Sounds as though a few bad experiences have tricked you into overgeneralizing. I'm a property manager and a bit of an appliance nerd, and I deal with dozens of

Sounds as though a few bad experiences have tricked you into overgeneralizing. I'm a property manager and a bit of an appliance nerd, and I deal with dozens of them. Modern toilets like the Toto 1.25 gal models have almost completely eliminated toilet clogs and overflows at my properties. This is experience is pretty universal among plumbers. Do a quick search for Toto on a big plumbing forum and you'll see what I mean. Water regulations forced toilet makers to actually design their toilets, which paid huge dividends in bowl wash and waste clearance. Toto toilets' flushways and bowl washes are designed by computer. There is simply no comparison with the old toilets that I immediately pull out and destroy whenever I acquire a new property. Similar situation for dishwashers. New dishwashers (I have some Bosch 300 series machines) are worlds better than pre-water-saving dishwashers. I can pack mine with almost every piece of Corelle I own, with no prewashing, and get spotless clean dishes. With their turbidity meters, they actually work better if you don't prewash. A caveat though: you have to learn how to use the machine properly. For example, the Bosch machines offer a "normal" mode, which is both the worst and the default mode. Avoid it and the machine runs circles over any dishwasher from your golden youth. I've had mixed experiences with washing machines. I have several very nice front-loading washing machines from LG, GE, and Samsung, all working flawlessly for between 6 and 10 years. Again, you have to RTFM, and perform basic maintenance like cleaning the filters. However, we used cloth diapers on our children, and found that our fancy front-loaders absolutely suck for such heavy soils. We actually bought an old-fashioned water-guzzling top load washing machine just for diapers, and it did the trick. On the other hand, we also have a new Maytag impeller-driven top loader, and it's shit. The computer pretty much constantly gets the water level wrong, and either leaves some clothes dry, or uses so much water that clothes don't circulate. I'm considering getting another old-fashioned top-loader for that property. Oldies are goodies in this case. I like old-fashioned dryers, no doubt -- simple, robust, and thankfully still made essentially the same as they have been for decades. The newer computerized dryers are of dubious value IMO. And don't get me started about the absolute shit durability of electronic control boards in appliances. Boards that can cost hundreds of dollars to replace. This summer I replaced a control board in a high-end Dacor stove. I had to find a used one because factory replacements cost $300. Plus, Dacor tightly restricts schematics and documentation to "authorized" (and expensive) repair shops. In my opinion, Right to Repair laws are the best remedy for the declining quality of appliances.