A Clean Start

Well, our vacuum cleaner is well and truly deceased. Finally. Alan and I flipped a coin for chores and I lost so I had to do the vacuuming and he got to clean the bathroom. Yes, I really would rather clean the bathroom than vacuum. That's primarily because this is a fairly large apartment and more importantly, it's a looooong apartment. And most of it is carpeted. It is secondarily because our vacuum cleaner is terrible and it seems like it requires the removal and fiddling with of all brushes, belts, and filters every time I use the damn thing. I've even had to unbend wire hangers to extract cat hair bezoars from its accordion tube guts. Thirdly, it's an incredibly disappointing task because the carpet never seems to be any cleaner when I'm done.

So, resigned to my vacuuming fate, I started in the bedroom. I must have gone over the same bit of pink fluff 10 times and it wasn't even pretending to pick it up. I stuck my hand over the intermittently spinning brush bar. Not enough stirring air to move a feather. I pulled off the hose. Perfectly fine. No need to retrieve the hanger. So I dragged it out to the living room and pulled the plate off the bottom. Okay, so there was a little hair wrapped around the brush bar. But certainly not enough to explain its complete uselessness. Still, I figured I might as well pull off what I could, so I snapped out the bar. Ah. Perhaps the problem is the glob of brittle, once-molten rubber underneath the cleanly snapped belt. I can only surmise that at some point, the brush bar stopped spinning, but the belt didn't. The friction of the belt as it tried in vain to turn the bar must have melted its inner surface to the bar. Unwilling to waste anymore time or energy on repairing a vacuum that never worked all that well in the first place, I have it a halfhearted kick in the canister and went to Sears.

So Alan and I are now the proud parents of a Dyson Ball DC25. It was ludicrously expensive at $536 (with tax), but on the other hand, it picked up every last pine needle, bit of tinsel, and fleck of candy wrapper that's been infecting our living room carpet since Christmas. Hell, this stupid thing might actually make me want to vacuum.

Okay, probably not.

But at the very least, it's not the fruitless task it once was.

So resquiescat in pace dear Dirt Devil. I suppose we're lucky that you never managed to burn the house down, so thanks for that. Maybe some kind and benevolent junk man will take you home and give you a second life. Or maybe not.

~Lizzie