Ahhhhh.. the dreaded vacuum battles.
Hubby & I obviously live in the same house… we walk across the same floors, we share the same shedding dog (with muddy & wet paws), we entertain mutual friends who walk across our shared floors. But for some reason, we don’t both notice the dog hair or outside debris all over said floors, at nearly the same time. Or perhaps, we do actually both notice it, but hubby’s tolerance threshold for dirty floors is just simply much, much higher than mine. (or quite possibly it really is another example of Selective Vision).
Anyhow, now that I think about it…. I suppose it’s not exactly a vacuum battle, since it’s kind of a silent battle that I have in my head as I notice the floors need to be vacuumed and I mentally will hubby to recognize this fact and decide, on his own accord, that he should pull out our vacuum. It’s a battle that I rarely win. Without a prompt from me, (which may also be known as nagging) hubby may never, ever see the leaves blowing through our kitchen or the tufts of dog hair tumbleweeding through the foyer.
I’ll admit, that one of the best decisions we ever made was to hire a cleaning service to come to our house every couple of weeks to do a full-on cleaning. It’s spared us many ahem, disagreements about when and who is going to do which part of a massive clean.
But, on the rarest of occasions hubby may help with vacuuming (I declare this a quiet, silent victory – but I’ll be honest, I’m dancing a little jig in my head!). It’s sort of like a sighting of the Loch Ness Monster. If you blink you might miss it, and even after you’ve seen it, you start questioning if you imagined it. Was it real or was it a figment of my imagination?
Well I was doing a little jig, dancing and singing in my mind, a few weeks back as hubby was vacuuming. He declares mid-vacuum, that the vacuum isn’t working to it’s full potential and that the cleaning ladies must never clean off the beater bar. I say, “no they probably don’t, it easily gets covered with dog hair”, and I go about my business. Still dancing – Still singing – Still celebrating my silent victory…
Fast forward to this past week. We (ahem.. I mean mostly me) have put away Christmas. The bins are packed up, the tree is undecorated and looking sad and limp waiting for hubby to put it in it’s final resting place on the curb. Hubby drags it out of the house and, as you can imagine, I’m looking at like 6 million pine needles that need to be cleaned up. So, I grab our trusty vacuum and I power her up to do her thing and work some magic (that Dyson guy really does know his shit, we LOVE our Dyson). Ok, I must at this point, do a bit of a side bar…
[We were skeptical about all the hype over spending so much money on a Dyson. We’d heard people rave about it, tell us we wouldn’t believe how great it was but heck it’s a lot of money for a vacuum (do you know how many blue ray movies hubby could buy with all that money??) BUT, when we got it home and it sucked up like 10 years of crap out of our carpets we quickly became believers. AND, right before my eyes, I watched hubby get excited – yes, I said EXCITED – about a vacuum. I had dreamed of this day.. the day where there would be enough bells & whistles on an instrument designed to clean that might get hubby excited enough to use it! This was a magical day, a day to put my Fun Theory to work. A day where hubby might actually be excited enough to use this new toy (and we can call it a toy.. if that’s what will get hubby to use it) to clean our house! Well, needless to say many years later, I suppose the novelty has worn off and it doesn’t nearly have the same effect. But damn! That Dyson guy really did make an impressive vacuum!]
Ok, back to my story.
I’m trying to suck up half of our Christmas tree and I don’t seem to have very good suction. So, I stop the vacuum and turn it over and… what do you think I find?? [insert dramatic pause]
Yes, the beater bar is so incredibly filled with dog hair etc. that it not only doesn’t move but, it also blocks practically all other things from ever making it into the opening. So, I call to hubby….”Hon, you mentioned that the vacuum wasn’t really working when you last used it.. did you not clean off the beater bar”. And, (I’m sure you can see where this is going..). what do you think hubby says?? “Nope, I never cleaned it off”.
Hubby always jokes about the Dyson guy saying he “likes things to work properly” [he says this with the best British accent he can muster] but he apparently could care less if OUR Dyson works “properly”.
Needless to say… as I’m stomping into the kitchen to grab a pair of scissors… I am no longer doing a jig. There’s no dancing, no singing… there’s just grumbling and cursing under my breath. And, it appears that I have one more example of a battle that I surely haven’t won.
shouldn’t Dyson have created a vacuum whose beater bar doesn’t become hopelessly entangled? After all he does think things should just work properly. I blame him and his sub par product for this incident.
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We have a dyson, I love it, my hubby likes it to. He was vacuuming the other day and he did in fact clean the beater bar, something I avoid doing, and then continued to vacuum, I was SHOCKED! Sometimes they actually receive the esp messages we send them, huh.
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Rachel ~
You must have amazing powers….guess I need to practice my telepathy a little more! 🙂
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Vacuum in the nude. I bet he’ll want to help then. 🙂
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Rose ~ I can’t imagine that vacuuming in the nude would actually HELP us get any chores done… on the contrary I’m pretty sure less and less stuff would actually get cleaned!
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Just had to weigh in on the Dyson endorsement… they are soooo worth the money!! My H wanted one for a while, I thought they were too expensive but he finally convinced me. He vacuums all.the.time. If he catches me vacuuming, he gets all butt hurt about it and says I’m doing his job! I wonder if I allowed him to choose other cleaning supplies he would be more inclined to use them as well?
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[…] gift of tools for a man borders on a gift of a vacuum cleaner for a woman (this of course doesn’t include an amazing Dyson – because, as you know, we […]
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