A vacuum cleaner blog??!!

Seriously! Who writes blogs about vacuum cleaners?! Well why not?! Here goes!

When I arrived in the UK with my husband and daughter, we brought no furniture or appliances with us; no lounge suite, no beds, no fridge, no microwave, in fact the only electrical ‘appliance’ we brought in our suitcase was the DVD player which had been a gift from our son the previous Christmas.

So the settling-in period consisted of living in a minimally furnished house while shopping around for all the necessities, including crockery, cutlery, cookware, bedding etc.  Yes, it was fun buying all new stuff, despite the frequent frustrations with the ‘no-credit-record’ status and long delivery waits for furniture!

The house was furnished more or less as you’d find self-catering holiday accommodation and it did include a vacuum cleaner – what make it was I really can’t remember, but I do remember it was totally and utterly useless in performing the job it was manufactured to do!

So one fine Valentine’s day hubby rushed off to the nearest supermarket and brought home a ‘compact’ Durabrand-CB9191-D bagless-canister-vacuum-with-cyclone-function vacuum cleaner. It was small, it did a better job than the one provided in the house, but boy, did it whine as it was switched off! But it got up the dirt, or at least some of it.

However, I moaned so much (there was much to moan about in those early days!), that a friend gave me her ‘old’ Dyson DC02 cylinder cleaner: ‘The world's first bagless cylinder vacuum’ launched in 1997. Everyone knows that Dyson’s claim is that there is ‘no loss of suction’ due to the ‘Root Cyclone^Tm Technology.’  I don’t know when my friend bought her Dyson DC02 but it certainly worked well for me for the next five years.

Unfortunately, just after replacing the filters (at a minimal cost of £5) and seeing an immense improvement in the pick-up, said Dyson DC02 went up in smoke! Literally! It made a last screech for help as it sat on the stairs (after toppling over which may have had something to do with its demise) and then went ‘POP!’ and pathetic cloudlets of smoke hid its shame! Obviously that was the end of Dyson DC02 and I had to revert to the Durabrand CB.

The Durabrand’s inefficiency and high pitched whining very soon sent me on an investigative surf of the net looking for a Dyson on Freecycle or E-Bay, but there was nothing worth following up. So a few deep breaths later having persuaded ourselves that it was worth paying the price for the Dyson, we walked out of Argos (at a deal price!) with the black box containing the Dyson DC19dB – ‘a new cylinder vacuum cleaner re-engineered for high dust and dirt removal on every floor type – not just carpets. DC19dB has a new motor and sound absorbing materials for reduced noise levels!’ Plus all the usual Dyson claims of picking up pet hair – an important consideration.

A month on and I love my Dyson! It’s small enough to store and easy to use! Except on loose flooring like lino or bathmats! The little DC19 is so tenacious it doesn’t let go of anything loose! There is a release-suction button on the handle, but I wish I didn’t have to use it! It certainly does what it promises and the knowledge that it’s done a good job overrides the guilt at seeing how much dust and dog hairs are in the see-through canister!

So here’s to past vacuum cleaners – the Electrolux - nothing sucks like Electrolux – while my children were growing up, the one that picks up both wet and dry; and the Vorwerk - quality since 1883 – another ‘pre-loved’ upright cleaner from a friend and another appliance we left behind. And here’s to the newcomer and household employee – Dyson DC19dB!

(See, I knew I could write a blog on vacuum cleaners!)