Even occasional knitblog readers know about Stephanie’s feelings for Mr. Washie. I would like to go on record here as having the same feelings toward my vacuum cleaner. If I were a shameless plagiarist I’d call it Mr. Suckie, but I’m not, so it will henceforth be referred to a My Favorite Household Appliance That Can Be Used In Front Of The Children, MFHATCBUIFOTC, for short.
(I will, however, shamelessly rip off her idea of affection for a household applicance. Anyone who has ever loved a tool will understand.)
Another of my internal conflicts, besides the left brain-right brain thing, is that I detest dirt and mess but am a lazy housekeeper. There are so, so many other more interesting things to do with my time* than scrubbing the bathroom or dusting the end tables (dusting? who am I kidding – I haven’t dusted in years) or washing the windows (washing windows? ditto). Every so often I get a bug up my butt a burst of cleaning energy and get rid of some dirt and/or clutter, but it doesn’t happen more than a few times a year, if that. Hence, my house is dirty. Disgustingly dirty. My mother, may she rest in unknowing peace, would Be Appalled.
I didn’t used to be so bad. When my older son was a baby I used to vacuum and dust and be all domestic goddess with him in a backpack. Later, I had a woman that came in every other week and cleaned my house until it shone. Then, in 1999, we moved. We started a major remodel and addition in 2000 but ran out of steam (and money) a couple of years later. The addition is pretty much totally done, but the pre-existing house has bare studs here and cracked plaster there and a distinct lack of electrical outlets in the area where there used to be a wall. We didn’t plan that the project would end up taking as long as it has (duh. Who in their right mind would actually plan such a thing?), so for the longest time I didn’t do much cleaning because “that carpet is going to go anyway” and “I’ll wash the windows when they are ALL installed.” And so forth.
Then, in early 2005 I got a job offer that was too good to refuse but which meant that I spent the majority of the next 1-1/2 years living most or all of each week in Minneapolis and coming home only on weekends. Smokey's work life was pretty much the same, except that he worked weekends and was home mid-week. There was absolutely no way either one of us was going to spend our little time at home cleaning. So the house went from bad-but-bearable to abominable.
The tidy side of me, small though it may be, finally stood up on its hind legs and demanded that I Do Something about the mess and clutter and general degradation that surrounds us. (It helped that the job is seasonal and ended in mid-August. Since then I have been working 20 hr/wk at the county library, which is 15 minutes from my house, blessedly giving me more time at home.) I have cleaned the kitchen – although not the refrigerator; that will demand greater courage than I have yet mustered – and our bedroom and bits and pieces elsewhere. But this weekend was major. Major, I say. This weekend Matthew and I steam-cleaned the carpets.
(If I were a really good blogger, I would have action photos here. Bad blogger = no action photos.)
We have 2 dogs and 3 cats and pretty much every one of them on occasion loses all notion of where it is supposed to relieve itself. Hence, the, er, fragrance that informs everyone who chances to walk in the front door that we have pets. We clean up the mess(es), maybe douse that bit of carpet with some Simple Solution or Nature’s Miracle, and call it good enough. But the situation had gotten out of hand in the past few months. There were a couple places in the house that I just didn’t venture into any more. Too nasty.
One such place, in the dining room: the Corner of Disgust.
(Note the raw window edges, the orange countertop, the 1976 shag carpet. Someday... it will all be better.)
But that is behind us now. We rented a carpet steamer, paid the extra $5 (five bucks! I love small town prices!) for the Super Scrubber head, and Matthew took care of the disgustingness that were our carpets. I organized the project, supervised, moved stuff out of the way, vacuumed, vacuumed some more, vacuumed again, told Matthew what a good job he was doing, sniffed around for any missed spots, and now… we can breathe somewhat more easily. Next I need to douse, nay, saturate the offending areas with the enzyme stuff I mentioned, and when it all dries the ambience will be greatly improved, maybe even good enough to permit nonfamily members into the house. Andrew is coming home for Thanksgiving; now he will be able to get to his room without a gas mask.
This is the magic stuff that is going to make the dining room habitable again. At least, we hope it will -- when I looked at the instructions just before using it but after the carpet steaming was done, I read,"Do not shampoo carpet before using Urine Gone! Shampooing will inhibit the action of the enzymes" or some such nonsense. We shall see. I bet it will work anyway.
Anyway. I started to tell you about MFHATCBUIFOTC. Here he is, in all his humble and dusty glory:
This thing is amazing. I bought it about 10 years ago when the Eureka canister vac that I had inherited from my mother in 1984 finally bit the dust. This Hoover was the first new vacuum I had ever owned. I studied Consumer Reports and bought the one they rated highest for households with pets.
My favoritest thing about it is this:
When MFHATCBUIFOTC starts, the light is generally red. That means that it is sucking up dirt and that the operator – that’s me – should keep going over that area of floor. Soon the green light starts to come on occasionally, then more often, and eventually the red light stops lighting and the green one is on all the time. That means that area is clean, baby, clean. I think there must be a sensor or an electric eye that monitors the dirt path inside the vacuum; if the beam is obstructed at all by dirt or hair going past, the red light comes on, and when the air being sucked through the tube is clear, the green light is lit. The whole thing is such a visual payoff. I love it. It tells me first, that my carpet is dirty (yeah, like I didn’t know that), then that it’s gradually getting cleaner, and finally, wah-lah! green and clean.
A few years back I was using the MFHATCBUIFOTC hose and wand to clean the cobwebs out of the corners of the bathroom ceiling. The wand separated from the hose, the hose fell into the toilet, and the toilet water was sucked into MFHATCBUIFOTC. Eeek! I turned it off as quickly as I could, but it was too late and the damage was done. I ended up having to replace the motor, which was so expensive it would probably have made more sense to buy a new vacuum. But I didn’t know that when I began the repair quest; I just knew I wanted MFHATCBUIFOTC to work again. Vacuum-cleaner manufacturers have probably improved the design and
performance of their machines in the past ten years, but I’m not
interested. MFHATCBUIFOTC and I are together for the long haul.
* My theory is that one of the reasons that women were not allowed first-rate educations until relatively recently is the patriarchy's fear that once they discovered the magic of readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic, they would become less interested in the delights of domestic duties. I mean, really, once you have learned the joys of Plutarch and Nora Roberts and the differential equation, who wants to scrub the toilet?
