Perdiz Magazine / Excerpt

In a new series Excerpt, Nothing Major presents great content from the world of print publications. Today, we're featuring a piece from PERDIZ, a bilingual magazine from Spain concerned with happiness.

As editor Marta Puigdemasa tells us, "PERDIZ is a magazine about things that make people happy. A compilation of amazing stories from common people. And it’s also a virus that, like yawning in the Tube and laughter between friends, is catching. Happiness is contagious. Our glass is always half-full. PERDIZ is fresh, light, and optimistic. It doesn’t tell you what you should do to be happy, nor even suggest that you have to do something; it simply explains what makes others happy and satisfied with their lives."

RJ VANIK

SEATTLE • UNITED STATES 

Like the perfect dinner guest, RJ Vanik does the vacuuming before he sits down to eat. Former president of the Vacuum Cleaner Collectors’ Club, he makes no apology for his passion and, boasting a collection of over 800 appliances, Vanik’s Seattle home is his temple.

Text: Jasmine Phull 
Photography: Brian Edward Berman

My childhood maid taught me that vacuum cleaners weren’t something I needed to be afraid of. She probably got me doing half her work in the process [laughs]. I can pin the date back to when I was three years old because I remember getting a toy vacuum on my birthday; nothing could have possibly made me happier. Fast-forward about 40 years and, thanks to eBay, I was able to find a replacement for it. 

My first real vacuum cleaner was given to me when I was five by my uncle. It had belonged to my grandmother who had passed away before I was even born. He said: “If she had known you, she would have wanted you to have it.” 

My mother was never fond of housework, but she’s a wonderful cook and a wonderful seamstress. There are a lot of ugly chores in housekeeping but vacuuming’s an easy one for a toddler to help out with. Anytime I did anything to help with the cleaning I always got a lot of praise. 

The effort you put into vacuuming is instantly rewarded with visible results; you can see the difference immediately if the carpet was dirty. That’s very satisfying to me; one sweep over the floor and you know that you’ve achieved something. 

My passion isn’t for cleaning as much as it is for the machines. I wouldn’t say that I don’t clean, but I’m geared more towards the machines, the mechanics, the aesthetics, the design, and the engineering. 

For many years the club was a small group of 8-10 people. This was in the days before the Internet so it was all about word of mouth. It actually happened because of somebody who knew two different people who were interested in collecting vacuums, and so they were introduced to each other. 

When I was 10, an aunt of mine sent me a newspaper article about a gentleman in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a vacuum collector and he was also in the entertainment industry. The fact that he was a local celebrity in that area is probably what garnered him enough attention to get a newspaper article. I knew that I couldn’t be the only one, but I also knew just from discussing it with others that there were very few who had a passion for it. I was happy when I joined the club in 1998. 

Most of the vacuum manufacturers have moved abroad now but in the early days, the club visited many of them. They were very gracious to us as guests, and many of them fed us lunch or had some sort of welcome gift-pack. They would get the staff to give us specially organised tours of their facilities that the public wouldn’t normally see. 

My passion is for the old ones because of the durability that was built into them. I look at a machine that is 60 years old and I can’t help but think it was highly advanced for its time. In the last 30 years, machines have become far less durable and been built using poorer quality materials. 

My machines very rarely break-down because I don’t abuse them and know their limits; I don’t try to make them pick up things they weren’t designed to. 

Every square inch of my house that I can spare is filled with vacuum cleaners and I’ve also rented some storage space. I even have a number of machines at a friend’s home. There are half a dozen just for general use in the home that fill different cleaning needs depending on the type of floor, surface, or spillage. 

It’s much easier for me to part with machines that I have two of as opposed to the ones that are unique. 

I’ve given machines away to people who are young and just starting out. They don’t have the budget to purchase a good quality machine and I don’t want to see them get a piece of junk. There are still people who’ll call me and say: “We have these if you want them? If not, they’re going in the garbage.” Those are the ones that I almost always run out and rescue. It’s kind of like rescuing a stray animal, you don’t want to see it go to a bad home. 

It’s not surprising that when I go to my close friends' homes I get out the vacuum and go to work. To them, it’s something they almost expect of me. I’ve had a few who actually leave the vacuum out. I’ll get an invitation to dinner knowing that I’ll have to vacuum before I eat [laughs].

Most people vacuum way too quickly. They are in such a hurry to get the job done that they don’t give the machine time to do its job. A carpet or rug can look clean on the top yet still contain one and half times its own weight in dirt because it settles down to the bottom of the mat. 

I’m getting married this summer, but for the time being we’ll be living in two houses, back and forth, because it will take me a long, long time to do the thinning out I need to do here. I don’t foresee living under the same roof on a full-time basis. We’ve had a very comfortable arrangement for over 13 years; I think I might still have a house and a half instead of a half [laughs].  

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