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Wednesday, January 12, 2000
By Samantha Bennett
For someone who cleans as negligently as I do, I have an amazingly cutting-edge new vacuum cleaner. I just bought it, after being educated by an article I read right here in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and I am able to boast that it is, for the money, one of the most powerful and high-tech available. It has a big motor. It has swivel casters for increased maneuverability. It has a "Power Edger" attachment. It even has a headlight.
I am afraid of it.
I now fully understand why cats always run away and hide under the bed when the vacuum cleaner is switched on. The first time I fired this sucker up, I could hardly stand to be in the same room with it. This has to be the only household appliance on the market with a Pratt & Whitney engine.
True, my old vacuum was fairly noisy, but it was too simple to be intimidating. It was kind of like my mom's Hoover, which is about as old as I am and runs better. Motor, carpet-height setting, basic attachments, bag.
But mine wasn't as durable as Mom's, and it began to emit a burning smell, which I recognized as a bad sign. So what if I have only two smallish area rugs in my apartment that need vacuuming? It's the year 2000. Time to upgrade to the newest in vacuum technology. Even if I end up with something that looks and sounds like some kind of alien military assault craft.
You like filters? Boy, this baby's got filters. Several of them, including one that takes, like, 98 percent of all the allergens out of the air. How cool is that, huh? Pretty cool. It would probably be even cooler if I had allergies. It's sort of wasted on me, but I will be proud to inform guests they will remain unpollinated in my home.
This vacuum has a lot of nice attachments, though I doubt I will ever have the presence of mind to use them.
The second I hit the "on" switch, I can't wait to turn the thing off. I can't think with that much hurricane-force roaring going on, not to mention the feeling I am wielding a piece of machinery as potentially dangerous as a chain saw or even a backhoe. Watch for coins and paper clips! Watch for electrical cords and rug fringe! And keep extremities, pets and small children well away! In the midst of this deafening, barely-controlled rampage, who can ponder, "Hmmm, now, what would work better right here -- the Power Edger or the crevice tool?"
(I have never in my life used a crevice tool. It just sounds too unpleasant. I prefer not to think about the contents of crevices.)
And then there are the pile settings. You want pile settings? There are seven. From thick carpet to bare floor. Of course, mastering them may take some practice. I had the dial set to medium-low for my bedroom rug, and when I finished that I figured I'd go around the edges of the room and get the bare floor clean too. Save myself dust-mopping.
So I pull the vacuum cleaner onto a big patch of bare floor, turn the dial, and off some dust-bunnies. It's going great! Until I want to move to the next patch of bare floor and try to drag the vacuum over a corner of rug to get there. Suddenly, it's stuck. For a moment there, it was touch and go. I actually wondered if it might suck the whole rug into its tank, or at least pull out all the fibers and leave a big bald patch.
The tank is the major selling point of this particular vacuum cleaner, but I have mixed feelings about it. There are no bags to change, which is terrific. Instead, there is a clear plastic tank, which makes the whole apparatus look sort of like a rolling, upright food processor. When I first put it together, I wasn't sure whether I should clean my rugs or throw in a few cans of chick peas and make hummus.
You can see when to empty the tank, and the owner's manual assures me that even this will be a quick, easy and dust-free process that I can perform wearing a pretty dress and pearls like Donna Reed.
But my reservation about this miraculous modern innovation is that, while bags were inconvenient partly because you couldn't see what was in them, uh, you couldn't see what was in them. What I have now is -- and keep in mind here that I don't have a closet in which to keep my vacuum cleaner -- a display case for big gobs of lint, hair, dead spiders and who knows what.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Samantha Bennett can be reached by e-mail at sbennett@post-gazette.com.