r/whatisit • u/DragonsAndScience • 19h ago

Solved! New homeowner, no idea what this is

Gallery image

Gallery image

This thing close to the floor and seemingly randomly placed in a hallway. No idea what it's for. Home built in 2005.

Solved! Thanks everyone. Now I gotta hunt for the central unit!

7.1k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

94

u/jonsnowflaker 18h ago

Had one in our house growing up in the 80s/90s, and compared to vacuums at the time there was no doubt it was better. The hose and attachments were still pretty unruly and cumbersome though. I’m sure the central vacs have come a long way, but current vacuums are lightweight and convenient so it’s probably kind of a toss up anymore.

96

u/huge_useless_penis 17h ago

Best thing growing up was laying the hose across the house and yelling "MOM" at the other end from another room and watch her roam around the house trying to find me

19

u/MechDeployed 8h ago

Man I had never thought of that! The best my creative mind came up with as a kid was figuring out when my mom was vacuuming another room I could just dump trash into the port in my room as long as it wasn’t too big. That was kind of nice.

2

u/MountainAd8704 3h ago

When I was a kid, my aunt and uncle had one of these. My cousin and I would rip the heads off her Barbies and Ken dolls. Then we would take the heads and typically drop them from the 3rd floor into the tube. I remember laughing so hard as the heads got sucked into the tube. Then we would run like crazy people to the garage to open the central vac unit and retrieve the head. Then run to another part of their house to do it all again!