Never a dull moment...even while vacuum cleaner shopping

This blog is all about the ordinary things of our lives, so please excuse me if I rave about my new vacuum cleaner for a moment. 


It's been more than 10 years since we bought a new vacuum cleaner and the old was one showing some wear and tear. I guess that is particularly because it is dragged out nightly by our boys to vacuum the dining room (one of their regular jobs).  The head was attached to the pipe by masking tape because it kept falling off. That made it pretty much impossible to change the attachment to do corners or narrow ledges. Everything else, except a retracting issue with the cord (it automatically retracts to minimum length, which means you're always pulling against the cord and sometimes out of the wall).


Then someone gave us their old machine when they left last year. We took it sight unseen, it works fine except that the hard pipe doesn't have a length adjustment. It is either too long or too short for me (depending on whether or not you include the extra bit of pipe) and is intensely annoying to use.


So, we finally decided to buy a new one. The last couple of times we've looked I was pretty annoyed, because the only vacuum cleaners on display in their fullness (i.e. with hoses and heads attached) were the top-of-the-range ones. That is, the ones that were out of our league, up around $AU500 or $AU600. Ouch! The other thing that annoys me about many of these higher ranger versions is that they are quite heavy, at least their heads are. I am vacuuming stairs here and my wrists aren't the strongest around. I don't want to be hauling around a heavy cleaner.


The cheaper ones only had the main motor bit and the heads. You can only get so much information from that, so then it is on to the Japanese literature that describes all the wonderful features of their many models. And, if you read yesterday's post, you'll recall we're trying to do all of this while the boys roam around the shop seeing M-rated movies and causing alarms to go off in the camera department. Shopping for significant purchases is never without its hairy moments in our family.


But yesterday we did finally pick a lower (but not lowest) range version. At almost the last moment we decided to go up one model in the range we were looking at and I'm so glad we did, because it came with this amazing attachment. Not only is this extra attachment very flexible (many angles are possible), it is thin, so I can vacuum between the oven and the bench (US=counter) for the first time. Plus, it extends 155cm from the handle (~5 feet). So I have amazing reach with it.

Hard to see, but there is a horizontal ledge up
there. My son quickly took care of that.

Our old Japanese house has ledges all over the place, and in the most inaccessible places. Using this extension we've already removed dust that has been there a long time. Walls and ceilings can be vacuumed without a ladder, even by someone who is only 1.56m tall.


My husband is looking forward to a cleaner house for a week or two (he knows me too well!).

My 12 y.o. vacuuming the tops of the blades of
the fan in the kitchen.