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
