Friday, March 27, 2015

We have a musician as a house guest this weekend. His show will be at one of the local halls, but he will be overnighting at our place. So that meant the house had to be cleaned and beds prepared.

When we moved in I was so excited to have a built-in vacuum. Over the years though I was less enamoured with its performance. It worked well on bare floors, but the rugs were a nightmare to get clean (and you know how those threads stick to your socks and then get transferred to the carpets). The power head was a waste of time and a huge source of frustration so I made do with the bare floor tool even on the rugs.

About two weeks ago the Electrolux salesman was in Powell River and we had him stop by to see what we could do. He was in town a year ago but his timing didn’t work out with our timing. Even though it was the day before the quilt show I made sure I was home to have a chat with him. We ordered new parts for our machine and they arrived over a week ago.

Finally, today, I pulled everything out of the box and started putting it together. After three tries to get the hose cover on the hose I was ready to go. I had the beds stripped so I vacuumed the mattresses – something that we have a handy new tool for. The next test was on the threads that were on the rugs. We put on the power head and started it up and were disappointed that it didn’t work. Pat did a bit of fiddling but it was apparent the power wasn’t getting to the head as the handy light on the front wasn’t even shining.

We had replaced one of our wall plugs a few years ago in an attempt to get the system to work better. Pat suggested trying it in the other plug; it very definitely snapped into place unlike when we put it in the other plug. I started it up again and … my goodness it works like a charm. I could hardly wait to get all the carpets done; it takes only seconds to do the area rugs as opposed to minutes with the old system. I used the tool for the bare floors and it works well in both the old and the new plug so I’ll be able to reach both up and down the stairs.

I’ve scrubbed all the floors, cleaned all the bathrooms and both Pat and I did some grocery shopping. The fridge is stocked with beer and wine, the beds are all made, and the dusting is done. The laundry is done except for the drying so I think we’re set.

At the end of a day of cleaning though, even with a new vacuum, my hips, elbows and back are still all aching!