Unable to clean certain surfaces; a new phenomenon?

[intrepidity]

I've been noticing more often that I encounter certain surfaces/materials that are either more difficult or impossible to clean. Anyone else notice this?

For example, plastics. I just did a teardown and rebuild of some vacuum cleaners, and the plastic parts just did not want to part with their dirt! I go through the various steps, ranging from soaking (in increasingly stronger cleaners) to the various mechanical methods (various brushes, cloths) and each step, after drying, the dirt remains. Only when I manually wipe a surface will the dirt (sometimes) depart. WTH is going on?

Another example, painted metal (presumably some sort of enamel): a Procter-Silex heat plate, used a couple times and now cannot be cleaned. I've gone through what are usually my last resorts (Bar Keeper's Friend, magic erasers) to no avail. WTF? I'm now thinking my only recourse will be to just repaint the damn thing!

Is there some fairly recent trend in materials science that is deliberately sabotaging the efforts of those of us who resist throwing things away and just buying new ones?

Mainly I want to know if anyone else has noticed this. It is slowly but surely driving me mad.

[Kali]

1. older surfaces have micropits and scratches that tend to hold dirt

and it becomes a vicious circle using stronger cleaners because they increase the surface damage.

[intrepidity]

4. With some of these plastics, it seems electrocharge related somehow

Also, the painted metal plate was brand spankin new. There's something else going on.

[ret5hd]

2. I find the same problem with certain...

textured plastics…most notably our (now sold) Prius dashboard.

The damned thing had a texture that seemed designed to hold any dirt, dust or lint as if it had an adhesive. If I had sat and tried I could not have designed a surface that was more difficult to clean. Any material you cleaned it with was going to deposit as much as it picked up…paper towel, magic eraser, rag, etc.

I liked the car, hated the interior plastics.

[intrepidity]

6. It's as though the pressure washer and steam cleaner folks got together

and orchestrated this madness!

[3catwoman3]

3. When we had our house built in 1994, I chose a textured linoleum...

…for the kitchen floor. I really liked the pattern. Little did I realize that it would be damn near impossible to clean because of the textured surface. Dirty water would settle into the little pits that were part of the textured design.

Our sons at the time were 1 1/2 and 4, a really messy age. I had to clean the floor very a lot, and within a matter of weeks, I was referring to it as “my goddamned, son-of-a-bitching, mother-fucking kitchen floor.” When we redid the kitchen, we did an untextured tile floor.

[intrepidity]

5. Ugh!! I have shower tiles like that

You can imagine the frustration...