Brooke here. I’m pushing hard to finish a big project so here’s a holdover house post.
Picture this: A young(ish) woman, singing the Happy Vacuum Day song as she peels the plastic off of her new vacuum. The old vacuum is sitting at the end of the porch with a dead motor, waiting to get tossed in the trash. Her husband walks by and shakes his head.
ME: It’s Vacuum Day!
BROWN: Yup.
ME: Happy Vacuum Day!
BROWN: Yup.
ME: You want to try it out?
BROWN: Nope.
ME: Oh come on, how often do we get a new vacuum?
BROWN: About once a year.
ME: See? You should be happy!
BROWN: This isn’t a day to celebrate. This is a day we spent several hundred dollars to replace the vacuum that we replaced a year ago, which replaced the vacuum we bought a year before that, and so on for the twelve years we’ve been together. This is a perpetual cycle of expense and despair.
ME: I’m a little hard on vacuums.
BROWN: If they were alive, I would have turned you into the police for abuse. Most tools need a cool-down period before you use them again. A white-hot vacuum cleaner doesn’t do anyone any good unless you are smelting it into a toaster.
ME: Hey, I never ask you to pay for them.
BROWN: Yes but you never buy the extended service warranty either. This is the only situation in the entire history of the free market where a service warranty is a good investment!
ME: Those things are for suckers.
BROWN: You have a Vacuum Day song. Do you realize how wrong that is?
ME: It’s a holy day. It’s appropriate to raise our voices in celebration.
BROWN: I’m getting a drink.
ME: Now you’re getting in the spirit!*
*Sorry for the pun. Stop hitting me.
Flying by night 
You apologize for the “spirit” pun but not the “suckers” one? That’s why you’re getting hit.
Yea, I deserve that.
This is perfect and hilarious and I LOVE this. And you can vacuum my house any time. I would happily pay towards the Vacuum Day fund to avoid having to do the chore. (Thank goodness for roommates who do the chores you hate while I do the ones they hate.)
BTDT. Now I buy vacuums at Goodwill…
I’d go for an orphan from the vacuum cleaner repair place.
I’m with Brown on this one. I’ve had my current vacuum cleaner 12 years. Though I did buy another, smaller one when I moved…
I can heartily recommend buying a Dyson. Washable HEPA filter and pre-filter; no bags; doesn’t lose suction; single click release to dump contents into trash can; very good aftersales service; seriously engineered and look so like they come from a Jetson’s episode.
You had me at “Looks like it comes from a Jetson’s episode…”
Maybe I’ve mentioned this before, but, really, I don’t think I can say it enough: http://www.ghibli.com/en/25.32-120-AS-27-P.html
That’s a link to Charlie-My-One-True-Vacuum-Love. He eats all pieces of brick that can fit into the 40mm diameter hose. We have the fine particulates extra filter. Plaster dust? What plaster dust? Cat hair? Pshhhh. The shedding of two people with hair 2ft long and counting? WHat do you mean vacuums clog with this?
When my mother and friend came to visit over the summer, they fought over who would get to vacuum next just to say they vacuum’ed up a brick.
A neighbour down the street has one, we recently found out. He calls it the ‘rainbows and sunshine vacuum’. Or maybe I had some trouble translating? In any case: ‘best vacuum ever’.
It’s survived falls down flights of stairs, sucking up objects I don’t even want to think about, and has been taking abuse that 2 other ‘normal’ vacuum cleaners couldn’t handle for 4.5 years and counting.
When we’re done living in a building site, there’s a converter piece so we can get the smaller diameter hose and then have access to the normal upholstery accessories that everyone else seems to have a need for because they have things that are upholstered. They also come in half-sized.
I hope you find your one-true-vacuum-love. They exist. Have faith.