Vacuum Love

Vacuuming has always been my least favorite chore. I blame my Mother. When I was a kid she was all about vacuuming. Well, she was all about my sisters and me vacuuming. Every day, every room, and she had very high standards. She could come into a room and know if we had moved furniture or simply vacuumed around it. If the vacuum ran for less than 20 minutes in a single room she would yell "that wasn't long enough to do a good job." There was no just setting the running vacuum in the middle of the room either, she knew the difference in sound between a vacuum just standing there and a vacuum being pushed around the floor. Since growing up I have actually found joy in cleaning my house. I love doing dishes, folding laundry, cleaning the toilet, and even scrubbing grime off the stove. But vacuuming has always felt like drudgery. Until today. Today is the day I discovered the Dyson.

The Dyson actually belongs to my Mom, the vacuum queen. She bought it about a year ago, but it has been sitting and gathering dust for the past few months because it is too heavy for my Dad to push around with his bad knee. And my Dad does all the vacuuming. Is anyone else seeing a pattern here? But, I digress. My sister "borrowed" the Dyson from my parents, and had been raving about how incredible her carpets looked. She has four cats -- all with long hair. So, I knew there had to be something to this. Then, the other night I was looking under my coffee table for something, I think a peanut, or maybe my glass eye, when I noticed that my entire living room rug was covered with a web of cat hair. It wasn't a fine web either, it was thick, like a coat. A disgusting, hairy, slightly fetid smelling coat. I was totally grossed out. I called my sister and arranged for a transfer. A secret, midnight transfer. My Mother could never know that I was considering falling into the cult of the vacuum. Of course, now I have no choice but to let her know. My Mother has won, I will never look at vacuuming the same way again. I am in love with the Dyson.

This thing doesn't just suck up dirt and pet hair, it annihilates it. The hair seems drawn to it too. I swear I didn't have to chase a single tumbleweed of hair across the floor -- they came to the Dyson. I used it on a floor heating vent that has looked like Chewbacca for months, and that I never thought would be clean. I have tried cleaning it with rags on sticks, with the dust buster, and with Wiccan magic. Nothing has worked. Two seconds with the Dyson though, and it was done. It wasn't just miraculous on carpet either, it was magic on hard wood floors as well. And the tube attachment? Let's just say you don't want to get to close or else it will rip your arm off. I ran it under my stove and I think it picked up dirt all the way at the back.

The best part about the Dyson is the fact that the canister is clear, so I could see how clean my floors were getting. I felt an extreme sense of pride, and also disgust, kind of like the feeling of popping a huge zit. With every room the canister would get fuller and fuller, and I would examine the collection through the Plexiglas.

By the time I was done I was fascinated, but also a reticent, because I had to empty it, which would mean reaching inside the canister to pull it all out. Or so I thought. The Dyson is so wonderful all I had to do was hold it over the trash and pull a trigger. The bottom opened, and the debris fell out. Magic.

Now, I'm hooked. I'm actually worried that I might become one of those annoying people who goes door to door throwing dirt on carpet just to show housewives the magic of the Dyson -- and I won't even be selling them. That's how much I love this machine. I have to have one. The $425 price tag be damned! Ryan won't mind if we have to eat Ramen for a month, because our floors will be clean.

Of course, I could just refuse to return this one to my Mother.We could consider it payment for all of my years cleaning her house with an inferior machine...