Barbara Lippert's Critique: Redefining 'Lux' Living

When my mother got married, something like 50 years ago, her family put together the equivalent of a down payment, which set her and my dad up with … a fancy new Electrolux vacuum cleaner. (Were you expecting a house or an apartment? Priorities!)

We had no pets, so dragging the long canister vac around the house was the closest thing I knew to walking a dachshund, and it made just the right swirls and patterns on the wall-to-wall carpeting in the living room, which we weren’t allowed to walk on.

But the vacuum still works and, even stranger, I have really positive associations with the brand.