Floor Cleanliness and the Devices Responsible: A Mostly Worthless Read

Have you ever done something for a really long time that could have been immediately made easier by a simple change? I do that all the time.

One such change I recently made after laboring over my carpeted floors for an entire year with nothing more than a chargeable, hand held, vacuum cleaner.

Actually, "vacuum cleaner" may be a bit of an exaggeration since it neither sucks nor cleans very well at all. Another one of its flaws, as if those first two accusations weren't incriminating enough, is the fact that it only stays charged for a few minutes, getting me only partway through the living area of the trailer before its power begins to audibly wane. This is when I inevitably pick up my speed, scurrying around on my hands and knees trying to get as much of the dirt and grime off the floor as I can before the battery gives out completely. But at this point the suction has lessened considerably and by the time I get to the three steps at the far end of the living room, I find I'm only rearranging the dirt on the floor with the vacuum nozzle.

Now, I should add, that I have fairly long hair; it ends about halfway down my back and is pretty thick too. I also shed like a dog. Especially right after a shower. Sometimes I wonder how I have any hair at all on my head with how much I shed on a daily basis. But I digress...

The problem with this is that all of that hair that falls out has a very concentrated amount of square footage that it must reside in once detaching and descending from its follicles. And the hand held vacuum I have been using for the last year, doesn't have enough suction to pick up a single strand of it.

Some of my extreme methods I have resorted to involve picking it up in clumps with my hands, bringing in the monster shop vac that lives beneath the trailer and is home to hundreds of spiders, and (my personal favorite) getting down on my hands and knees with a small lint roller to collect hair off every square inch of the carpet. The rolling usually lasted only about two seconds before I had to tear off a layer of the hair entangled, once sticky lint collector. It got a bit time consuming, but I was desperate.

Looking back, it boggles my mind why I didn't consider different options sooner. But it was only thanks to Hurricane Irene, relocating me and mine to the middle of Virginia and next to a nice older couple with an actual working vacuum cleaner, that I finally realized my ability to easily rectify my less than desirable, self-inflicted situation. It was not long after arriving back in Virginia Beach that I shopped my local supermarket for the long-overdue replacement of my carpet cleaning device.

Enter...

...The Shark.

Okay, its not really as cool as the image its brand name might inspire. And its still a hand held, but it has a much bigger nozzle, which is handy when vacuuming one's entire carpeted floors, and it has the ability to pick up hair (a significant plus). It also is a good, old-fashioned plug-in-to-a-wall-outlet sort of vacuum, which is refreshing. I don't even mind when the cord gets in the way!

You may be a little disappointed for reading this entire blog entry, and rightly so. But I hope at least some of you are comforted with the knowledge that my floors are clean with much less effort and trial.

And if that's not enough, be consoled that perhaps someone may have read this and been inspired to scrutinize their own life and recognize such an unnecessary complication that could be easily targeted and rectified through a simple change.

I just hope that simple change isn't the decision to no longer read this blog in an effort to not waste any further time.