Vacuum vacation

Many of you might have gathered from hints in previous posts that I do not much enjoy cleaning. Who does, really? I like to have a clean house, but mine is usually more on the tidy-but-not-entirely-clean spectrum. A quick swipe of the toilet bowl and rim, a paper towel to the sink, ready for company!

Then there is vacuuming. I don't care what vacuum you use, I have never found one that doesn't kill your back. My vacuum is a relic from the 80's that I bought from the "Vacuum Doctor" for $40 back when I moved into my first apartment. Does it say anything that I am still working my way thru the bag of vacuum bags I initially bought with it? And no, I don't empty and re-use them. I just vacuum that seldom.

Much as I don't enjoy it, at least vacuuming is satisfying in the way that picking a scab is satisfying (yes, I am one of "those" people) . . . I do it so infrequently that it is gratifying to see the giant hand size fuzzies get sucked up the hose.

At any rate, it was with pleasure that I loaned my vacuum cleaner to a friend several weeks ago. Finally, I could not vacuum guilt-free! And when by chance we didn't end up seeing each other until today, I got to not vacuum for two weeks. And I won't tell you how long it had been since the last time I actually used it . . . mostly because it was so long ago I can't remember.

So when my mom came over to babysit and I was scooping up a couple of obvious dust bunnies, I could just say that I loaned it out. And when a friend came over to cook and my kitchen was a bit grimy (though tidy!) I told her my friend's was broken and I had given her mine as a loaner.

What I didn't realize until I had made the loan is that I actually sounded kind of noble . . . "Well, of course I would have a clean house but my poor friend was in desperate need of a vacuum, so how could I say no?"

When I did get my vacuum back today, I decided it was finally time to actually use the thing. I vacuumed my house from top to bottom, cleaning up dust bunnies that had spawned generations of children. I even changed the bag (!!!) which was of course only full because my friend is the clean type. (She actually said since she got her vacuum back from the repair shop she had been using mine upstairs and hers downstairs. What a woman! Her children will never be covered in living, breathing dust bunnies. Sophia might.)

Tomorrow I am going to hit the den. I scoured all the other rooms today, but saved the den for it's own day. I am in the middle of painting it, and when I moved the furniture out into the middle of the room realized it had been a while. As in my black pants were gray from sitting on the floor painting trim.

All that said, what I realized as I sailed around my house today sucking up grime is that I really haven't been so noble over the last two weeks, just lazy. Because what I had forgotten is that I too have an upstairs vacuum and a downstairs vacuum. My downstairs vacuum just happens to be in the basement, a cast-off from my mom (still works perfectly fine, but they didn't need it) that I have been saving for the day that the Vacuum Doctor special finally bites it.

So all this time I could have had a clean house. But it was really nice to have an excuse, so anyone want to borrow a couple of vacuum cleaners? I won't need mine again until 2011.