How Three Tiny Nerd Candies Got Me a New Vacuum Cleaner

Welcome to 2021, my friends!

For my first blog entry of 2021, I thought I’d share a funny story that is sort of at my own expense. I’ve found it’s best to stick to that sort of tale to avoid angry phone calls or emails… Haha!

Sometimes I can be a little oblivious to my surroundings. It is true. This is how my brain works. I am that rare woman who finds it necessary to focus on only one thing at a time. Sometimes this leads to an extreme form of tunnel vision.

Yesterday my mission was this: Operation Unpack All My Suitcases

All four boys had already full unpacked because they had to do so before they could go play.

Alan was also completely unpacked because he is Alan. He hates to pack and waits until five minutes before time to go to do so, but when UNpacking, he is the speediest.

Me, I can do some serious unpacking procrastination, but not this time. It was day one from the road trip, and I was all in. I had three suitcases to unpack: my clothes suitcase, my extra stuff suitcase, and the Christmas present suitcase. All were packed to bursting with Christmas galore.

The first suitcase was the present suitcase, and I was halfway through it.

I came to the stack of Christmas stockings. Each one had a few things left in the bottoms. In dismay, I realized that our youngest two boys had about 100 tiny Nerd candies in the bottom of theirs, no longer in any kind of box. There was not even a box in the stocking. Just loose Nerds–who does that!?

Being the thrifty, non germ-phobe that I am, I decided to pour these Nerds into a sandwich bag. Why waste good candy?

As I was doing the pouring, about three or four individual tiny Nerds escaped onto the carpet. Drat.

I decided the floor must be vacuumed promptly so that these candies didn’t end up smooshed in the carpet, eventually turning into brightly colored stains. So like any good, logical housekeeper, I trudged downstairs and retrieved our vacuum cleaner from the coat closet.

The Kirby

Our vacuum is a heavy eleven-year-old upright Kirby. It still has excellent suction, but it has caused me several different problems in recent months:

1.) It weighs so much it is hard to lug up and down the stairs. With six people at home 24/7 this year, this is a significant issue.

2.) The Neutral/Drive switch jammed. Alan took apart the vaccum and fixed it for me.

3.) But then the on and off switch actually broke. It can no longer be turned off. You have to unplug it to turn it off.

4.) Did I mention it is heavy? Also it smells like dirt, so I have to spray the carpet with essential oils each time I use it.

I just don’t love my vacuum anymore, obviously, but it does still work.

Ignored Warning Signs….

I noticed that in front of the vacuum there were big dirt smudges. See, I’m not always totally unobservant. I shrugged it off and hauled Kirby on up the stairs.

Usually, I stop to check and see if the bag is full before I start vacuuming, but I wanted to get back to unpacking my suitcase, so I decided to skip it. Mentally, I criticized myself even then for skipping this step, but I forged on nonetheless.

As soon as I turned it on, I noticed the air in the room seemed to be filling with dust. What in the world? This I also shrugged off and kept on going. It seemed like some dirt was just getting blown around and there was more dust than usual, but that served to only make me vacuum harder.

Once I finished vacuuming my room, I unplugged the vacuum, and shook my head at this monstrous machine. I was sneezing. This was ridiculous. The old thing needed to be replaced soon!

I got out my Flonase nose spray and then popped a Claritin. I didn’t know why the air was full of dust, but I did know I would end up sick if I did not manage my reaction to it.

John David was in his room across the hall. He called me in there, and that’s when I looked down at the hallway behind me!

OOPS!!

The entire hallway, which is thankfully hard wood floor and not carpet, was covered in hair, dirt, and dust bunnies. It was dirtier than the floor under an old sofa. “What in the world??? John David, look at what this old vacuum cleaner did. Man, what is wrong with this thing? It was blowing everything out from behind the whole time I was cleaning. Gross.”

Clean up from the clean up

So then I had to go downstairs and grab my Deebot. That is the robot vacuum I bought this fall. I love that thing, but it cannot handle thick carpet. It handles hard woods expertly though. I had to clean all my (constantly shedding) red hair out of the brushes, and then I set the Deebot to work on cleaning up the hallway and hall bathroom from the massive vacuum cleaner incident.

Now most people would stop and wonder why that dust explosion happened and stop to examine the offending vacuum cleaner.

But I am not most people. Ha!! This was my chance at a new machine, and even Alan would surely see that!

I hopped right online, researched the best bagless upright vacs of 2020, picked one, and ordered it, all in less than ten minutes. I may be oblivious, but I can be very decisive.

Next, I finished unpacking all three of my suitcases. Feeling all sorts of accomplished, I headed on downstairs, where I forgot all about the vacuum cleaner until I told Alan about it a few hours later.

We all sat down to eat dinner, and I literally brought a list of things to talk to Alan and the boys about. At the very top of the list was this story.

I did not get halfway through my story when Alan said, “There was no bag in the vacuum cleaner.”

“Huh???”

“It was not even zipped shut! You didn’t notice?”

Oh.

Well, that does explain the whole back blast thing.

I defended my purchase anyway. My new one will be lighter and easier to carry.

Later I came back upstairs and looked for myself. Sure enough, the vacuum bag compartment was wide open with no bag at all inside. I shook my head at myself. How did I never even notice? Why didn’t I even look?

So in conclusion, don’t ignore your conscience when it tells you not to take shortcuts, like skipping checking the bag.

And if you ever need to borrow a vacuum cleaner, I guess you should come see me because I now own several. haha! We will just call it my New Year’s present to myself.

We hope you all had a jolly Christmas. It has been a long time since our world was this ready for a NEW year. I hope your 2021 is off to a wonderful start.