The Epilogue

The inspiration of a new vacuum was all I needed to motivate me to find the carpet in our room again, and now, with a mostly tidy room and newly vacuumed floors, I can say definitely that the new vacuum is nice. It's made a few finicky noises when I ran into pieces of furniture a little too forcefully, but it recovers quickly and apparently suffers no ill effects. The extension wand for attachments is a little complicated, but allows for good variety: a nice long extension wand for reaching ceiling fans and out-of-reach corners, or a short little wand for "dusting" type uses. Emptying the receptacle is easy, and so much nicer than having to replace bags! It's very quiet for a motorized machine, and it's amazing how much dust it's able to whip out of the carpet with the "wind tunnel" effect that Dyson employs. I think this will be a long and beautiful relationship... hopefully, a happily-ever-after!

(Haha!)

The End.

A New Beginning

Some very old, faithful readers who diligently read all of my lengthy posts from "way back when" may remember my difficulties with vacuums. There are actually three posts about it, which I will obligingly link to, under the delightful illusion that anyone might actually want to read these old posts from the "archives."

Prologue
First chapter
Second chapter

I am happy to announce in this Third chapter that The Vacuum of Sauron has officially been replaced. Finally. And Sarah will not be allowed to name it. Hopefully, it will remain blissfully nameless, and therefore have no "character" to be flawed, thus enabling it to clean sufficiently with no issues.

It's a Dyson, although not a Dyson "Ball" vacuum (those are so expensive just for the convenience of more range of motion!) and I hope will be a vast improvement over my past Hoover vacuum. It doesn't use bags, so already it's better. An improvement would likely mean that there would be no more posts about vacuums, as I have a tendency to blog about exasperating things and enjoy all the convenient and happy parts of my life in bloggy silence... but should it turn about to be an amazing vacuum, I will probably write something in glowing praise, which will be a satisfying epilogue to this trilogy.

Vacuums, part 2

Yep, there's a part 2.

So Daddy got the new belt in place, and I put the roller back in, and put the cover back on, turned it on to vacuum and........ it made this insanely loud noise, started trying to propel itself very fast, and WOULDN'T TURN OFF. I frantically flicked the on/off switch up and down and just when the lightbulb in my head suggested that I just unplug it, it finally turned off. "The Vacuum of Sauron" indeed. Sarah named it very well. Too well. It's probably all her fault anyway. I mean, we could have named it something like... what am I saying. It doesn't need a name! *bangs head on desk*

So anyway. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is THE Vacuum of Sauron! Recovered from Mordor just before the Frodo accidentally dropped the One Ring into Mount Doom. And it can be yours for the price it takes to catch it as I hurl it out my bedroom window! Warning: Unsuitable for vacuuming, but a very... interesting collection piece.

I'm looking into the costs of wood floors.

~Lizzie

Vacuums

I loathe vacuums. Some of you may remember my previous issues with this vacuum (since my sanity is already on the edge of a very steep cliff, I'm not going to link to that old post. If you're really that bored, you can find it yourself).

All manuals are meant to be lost or discarded immediately after any necessary instructions have been absorbed. Most instruction manuals contain only the most useless information anyway. "Warning: Toaster may become hot after use." "Warning: Keep fingers and toes away from the cutting blade of the lawnmower." The instruction manual to our vacuum cleaner was no exception.

So considering that the typical maintenance like changing the bag and pulling out all the hair (did you know that the average person loses 100 hairs a day? Yep. I gather that that makes about 300 hairs that are over 1 and a half feet long that wrap around the roller brush of the vacuum) are rather simple tasks, I determined that I probably wouldn't need the manual, and promptly lost it somewhere in the piles of manuals that Mom insists we keep.

Even when one of the belts came off, I didn't need the manual. Or at least, I figured I didn't. I mean, sure, I broke out in a sweat, worked myself into a headache, snapped a couple pencils and needed a very long screwdriver, but I did manage to replace the belt. It fell off again recently and today I finally got around to trying to fix it. Only this time, I figured that maybe it fell off because I did something wrong. So I looked up the manual on the internet. (Yeah, I know, I'm a genius.) And, no, I definitely replaced it right. As a matter of fact, I think I've figured out a better position for all the right leverage and everything than the one they suggested. Hopefully that doesn't affect the application. *groan*

So, anyway. I determined that the reason the belt came off must have been because it's stretched out. It's a good inch bigger than the replacement belt that the manufacturers helpfully included. Therefore, I decided to put in the replacement belt instead of the original belt. And this has been an even worse experience than replacing the original belt. (duh... it's an inch smaller!) The manual isn't very helpful either. It only says, "Extra effort may be required to stretch belt onto pulley." No kidding!

I'm pretty sure that the manufacturers didn't test replacing the belt. Either that or they had a robot test it. *pouts* I'm going to get rid of my carpet. Then I can just sweep. And I think I totally said the same thing last time.

~Lizzie

Edit: Daddy got it on! Yay!! Thank you, Daddy. :)

Grrrrr.

The floor in Sarah's and my room recently became visible (entirely by magic) so I decided to vacuum. I got out our faithful vacuum cleaner, dubbed "The Vacuum of Sauron" by Sarah (can you tell that she doesn't like the vacuum?) and got ready to vacuum. I turned it on and.... something definitely wasn't working.

The roller brush was completely entangled with hair (a disgusting phenomenon that is, unfortunately, almost completely unavoidable when half the people in a family have really long hair). So I grabbed a screwdriver and scissors, and set out to remove the roller brush, clean off the hair and deposit the hair around Mom's magnolia tree (in an effort to keep the deer from terrorizing the poor little tree). I returned the clean roller brush to the vacuum and was about to replace the cover and begin vacuuming, when I noticed that one of those belts (that appear to have no use whatsoever) was decidedly out of place.

Of course, it's in a very small place, and the belt is really tight. I nearly broke all my fingers and 2 pencils before I decided that a very long screwdriver was needed. Let's not go into detail about how long it took to get the belt back on, or how many times I nearly screamed in frustration as the belt was ALMOST in place... and then slid off again. The belt finally back in position, I started vacuuming about 2 hours after I originally came up with the idea. Within seconds, a very nauseating smell that smelled something like something burning filled the room.

I'm almost ready to throw the vacuum cleaner out the window (imagining doing so is very satisfying). I have no idea what's wrong with it. Sometimes it makes that smell when the hair needs to be cleaned out, but I already cleaned out the hair! Maybe the bag needs to be replaced..... but I replaced the bag fairly recently and it usually doesn't make that smell when the bag is full. Urgh. I hate vacuum cleaners. I want wood floors in my room... then I can sweep and scrub the floor. Sometimes I'm certain that I was born in the wrong century.

*sigh* I guess I'll go change the bag. Accursed vacuum.

~Lizzie