It sucks!

I live in a house­hold full of shedders.

So inno­cent look­ing, but it really sucks!

Not the blokes of course but all the females in the house (two fur babies, two daugh­ters and myself) shed for Britain. We’re appar­ently a very hairy bunch! As Dark Princess and myself both have long dark hair (and lots of it!) the bath plug hole needs to be res­cued from stran­gu­la­tion by hair ball, most days. The choco­late Labrador sheds more than any dog I’ve ever known, and even the Tonk­i­nese cat, though short haired, con­tributes her lit­tle puff balls of grey fur to the veneer of dust and dirt and hair atop the carpets.

I hate car­pets. Yes, I know I’m from New Zealand. I know wool is a major export and NZ wool car­pets are the best in the world, but give me a hard pol­ished wooden floor any day! The biggest prob­lem with that is we don’t live in a sub-tropical coun­try and can’t afford under­floor heat­ing any­way, so we have carpets.

And I hate them. Almost as much as the vac­uum cleaner. Though I need the vac­uum cleaner to mow down path­ways from kitchen to bed­room to TV, through the hairy maze. Vac­uum clean­ers and I don’t mix. I hate that they are unma­noeu­vrable. I hate that men spend decades mak­ing new fan­gled machines that look good but don’t work! I hate that it eats my socks, and son’s home­work and lego blocks and sim cards and mis­laid earrings.

Most of all I hate that I’m the only per­son in this house who ever uses the bloody thing!

I need to con­fess some­thing at this point.

I have had five vac­uum clean­ers in the past three years. Yup. Five! I even broke one vac­uum cleaner I bor­rowed from a friend (who’s not so friendly any more!) whilst mine was being fixed. I burnt out the motor. Or some­thing like that.

I am hoover Kryptonite.

Vac No 1 died about the same time as my mar­riage. Like my mar­riage to BM, it had issues. Big issues where tis­sues could fall out of the hose. Even­tu­ally the motor gave out. Like the fire in our marriage…

Vac No 2 replaced it. Bright and shiny and lit­tle and easy to yank along by its hose (Oh I’m not sup­posed to do that, oops) it was very pretty. But use­less. Like the Hol­ly­wood lead­ing lady of hoovers. Vac­u­ous. Easy to manip­u­late, but didn’t ever do the job prop­erly. All form, no function.

Vac No 3 was a lit­tle post-divorce treat I bought for myself. I know. So much nicer than jew­ellery. I also needed some­thing suit­able to clean the two storey house that was now on the mar­ket. It boasted Hepa tech­nol­ogy for peo­ple with pets (or messy kids with long hair!). We got along fine for a while. I reluc­tantly sought its assis­tance twice a week or so to clean the pol­ished floors and suck up the hair off the car­pets in the bedrooms.

On one occa­sion the real estate rang mid-afternoon in the height of sum­mer want­ing to bring buy­ers to look over the house. Mad panic!!! I grabbed the vac­uum cleaner and started to clean the floors, and the ceil­ings (Cob­webs be gone!) whilst simul­ta­ne­ously deal­ing with the laun­dry (Who’s sock…woosh… oh well never mind!). Slurp went the pen­cil that lit­tlest daugh­ter had left on the car­pet. Oh the power!

Mwa­ha­ha­haha!!!!!

Slug went the hair tie Dark Princess had not put away in her room. Chug­gle gug­gle gur­gle cough cough cough went the piece of paper which was some­thing vile, like a bill..

‘Not so bad this’

I was sweat­ing buck­ets in the heat, so took off my t-shirt and con­tin­ued in my bra. Yes I know. But no one could see in! And it was hot. Con­sider it being eco sen­si­tive in that I wasn’t sweat­ing over the t-shirt which would need to be washed in nasty earth-killing chemicals!

There I was vac­u­um­ing in my bra and shorts when every­thing came to a stop. Arrrgh! Run­ning out of time before the agent arrived I opened the lid and dust erupted from the cav­ity, all over the carpet.

‘Damn. And blast. Bloody vac­uum. Run­ning late’ I picked up the pipe and in a moment of absolute frus­tra­tion started wack­ing it on the floor to remove what­ever was lodged inside.

That’s when I dented the vac­uum cleaner pipe. So badly, noth­ing could pass through it, and it wouldn’t attach to the hose any longer.

Happy days!

I labo­ri­ously picked up every sin­gle bit of dust, smear­ing some on my face and in my hair and on my bra. I think I may have even shed a tear, like a baby. Of course that’s when the buy­ers arrived for the house.

The same ones who said I han­dled the house sale with ‘great dig­nity!’

*********

When I arrived over here my new vac­cum (No 4) was still on the ship with the rest of my belong­ings so we bor­rowed one from my Mother In Law. It was one of those stand up ones but it was com­pletely knack­ered. We stu­diously ignored the accu­mu­lat­ing mess. We set up flares to high­light safe zones for sit­ting, in the undergrowth.

Of course the NZ vac­uum cleaner arrived, and inevitably there were no bags for that make or model in exis­tence in the entire United King­dom. We bought a new one. A nice lit­tle natty one from Sainsbury’s. Not very big, not salu­bri­ous. Didn’t lick the car­pets clean, or plait stray hairs into macrame pot hold­ers, it just mowed the carpets.

A few weeks ago I was frus­trated with… life, the uni­verse and every­thing and decided I would attack the house­work. I picked up the vac­uum cleaner and set to work. Every­thing was going swim­mingly until for some rea­son we lost suc­tion. I inves­ti­gated inside the cav­ity. It was a bag less vac­uum so every­thing evac­u­ated out onto the floor. Shov­el­ling up the muck with my hands (yes I did a degree and this is how I spend my days!), I set every­thing back in place and tried again. Still noth­ing. It was kiss­ing the car­pet, not suck­ing it clean. I removed the pipe and I may have knocked it inad­ver­tently on the car­pet to remove any­thing stuck inside it, and then vehe­mently reat­tached the hose.

Pick­ing up the pipe I went to fit it into the hose when I heard a crack.

I, the vac­uum cleaner killer of the world, had bro­ken the pipe in half with my bare hands!

I love clean­ing that much!!!

We have a replace­ment model. Son clicked and shook his head when he saw it.

‘It’s an indus­trial one Mum. Like the clean­ers at school would use’.

It cleans the car­pets, and dries them again and just plain vac­cums. It does not how­ever do it all by itself.

Doesn’t that suck!

Image Flickr CC by butkaj.com

HackingEth­ics