Mojo

I have bad vacuum mojo.

It's true. In all my adult years I've never had a great vacuum.

My first vacuum was a hand-me-down from a friend whose parents ran a hotel. It was an outcast upright on the way to the the salvation army she grabbed for me to help me furnish my apartment. It was avocado green, of course, and left black streaks on the pink/blue/green/brown/calico carpet of my basement apartment. It sucked well enough, but if you ran it too long the belt overheated and rubbed rubber stains onto the carpet.

When I got married my husband and I purchased with money given to our wedding registry, a nice hoover canister vacuum. It was small, lightweight, and good at sucking up dirt out of the crevices of our car, but inconvenient for taking up and down our flight of stairs to get rid of the cat hair that populated our apartment.

My next vacuum was purchased when we bought our first house in NY. It was a special blue bagless number with a pricey filter. While it sucked well enough, it was a bit heavy, and I couldn't stand to see the filter full the dirt and allergens it was supposed to keep from recirculating into the air, so each month I'd heft out another fifty bucks and throw the offending filter away. It was an endless cycle, and I discovered I was throwing so much money away on filters that I might as well be buying new vacuums every 3 months.

Then came the Dyson.

I didn't actually ever own a Dyson, but was taken with the "filter-free" talk on the commercials and jumped at the opportunity to borrow one from a friend when my previous vacuum hit the dust.

The Dyson seemed great, if a bit cumbersome, and I happily lugged the sucker up and down three flights of stairs for the two weeks I borrowed it. I planned to buy one as soon as we moved stateside. Sadly, I saw a morning news show that compared the Dyson to both bagless and regular vacuums of various varieties and was shocked to see that it didn't get nearly as many muffin crumbs off the ground as its competitors. there went my dreams of the perfect vacuum.

Since moving to California I've purchased the Hoover Windtunnel™ Deluxe Canister Vacuum. It was cheap, seemed like it would do the job and was not as heavy as the alternatives. But, naturally I have the buyers remorse. It's heavy, grunts like a pig when it rounds corners, and I don't like having to cram the various parts--especially the long cord, into my coat closet. It also leaves black marks on the walls and trim each time I push it to close in an attempt to get the very edge of the carpet.

I've been telling myself that I'll buy a new vacuum when we buy a house, but I'm not sure I can wait that long. I mean, I vacuum nearly every day and each time I see my current vacuum I get really irritated. So, if you've got a great vacuum you can recommend let me know. Till then I'll be cursing the scuff marks.