I'm in love with a vacuum cleaner and my god, every time we are together, I feel my heart triple in size and I want to dance and sing and giggle.
My four month old Julian is furiously working on rolling over and his plans for global domination. He will probably be crawling in two months. You know what that means? It means I'm fucked. Totally and completely fucked. Because my three year old Pippa is a tornado who whirls around the house leaving behind a trail of glitter, graham cracker crumbs and stale Cheerios. And in two months, Julian will be crawling after Pippa and eating anything and everything left in her wake.
As a second time mom, I am much more relaxed with Julian than I was with Pippa. But I do not relish the idea of my baby eating petrified Cheerios off a dirty floor. So I started waging a war against dirty floors. And almost immediately, I started losing the war against dirty floors.
Until now!
A hero has arrived, from distant lands, to bolster my troops and strike fear into my enemy. Her name is the Hoover Linx Cordless Stick Vacuum Cleaner, and she is glorious.
How did I not know about cordless vacuums? I assumed that in my war against crumbs, my weapons were limited to (1) my clunky clunk of a clunker vacuum with its annoying cord, (2) my dust buster, and (3) my broom.
I like sweeping. It's a sort of walking meditation for me. But sweeping is slow and inefficient. Especially when a thirty pound child is wrapped around your leg.
The dust buster is in theory very helpful. In practice, it sucks. Too much bending. I spend all day bending. I bend to pick up the baby. I bend to pick up the three year old. I bend to pick up their toys. I bend to pick up my diaper bag. By 9 a.m., I have bent over so many times, I cannot bend anymore. Yet I keep bending. I'm a mom. It's part of the job description. If I bend over to use the dust buster, I am courting disaster.
I thought nothing could help me win the war against filth. But then a matchmaker (my mom) introduced me to the new love of my life: my new cordless vacuum. Oh my new vacuum! Just typing those words makes me giddy. It is one of the best things I have ever bought. I love it so much. It is light and easy to maneuver around the house. It has the power of my clunky clunk vacuum but the grace of a swan. It is as meditative and satisfying as sweeping but as efficient as a traditional vacuum. AND IT DOES NOT HAVE A CORD. I do not have to lug it around the house because it is light and slender and oh so fair. I do not have to plug it into an outlet and then tromp back to unplug it and replug it in a different outlet when I want to clean another room. I just breeze through the house, la la la, sucking up all the dirt and glitter.
I have heard it said that money can't buy happiness. Whoever said that has clearly never met my new cordless vacuum.
