Boogers on the Wall

I refuse to buy a $3,000 vacuum. So I am forced to use a cheap Wal-Mart wannabe that literally sucks. I have had the worst luck with vacuums.

I started my marriage with a great Hoover my husband and I bought with some money from our wedding. It wasn’t the fancy, new bagless type, but it really sucked.

Unfortunately, it was shocked to death during a series of freak power surges in the fall of 2008. A faulty power line coming into our house was making our power surge and our lights strobe. Our washer and dryer also lost their lives during that ridiculous three-month fiasco.

I went cheap after that, buying a small machine for less than $20 at a day-after-Thanksgiving sale. As you can imagine, that didn’t last long.

This year at Black Friday I was too focused on Barbies and movies to snatch up the vacuum I wanted. Instead I found a small hand vac with a long handle extension stuffed in an aisle display while waiting in an extremely long checkout line. It was cheap but definitely not practical. It works great dust busting my kitchen floor but it doesn’t do my shaggy carpet justice.

So, a couple of months ago I invested a little less than $40 on a red Dirt Devil from Wal-Mart. After vacuuming my tiny living room and even tinier hallway, the stupid thing overheated. I didn’t know if it was because there was so much left over lint that the little hand vac couldn’t handle hiding in my shag, or if my new vacuum was going to overheat with every use.

I kept it and a week later it overheated again. I was too lazy to find my receipt, clean it out and take it back to the store. So now I do what I call “race vacuuming.” I prep my rooms — making sure I’m not going to accidentally suck up a toy gun or lizard or something — plug the vacuum in, and run. More often than not, I can vacuum my small upstairs before it overheats. If it does overheat before I’m done, I unplug it, wait 30 minutes then start vacuum racing again.

I don’t know how long I’m going to put up with this temperamental machine.

I had an amateur vacuum saleswoman spend two hours one night trying to sell me a $3,000 vacuum. Do I seriously have to spend that much to get a decent machine? I absolutely refuse to spend more on a vacuum than I did on one of my vehicles. You’d think for $3,000 it would do much more than just vacuum. Gosh for that much it better be able to prepare and cook my dinner too.

Maybe I’ll have to invest more than $40 on a decent sucking machine, but I’m not going near the $3,000 mark. For now, because I am cheap, I’ll stick with the race vacuuming. At least I’m getting a workout while cleaning.