Running with Scissors

Sara Peterson-Davis has worked as a newspaper researcher and reporter, as well as a communications director and consultant. She and her husband, Monty Davis, can be found in Liberty, Mo., keeping their two children from running with scissors. Contact Sara

It Really Sucks

by Sara Peterson-Davis

Yesterday morning I was sitting in my dining room sipping my morning’s first cup of caffeine, when I happened to look at my carpet.

I try not to do this very often for a couple of reasons. First, our carpet is about a year past its freshness date. Second, I don’t like to see that it’s time to vacuum once again.

If there is one household chore I truly hate, it’s vacuuming the carpet. Oh, there are worse things like emptying the litter box or reaching down into the garbage disposal barehanded, but for shear mind-numbing drudgery vacuuming wins hands down.

There’s nothing like dragging 10 pounds of screaming electrified plastic around the living room to make me remember that I forgot to check the dog for ticks. If truth were told, I loath vacuuming because it never lasts. Five minutes after I’m finished, someone –usually me- walks through the room and the party’s over. The carpet is flat and the dirt and debris have begun to fall and resurface once again.

So like everyone these days, I decided to turn to the Internet for answers. Seems there’s a website for everything these days, and I hoped there would be one that would help me tolerate vacuuming a little better.

The first site I landed on was About.com. It furnished me with a video featuring Jennifer DeCristofano, a get-to-it gal in hiking boots and corduroys who broke vacuuming down into a few simple, easy steps.

Step 1: Pick up debris. Sorry, no can do. Seeing if the vacuum can suck up a sock is the only entertainment I get from Hoovering.

Step 2: Check vacuum cleaner bag to make sure it’s not full. You need to check it and possibly change it?

Step 3: Check underside of vacuum to make sure nothing is caught in bristles. We’re not transporting toxic waste or small children here, why do I have to check underneath my machine.

Step 4: Use a knife or screwdriver to loosen anything tangled in the bristles. In my house that’s a perfect way to lose an eye.

Step 5: Plug in vacuum and turn on. Finally.

Step 6: Go in a mostly forward direction and use overlapping brush strokes.I could see this little tutorial still required me to push the vacuum around the house.

How disappointing.

Another website – wikiHow.com – suggested starting out by buying an expensive vacuum. Evidently, by their standards my $5 garage sale special isn’t cut out for the optimal vacuum experience.

According to HouseKeeping-Channel.com “Most people just go over the carpet as quickly as possible and then throw the vacuum back in the closet.” They write that like it’s a bad thing?

BestMaidServices.net reports “the common W pattern that most people use is very inefficient…what you want to do is expose all of the carpet to the backwards stroke.”

Evidently, the vacuuming world’s think tanks need to summit and work out this forward or backstroke controversy, as well as the “W” pattern fallacy.

After those several minutes of research, I’ve come up with a plan. I’m going to see if they make riding vacuum cleaners featuring forward and reverse gears, a bag capacity indicator light and the suction capacity to pick up all the socks I care to run over.

If that doesn’t pan out, I’m checking into hardwood floors.

Now that definitely wouldn’t suck.

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