Who vaccuums in your house?
It's sure as hell not me. I get bored half way through a room and try to mix it up by vaccuuming another room, find I'm out of cord, swear, plug it in somewhere else, pull til the cord comes out the socket, swear, knock the vacuum cleaner against the wall, swear, wonder why the vaccuum sucks the floor that hard, swear.
So Jamie vaccuums. He's better at it. I mop. I"m better at shouting that he's putting wet footprints on the floor after I mop despite putting the damn mop leaning against the entrance to the kitchen. We all have our crosses to bear.
But dammit, there's gotta be an easier way. A stick vacuum? Expensive and the batteries risk obsolence. A robot vaccuum cleaner? Sounds good in theory but I've heard they send dramatic text messages to your app saying they're stuck at the edge of a cliff a.k.a rug. And bloody hell, you have to sell a kidney to afford one of those happy little guys. And yeah, that obsolence - parts no longer available, batteries running out.
As I was doing my research, a.k.a asking my sister who is a research queen and my son who has one, I was joking that Jamie is my robot vacuum cleaner, though he's running out of charge and he's getting a bit old now. To complete the joke, I searched for 'vacuuming' in the gazillion photos I have in Google Photos.
To find my late father vacuuming the kitchen drawers, on the floor, as you do.
Why I took the photo is beyond me. Perhaps I was sending it to Jamie to prove how great my parents are at cleaning. I mean, who pulls out the kitchen drawers to vacuum them?. At best, I tip them on the floor and my robot vaccum cleaner Jamie comes along to vaccuum it up.
When I sent it to Mum, she replied with a little love heart emoji and the words my vacuum cleaner. ❤️ It felt a little early to cry, and I had some messing up the kitchen floor to do.
Maybe we'll stick to the corded old school vacuum cleaner. It tells a story, after all, of impatience, of the roles we play to keep the house under control, of how my Mum gifted us their old one years ago and it's still going, about what husbands and wives do and don't do for a tidy house, about parents and their obsessively clean floors and me sweeping the kitchen into the corner where the crumbs stay all week til Jamie vacuums on a Friday.
Maybe a vacuum cleaner is about humanness.
Maybe automation is overrated.
In a world of AI replacing human jobs, of smart fridges and smart cars and AI voice controlled assistants and chatbots and menu planners and AI carebots for your elderly parents and automatic watering systems for the garden you are working too hard to have time to pay attention to and everything else you can think of, I wonder a lot about what removing human labour does for human meaning.
We perhaps forget what's important when we dream of a life being made easier by automated labour - the work is part of our stories. The crumbs I leave in the corner, the cord tugged from the wall, the arguments about wet socks and laundry going stinky in the machine - isn't this the messy beauty of a life connected to others? A robo vacuum can't roll it's eyes at you, volunteer to do the cooking because you're not feeling well, listen to your day and care. It can't turn an ordinary moment, like vacuuming drawers, into one that makes you laugh and cry in the same breath.
Maybe we don't need automatons that diligently and professionally clean floors, but the living, flawed, infuriatingly messy humans who endlessly make messes on them.
With Love,
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Our vacuum runs on battery but thankfully it still works after 3 years. I can't imagine having to use one with a plug... there's barely any outlets here lol.
Yeah that is one meticulous work!
Dad was a Virgo through and through. So is Mum but her floors have been dirtier since he died!!! I'm trying to talk her into getting a robo vac. She can afford it.
haha usually me! Funny as I mostly work from home and Mrs T goes to work, I seem to do the hoovering. But I love it as I treated myself to a Ninja Shark a couple of years ago and it is a fluffing beast! I mist admit we are not obsessed by clean floors or ceilings, cobwebs will be there for a while 🤣
A Ninja Shark?? So the shark vacuums? He he...
We have cobwebs too, made by delightful spiders that catch flies... Jamie is the kind of man that talks to the spiders and urges them out of the way so they don't get sucked up, hence . ... More webs!
A man that vacuums is alright by me.
Spiders are generally okay as long as they don't bite then I am not too fond of them lol
And that didn't make you instantly want to get one?! If I could, I'd get one just for the cryptic texts :))
Okay, went back to read the rest of it. I love you. How do you always write these brilliant things? I feel just the same - I was looking at fridges the other day, I've got an old one that's changed house more times than I have. Kept finding smart fridges and going 'well what the fuck does it do other than keep my food from spoiling'.
Too much automation is bad for you. I think the stick ones are supposed to be less demanding to use or some such. The little round robots seem like a hassle to me, we had them at my other yoga studio, when I did reception there, and they always got stuck, confused, tipped shit over, or just got wonky.
What's wrong with the vacuum as we know it?
Never cleaned inside drawers (but that picture is brilliant, it's just the thing that's worth preserving, in my opinion), though i do vacuum the deposit space under the bed about once a year and feel extremely fancy about it, with the mattress hovering menacingly and the space being all empty for a change xD
Just a genius. Can't help it.
Ice ice baby - that's all we need! It doesn't need to give me a pedicure!
I think I identify as a robovac...
Omg but where do dust bunnies come from??? Do you do that in your peasant gear? Because that's a nice image to go to sleep to now... Raaawwwwr.
I read the other day about beds killing people. No shit. Those hinged ones you lift up for storage. A woman had one slam on her neck. Her husband found her. Trapped by the bed. I mean, what??? Apparently it happens!!!
Oh god, that is my worst nightmare. Well, not the worst worst, but top 5 for sure. I always keep one hand on it when I open it - no idea if that would help. Also try to position myself so that on the offchance it does fall, it would break something non-essential like an arm or a leg. I thought I was crazy!
For you, baby, I could. wink wink
😜
Please don't die of bed or the plague!!!!!
I make no promises :))) But I shall try.
We have a robovac. She's called mopsy, because she also mops. She is very dramatic. But I too, love my old corded Dyson. Its over a decade old and wonderfully cathartic on the carpets.
The robo vac is still good for keeping the house generally clean, but the full vac is great for getting it spotless.
We dont own a mop. We have a steam mop. It too is corded, and it burns me everytime I use it.
The machines are already trying to take me down, just in subtle ways.
So I need two vacs??? I'll have to get out a second mortgage. And I'll STILL have to mop???? Fuck they do trick you don't they?? Like the smart fridges that can order shopping but won't go collect it. Harrumph.
You don't need a vac. You can get on your witchy broom and fly to the shops. We also have TWO, yes TWO hand vacs. One for picking up the cat litter, and one for everything else.
I am a little obsessed with clean and tidy house and redundancy in all things.
I use a sweeping brush and then hoover up the piles of dirt. My washing machine died last year and I stupidly left it to my brother to buy a replacement. Now I have a smart washing machine that will only work on Tuesdays and only if the sun is at the correct angle. Smart indeed!
Have you tried turning it on and off again?
☻
I don't mind vaccuminhg- with a broom, so much quieter and less cord to fuck around with...🤣
But when I do have to do a really good clean with a vacuum- which I don't atm, since I'm still in FNQ living in my van again....lol...
I do love my Bobby!
He's big, black, German specimen and only cost $200 in 2020- Bosch!
Bobby Bosch and best Vaccy I've ever had!
Where in FNQ are you? I cant imagine being in a van in the humidity.
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