Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Suck It Up: Vacuum 101

We are clean people. Anything dropped to the floor is sucked up immediately with a hand-held vacuum, always on the ready. Cleaning ladies appear weekly to do their thing, which they do very well. No piles of magazines, newspapers, or mail sit in any location on any flat service. Carpets are cleaned professionally every six to eight months. It has been said "one could eat off the floor" in this house. Apparently we are very clean folks.

Putting away Christmas decorations required pulling out the 20 year old Kirby vacuum, which is now too heavy, too cumbersome and just too old. It has lost it's ability to suck -- a new one will replace it. While some may say Kirby needs a tune-up to be as good as new, that will not happen. Kirby has been tuned up a few times, but still returns heavy and cumbersome. There is no gastric by-pass surgery for fat and heavy vacuums, only vacuum replacement procedures. Kirby will soon live at the local shelter, where someone else can decide the next phase in Kirby's life.

Soon either a Hoover Wind Tunnel or a Eureka Boss Smart Vac will start sucking up anything in its path. Both are $139.99 at Costco, both received high ratings at Consumer Reports, and both weigh only 21 pounds. The difference is in the bag. Eureka has bags that capture the dirt, while Hoover is bag less and apparently is easy to clean. Neither will be used very often, only when something is spilled and can't be sucked up by the handheld. A trip to Costco will determine whether Hoover or Eureka wins the suck-up contest. Life became simpler, and clean will remain the key word in this abode. Photo attribution: somewhatfrank

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If you list your old Kirby on Craig's List (http://www.craigslist.org), you can probably get a few hundred bucks for it, more than enough to pay for a new Hoover or Eureka! Old Kirbys fetch a high price because unlike the all plastic models of today, Kirbys were made to last.