Since I was sick week before last, we canceled the regular twice-monthly housecleaning service and deferred it to this Wednesday. Which means that in addition to more than the usual amount of clutter, there was a lot of stuff on the carpet and dirt in the front hall and a huge number of dustbunny-type junk in the upstairs bedroom.

It takes a while for my completely dormant housekeeping skilz to stir themselves, but today I’d finally had enough of looking at dusty margins and clumps of cat hair on the carpet, so I got out the vacuum cleaner. Fairly quickly, I realized why we rarely use it; it has a tendency to get clogged with pet and people hair (I have long hair, and I shed year-round; this wraps around dust bunnies like you wouldn’t believe).

There are few things in life more messy, and more satisfying to the soul, than unclogging a vacuum cleaner. I happen to be rather good at it, if I do say so myself. There is the proper sort of wire hanger to be selected, unbent, and straightened with a short little “L-shaped” crook at the end. It has to be fed down the flexible tube of the vacuum cleaner, which is an upright model with a flexible hose for use with attachments. Then there’s the rotating of the wire, in the hope that it’ll snag on the obstruction far down in the tube (this is where my having long hair pays off in the end). And then there’s the payoff, when the wire is slowly drawn out of the tube, pulling along a grey, mouselike blob of dust, pet hair, Ginny hair, bits of fluff, and other scrudimentia.

Today, I yanked several rat’s nests worth out of the vacuum, until I was able to pull the wire straight through and make sure that I’d gotten it all. The dust trap thing is a plastic compartment that snaps in and out, so that got emptied (and with it out, I could pull the wire through from the top). All gone, tossed out in the garbage in the garage already.

The vacuum was barely stirring the dust before, but it really sucks now! Wheee!
I admit that I’m kind of interested in getting a Dyson, because this clogging problem will just keep happening.