Big Blue, the Vacuum Slayer

My living room carpet, aka Big Blue the Vacuum Slayer…

We have a Roomba iRobot vacuum. My husband bought it "for me" for our anniversary almost 2 years ago. Now, I must digress a little here and say that this gift was not really for me since when we divided up chores all those years ago, he agreed to do the vacuuming since I hate, hate, HATE it. I'll gladly scrub a bathroom for hours on end, but I don't want to vacuum. Ok, back to the Roomba, I really like it, I mean really, what's not to like, it vacuums for you!!! But it’s not quite heavy duty enough to keep up with the constant shedding of Ms. LucieBelle.

I have an Oreck XL Commercial duty vacuum that works wonderfully well upstairs, on the stairs, on hard surfaces, and even in the somewhat plush shag carpet in the TV room. It is sadly no match for Big Blue. Big Blue burns through belts on that vacuum like you wouldn’t believe. So a few weeks ago we went and bought a new vacuum because the Oreck refuses to even go into my living room now. I got a bagless vacuum because, well because we were looking for a not-very-expensive vacuum and that’s what they had. I thought, “Wow, bagless will be so nice. You just dump the canister when you’re done and you never have to worry about how full the bag is before you start. This will be great.”

I was wrong. I plugged it in and began vacuuming the room and immediately the vacuum starts shocking me. Now, I already hate vacuuming anyway, I really don’t need this kind of aversion therapy that my new vacuum was providing. My husband was in the kitchen and he kept hearing me go, “Ouch, ouch, OUCH!!!” So he came out to see what was going on. I told him that not only was it shocking my hand, but when I’d pull the vacuum back towards me, when it was within 6” of my leg, it would deliver a resounding “ZAPPP!!!!” to my thigh. He thought I was exaggerating. (Me??? Never!) So he began vacuuming the room and immediately reached the same conclusion that I did. This machine was evil and needed to be destroyed. Ok, maybe he just realized that the vacuum was building up a lot of static, and tried to fix it. We rubbed the vacuum down with Bounce dryer sheets, and I sprayed the whole floor with static spray. It helped. I had done less than ¼ of the room at this point. I made the mistake of looking at the canister and was horrified to see that it was already ½ full. I finished that room, the shocks thankfully were greatly diminished. I removed the canister and it was completely full of dirt and dog hair. I felt pretty bad about myself and my housekeeping abilities. I went out and emptied it into the trash, and took a can of air and blew out the filter. Then I started again in other rooms. No shocks. Still tons of dirt though.

I emptied the canister after each room, and every time I removed it from the vacuum, I could feel the judgment just seeping from that cursed machine. When I was thinking that I couldn’t really feel any worse about myself and my apparently filthy house, I looked at the vacuum, and I swear I heard it say, “Wow, you’re a filthy pig, aren’t you?” I wanted to shoot it! But I didn’t, I just hung my head in shame, acknowledged that it was right, and walked away.