking one of our dogs in the neighborhood and walked by a home that's for sale. Next to the trash cans by the road was a Dyson vacuum cleaner. She stops and takes a look at it and it's in good shape. No noticeable damage and not beat up, so she wheels it the couple blocks back to our house.

I don't know anything about vaccums, but I tell her I'll check it out. I plug it in and it runs and the roller brushes work, but no suction at all. So I take off the cyclone/collection bin and seperated them. I hosed out the cyclone since it's just plastic and no moving parts and globs of pet hair and carpet fibers started falling out. I had to rinse it several times and used a coat hanger wire to remove it all, but it works like a charm now. Washed the filter and tried it in the house. This thing gets up pet hair and dust like you wouldn't believe, so we're using it instead of our old one.

Dyson DC17 Animal-$550 vacuum when new.



Then yesterday she went to drop off some of her clothes to donate to Goodwill. Well she's looking around and sees another Dyson vacuum. A DC18 Slim. It has an "As Is" sticker and price tag of $20. She calls me about it and I tell her to go ahead and buy it, might be something simple to fix. I plugged it in at home and it runs, good suction but the roller brushes won't turn. I look on the top of the head and there's a reset button for the motor. Pressed the reset button and it started working.

Cleaned it up and it works perfectly. Dyson DC18 Slim-$450 when new, $250 referbished online.



It's amazing that people won't even spend 5 or 10 minutes checking to see if they can repair something and just throw it away.