Connor's New Pet

Bissell Cleanview II

A week ago we bought a new vacuum cleaner, a Bissell Cleanview II Bagless Upright, to be precise. I never thought I would care about a vacuum cleaner enough to blog it, but this vacuum is amazing! The Hoover Power Drive vacuum, that faithfully served us since 1988 (yes, 1988) finally gave out. Truth be told, after using the new vacuum cleaner, it is apparent to me that our old one has not worked (not really worked) for the last 2 years or so. Sad, but true.

We hate to clean. We do it because we have to, and that's the only reason. So, after I brought it home, the new vacuum cleaner (which has been dubbed Zoey II), sat in the living room floor for a couple of days and we walked around it, and occasionally oohed and ahhed. It is pretty spectacular in appearance, compared to the Hoover. Zoey is a sexy French maid kind of vacuum, making its predecessor a dumpy old Hazel. We call her Zoey after a dog we grew to love very much. When the dog was no longer around, Connor said, "I miss Zoey, she ate cat barf, like a good dog should." Needless to say, so does Zoey II.

Of the three of us, Connor was the most impressed by our new acquisition. He kneeled next to it and inspected all of the attachments and apparently imagined what it would be like to clean our filthy carpets with it. After he finished his homework one night, he cautiously asked, "Can I use it?" To which I replied, "Of course, honey. Who do you think I bought it for?" Grinning from ear to ear, he offered to vacuum my room, and I responded with, something along the line of "Knock yourself out, kid." I showed him the nifty carrying handle and he was ecstatic. He lugged the vacuum up the stairs and started to work. In about 10 minutes he asked me to come look at what he'd done, so I went up to look and the floor looked pretty good, but the canister was disgusting. It was FULL of dirt, dust, and cat hair. He vacuumed most of the room and was pretty proud of the job he had done, but he was also full of admonish ions about letting the carpet get that "gross." I was humbled, but not so humbled that I didn't tell him to have a go at the window treatment with the cool attachments. So, this weekend, I pulled the rugs out of my room and washed them and I started vacuuming. In no time I had filled the plastic canister with the same amount of stuff that Connor removed just a few days before. I continued vacuuming and filled it again. A couple of realizations dawned on me. The first is that the old Hoover was probably not working properly for a year or two, and I must be some kind of mental midget in the vacuuming department to not see that before now. It's not that I hadn't vacuumed in the last couple of years, it's just that I didn't do it often and when I did, it was pretty bad, so any improvement was better than whatever drove me to haul out the vacuum and us it. The second realization is that we have a very low standard for clean. I am going to try to raise my standard in that area, and I am pretty sure that using a bagless vacuum will help pull me out of my cleaning malaise. It's hard to face a canister full of the most repulsive stuff (three times over) without admitting that you have issues. Hi, I'm Karen and I am a dirt-a-holic, or maybe I'm a clean phobic. Either way, change is underfoot; ) .