Our vacuum sucks!

And I'm certainly glad that it does!

Matt and I received our vacuum as a wedding present from his Nanny.  Unfortunately, it hasn't been working as well as I would like it to for a while.  It's a twin chamber bagless upright - a good vacuum - so I've been cleaning what I can on it, checking the brushes on the bottom, you name it, trying to figure out why it wasn't working at its initial power.

And I couldn't figure it out.

Then one day, I was walking around in Wal-Mart, looking at prices for a steam cleaner for the carpet (not buying one, but considering that the vacuum isn't doing such a hot job I wanted to see what options were out there for some deep cleaning action), and I stumbled across replacement filters.

Um, yeah.  We've had the vacuum for over ten and a half years and the filter has never been replaced.  I have cleaned the filter in various ways such as putting a bag around it and knocking it senseless on the ground and taking a cleaning toothbrush and 'brushing' it off, but replacing....never even crossed my mind.

So when I saw the filters, a lightbulb went off.  But of course, I couldn't buy one then, because I wasn't sure of which one I was supposed to get.  And I made a note to myself on my Blackberry.  Fast forward a month or so (I really wish I was kidding) and I finally remembered to check the specifics on the vacuum and put the information into my Blackberry note for the next time I was at Wal-mart.

Which was Monday.  So I replaced the filter.  And while I was at it, I rinsed out the HEPA filter, too.  And cleaned out the 'twin chambers'.

Who knew that a ten year old vacuum could look almost brand new?

Now that I've shattered any notion that I had it 'together' on the home front (as if anyone who reads this might think that anyway!), I just want to say....I'm really glad that my vacuum now sucks again!!