Too many people these days have no idea that many household appliances need routine care in order to work properly.   It isn't just vacuums with clogged filters, worn belts or brush rolls wound full of hair.   They have furnace/ac filters that never get changed, refrigerator coils caked with dust, lawn mowers with dull blades...the list goes on and on.   I think for a lot of folks cleaning is the worst form of drudgery, to be put off as long as possible, and fewer and fewer people seem to have basic mechanical skills.  I had a date once with a guy who hired a handyman to hang the pictures on his walls!!!

My neighbors and friends are constantly amazed at the "miracles" I perform for them, doing the simple little things they could and should have been doing themselves.   My father was one of those poster child Popular Mechanics DIY types and I learned a ton from him.   I think we're witnessing the passing of an era.  We're the last of a dying breed.

I agree on both parts,

I had a woman come to me with 6, yes 6 Vacuums at once telling me that 5 of them didnt pick up and that one was just too loud, well 4 of them had clogged hoses and filters, the other needed to have the outer bag replaced and the 6th one was just a hoover elite that sounded like an elite. I asked the woman, " mam have you checked to see if the hose was clogged"? her reply was, " yes we sucked out the hose with the shop vac". what I should have asked. " was the shop vac clogged"? the 4 machines hoses were PACKED full with hair, dog hair, lint, dust, bobbie pins etc... I could have filled a vacuum bag with what was in these hoses. she had a kirby that she cleaned out the fireplace with, that machine's outerbag was TRASHED. I turned the machine on and POOF a massive cloud of dust covered at least 20 ft of my street no joke.  I usually charge $20 per machine and due to lack of smarts on her part I was going to charge at least $35 a machine seeing I had to do something that was soooo easy, but I left her charge at $20 per machine plus parts and let it slide.

You see it everywhere these days.....people never think about the consequences of their actions, and they have no problem solving skills. 

I'm not a repair person, but based on people I've seen and heard, they just don't care about vacuums or know anything about them, and for them, that's just dandy. If something doesn't work they'll just trash it and get another. To be fair, we all probably feel this way about certain objects and items.

What about in the past? Did people know more about vacuums, or know and care more about maintaining them? Is it merely a sign of the times, or have people always been careless about things like this? Presumably, years ago, when more machines were sold door-to-door or in dedicated stores, buyers could (hopefully) have been educated by the sellers first-hand on maintenance and care. I'm not sure, however, if this lead to more machines being maintained properly.