I can’t honestly say anyone has ever asked me
what the secret to a happy life is. And I can’t truthfully say I know the
answer. But I’m pretty sure it has something to do with having a decent vacuum
cleaner.
Experience
has revealed few things more frustrating than trying to use a vacuum cleaner
that does not do what it’s supposed to do. I also know the deeply satisfying
feeling of seeing a gloriously clean carpet which only minutes before was
covered in lint and crumbs.
I’ve used a lot of
vacuum cleaners in my day, probably every make available. The first one I
remember ever using was my mother’s burgundy and cream-coloured Electrolux.
(Why it was “my mother’s” and not “my parents’” is a sexist topic for another
day.) Not that I had to vacuum a lot. But somewhere around age thirteen, I got
to redecorate my bedroom and chose a solid purple carpet. You guessed it. It
showed every teensy bit of lint my velvet bell bottoms could drop and every
long hair my hairbrush lost a grip on. I probably wore out the Electrolux,
because somewhere along the line it was replaced with a green Kenmore.
When I moved into a
dorm, my roommates and I covered our floor with carpet sample squares, every
color and style imaginable. The colourful collection was great, because it
didn’t matter what else was in the room—nothing matched anyway. I don’t
remember ever vacuuming that floor, though I suppose we must have once or
twice.
My first “work
assignment” at that school was cleaning the offices and board room. Which might
have been fine, except the vacuum cleaner they provided left much to be
desired. The best thing I could say about it was, it didn’t suck. I recall
going around on my hands and knees with it because part of the wand, as well as
the full-size floor attachment, were missing. Perhaps someone thought it would
build character in whoever was forced to use it. Maybe that’s why I’m such a
character.
When I spent ten years in the
house-cleaning gig, I used my clients’ vacuums, and they varied from the
upright to the downright impossible. One house had a fancy and amazing mini-beater
bar for doing stairs. Others barely made a difference, which felt terribly
discouraging. I remember roto-rooting loads of Christmas tree needles from
clogged vacuum hoses, changing filters for owners who had no idea filters were
a thing, and wrecking my back hauling big old Kirbys up and down stairs.
At home, hubby and I purchased a used
Rainbow vacuum because my mother-in-law was a fan and because we couldn’t
afford a new one. After forty years, we are now on our second Rainbow—also purchased
used—with nearly no repair bills in all that time. Some people don’t like
Rainbows because you must empty out the water canister (where all the dirt
collects) when you’re done. But, hello? By becoming trapped in the water, the
dust can’t seep back into the air. We raised three children in a mobile home
with light sandy-coloured carpeting. Even after fifteen years, every time my
mother visited, she commented on how new that carpet looked. It was not
expensive carpet. I attribute it to the Rainbow. And when our water heater
burst recently, our good ol’ Rainbow went to work sucking water off the
basement floor. Can yours do that?
This post was not intended to be an
advertisement. I hope you’re as happy with your vacuum cleaner as I am and that
you appreciate it sufficiently. Now if I could just find someone else to push
mine around, I’d be delirious with joy.