About two weeks ago, our vacuum broke. For most people, this is probably not all that big of a deal, but here’s the thing: we have seven cats. So I figured that I’d do what I do for most appliances and buy a new one on Craigslist, but after half a dozen failed attempts, it finally hit me: I could go to the store and just buy a vacuum. It was a revelation.
So I shopped. Because I hate stores, I ended up shopping online, and eventually I found a vacuum that looked adequate and was available for local pickup from Best Buy. I love in-store pickup. You pay online, and then you just show up, they present you with whatever you’re buying, and you can walk out. You don’t have fight your way past the shoppers who just want to browse, slowly, in the middle of the aisle. You don’t have to try to compare things while you’re in the store, surrounded by loud, bright, and smell. All the bonuses of shopping online, none of the annoying waiting for things to be shipped. I wish that everywhere had in-store pickup. (Target, I’m looking at you.)
My new vacuum looks like this:
Anyhow, apparently I’ve turned into the sort of person who finds vacuums really, really exciting, because not only did I phone several friends and Twitter about my awesome new vacuum, I’m now blogging about it.
Seriously, though, this vacuum is amazing. It’s a Eureka Pet Lover Upright Bagless Vacuum in “mystic purple”, and it’s fantastic. I think that the carpet downstairs is cleaner than it’s been since we moved in. Two weeks, seven cats, and this picked up everything. It’s pretty small–when I brought it home, Nick thought that I’d lost my mind, buying a tiny baby vacuum–but it’s impressively powerful.
For all the reviews that comment that it has a small canister, I found it to be perfectly adequate. Two weeks of cat hair is a lot of cat hair, and I vacuumed the whole downstairs, but even so, I think that we could have easily done the upstairs as well, and then quite probably the downstairs again, too. You’re supposed to empty the canister every time you use the vacuum anyhow, so I don’t see that it’s likely to become problematic for us.
After the exciting vacuuming (did I mention that I finally got all of the spilled coffee grounds off of the kitchen floor? All of them! Even the ones that were basically inside the heating vent!) our friend Emily called to finalize our plans for tomorrow. The plans include her, plus a couple who lives nearby and went to school with Nick and Emily, but who I’ve never met. I ended up on the phone with the wife-half of the couple–who, again, I’ve never met–to figure out what she could and couldn’t eat, and ended up telling her all about my new vacuum. That’s right. “Hello, person I’ve never met, what shall we do for supper tomorrow? Also, I bought a vacuum!”
Hey, internet. I bought a vacuum.
When my vacuum finally dies, I shall check back with you to see how well this one has aged. But that’s pretty high praise, lady.
You win! And I think Amanda likes you, and little M. That vacuum is hot. You’ll be helping me on my next purchase too ;-)