Mom Shocked When Son Replaces Abandoned Kitchen Radio (Exclusive)

• A Canadian mother was preparing to part with her beloved kitchen appliance
• Lorelai Bachman tells PEOPLE that her since-discontinued GE Spacemaker CD/FM/AM player was “the soundtrack to our lives” for more than two decades
• Lorelei was completely shocked when her son surprised her with a like-new replacement device, exactly the same as the one she was first given in 2001.

A mother had no idea how important an appliance in her kitchen was to her until she had to get rid of it.

Lorelei Bachman, mother of five, was the proud owner of a GE Spacemaker CD/FM/AM player that lived under her kitchen microwave for more than two decades.

“The GE Spacemaker was given to me as a gift. A family member who came to visit us from the United States in 2001 gave it to me. I installed it in my kitchen, under my microwave, and for about 20 years, he’s been the soundtrack to our lives,” Lorelei told PEOPLE.

“When my kids were little, I bathed them in the kitchen sink, or when I took them out of their high chair, we played music. I listened to the morning news on it. When they had little parties “Birthday, we listened to CDs there and it was just the backdrop to our lives for 20 years,” she recalls.

There are good memories linked to the device that stand out to the mother.

“I have five kids and when they were little they decided they wanted to have a luau in the living room. So we went to the dollar store and bought some hula skirts and necklaces. I used the broomstick and I put the Limbo soundtrack in the Spacemaker, and we did Limbo Rock and played the song “Lime in the Coconut.” We have so many fun memories like that.”

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After two decades of family fun, the device was not in perfect condition. “But it still worked,” says Lorelei.

“It was discolored. There’s a little bass boost button that was shorting out, so it wasn’t working properly. But it still played CDs! I even played CDs at Christmas when my kids came home home last year. The radio was But it would start working sometimes you pressed the button, and sometimes it wouldn’t turn on But it was in constant use for over 20 years.

It was during the holiday season that Lorelei had to accept that the device was slowly breaking.

“It was right after the New Year and I was like, ‘I have to take this thing off. There is a short circuit. It is discolored. It looks really bad in the kitchen, but I didn’t tell my kids.

Lorelei didn’t know that her eldest son had a “total surprise” in store for her.

“My oldest son and daughter live on the West Coast. My son called me and said, ‘Mom, I bought you a Christmas present, but I’m still working there, so please Please be patient,’” she recalls. .

“January, February, March went by and I didn’t ask him any questions. I didn’t think anything of it. I never made the connection. And then he came home to visit me and he said : “So I have your present”. This is either going to be a real success or a total failure because I don’t know if you will want it, but I think it will make you really happy.”

Lorelei burst into tears as she opened her brand new GE Spacemaker. “One of my other kids was there and they said, ‘Oh, I guess it’s a hit,’” she laughs.

“I said, ‘How did you know? Where did you find one?’ Because I’ve been digging around online for quite a while, I looked on eBay, but people want an exorbitant amount and you don’t know if they’ll work properly.

Lorelei learned that her children were saving together when they made this discovery. At the time the device was yellow, but otherwise like new. Fortunately, Lorelei’s son knew how to bring him back to life.

“He took everything apart, so everything looked beautiful, but he had to do a process called backlighting, where you mix hydrogen peroxide, make a little solution and use a UV lamp. He had to do that for a few days, with the UV lamp on it, and then it took all that yellowing away,” she explains.

“To me it looked brand new when I took it out of the box. I asked, “Has anyone ever used this?” And he said someone used it, but very briefly, and then just put it in a box.”

This moment was truly meaningful for Lorelei, who decided to share the story on TikTok, where it garnered nearly 2 million views.

“People don’t realize that as your children grow up and enter adulthood, they have a lot of comments to make to you about the kind of parent you were. You have to deal with that until “They’re growing up a little and starting to understand what it means to be a parent and do your best,” she says.

“The fact that my two oldest children were able to look at that and connect to a memory and say, ‘That meant a lot to us, that would mean a lot to mom,’ that was just the most beautiful thing to me. “Was the most rewarding thing about being a parent.”

She continues: “I think people need to remember that there is no shame in not having the newest thing. These little joys can still happen with old appliances or older cars or things like that. And it’s okay to live on a budget and hang on to things as long as you can.

Lorelei was touched that so many mothers had memories with their family and the same radio.

“I was so happy that day that I said to myself, ‘I wonder if anyone else remembers this, I’ll do a post about it,’ without thinking about it. It became went viral very quickly and that weekend I sat down and tried to go through all the comments – there were thousands of them,” she shares.

“My heart, as a mother, was very touched because a lot of moms had memories related to these machines. Many of them were their grandparents – one of them said: ‘My grand- father raised me and he listened to me all winter to find out what it was like.” days were snow days on this radio. Many people remembered dancing with their children with them, so it was really touching.”

She also has the perfect response to naysayers who suggest switching to more modern technology.

“I think they lost the plot. They didn’t understand that the best things in life aren’t things. They’re memories, and I think sometimes we have things that hitch a ride on those memories and bring them back,” she says. .

Of the company, she adds: “I don’t think GE has any idea how important this line is to people.”