I [Heart] Vacuum; Or, How Target Sucks-Up Damaged Goods

Vacuuming: no one enjoys it. No one rushes home from the office so that they can rev-up the Dirt Devil.  No one finds inner piece to the whine of a WindTunnel.  No one spends thousands on a Kirby or a Dyson because their heart speaks its name with helpless yearning.  No.  Not one person.  No one.  All of those commercials depicting women (ALL WOMEN, mind you!!) blissfully maneuvering their high-tech Hoovers with contentment in their eyes are complete crap.  Shameless propaganda.  The best you can say for vacuuming is that, given the proper equipment, it can be less annoying than usual.  I should know.  I have never possessed a decent vacuum cleaner in my entire life, and I have hated the practice with a passion.  Until recently.

            My long-term lack of decent vacuum may actually be linked to the fact that I’ve also spent most of my life on tile and linoleum floors where vacuums did little more than splatter your ankles with dirt-shrapnel.   That, and my distaste for the practice in general.  Really, any activity in which you mindlessly push and pull a heavy object back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, sucks.  The deafening racket of the motor doesn’t help, either.  Every living animal in the house runs for the hills, yet there you are, doggedly depressing the ON switch in quest of a cleaner carpet.  Perhaps you even get a sick joy out of Fido’s fear, since he’s 90% of the reason you are stuck there in the living room, sucking at life for the next 45 minutes. 

            Little wonder I thought it foolish to spend actual money on such a device.  Besides, for the first twenty-five years of my existence, I had only ever used whatever monstrosity came to hand.  Everywhere I went, someone had a vacuum, donated a vacuum, or abandoned one.  Clearly, vacuums were devalued objects that people couldn’t get rid of fast enough.  Why part with money to get one, if I could spend it on something cool, like toilet paper?

            My first actual vacuum was one of those lightweight, bagless Eureka Boss Mini things purchased by undergrads nationwide.  It cost $45 (I considered this highway robbery) and was a gift from my brother, Andy, who was visiting me in my new apartment in Tallahassee.  I had just moved up to begin my Master’s program, and he had missed my birthday.  I was twenty-five.  (It is also important to note here that my brother is awesome and considers it his personal mission to make me look cool to nerds the world over.  Historically, Andy has purchased just about every interesting item of cutting-edge technology that I have possessed – vacuum not included.  In exchange, I dress him.)

            The Eureka certainly lived up to my initial desires for vacuuming ease: it was, indeed, weightless, and I did not have to purchase bags for it.  But besides that, it was a waste of $45. Once my roommate’s boyfriend had used it to vacuum out his SUV without once emptying the canister, it was never the same.  Still, I resisted buying another.  I kept running that thing over and over and over the stubborn little bits of dirt, thinking: this time it had better suck that crap up.  But then I bent down, and picked up the bits myself. 

             This experience only reinforced my belief that vacuuming was evil, and when I moved into my townhouse and found an uglier, older, but slightly more effective vacuum abandoned there by the previous owner, I accepted it – relieved that no more precious funds need go down that drain.  This vacuum – let’s call him Big Red – weighed about twenty pounds and had a little light panel that went from red to green when the carpet was “clean” (in a manner of speaking).  It had bags, but I had learned to appreciate vacuum bags while choking on super-fine dust, trying to empty the Eureka’s filter.  Bags were okay.  But Big Red smelled faintly of rubber when switched on, and the chord was patched with electrical tape where someone had accidentally sucked it up (this person might have been me).  Vacuuming the stairs with Big Red was a genuine cardio workout – actually, you could break a sweat vacuuming anything with Big Red.  I used this vacuum for five years.

            Naturally, I vacuumed as rarely as possible.  This worked for me.  My common-room floors are tile.  So, for a long time, I could survive months without feeling a pressing need to fetch Big Red out of the closet.  But, since I also live in a stilt house, those tile floors turn into freezing slabs of ice in the winter, requiring me to cover most of them with gigantic jute rugs.  This added significantly to the total carpeted surface area in those rooms most likely to be seen by the public.  The library and bedroom were both carpeted, but I tended not to invite anyone into them.

            The more I found myself treading on strange particles, the more tolerance I had to build against the disgust-reflex common in such situations.  Walking in sand is the loveliest sensation imaginable, but for some reason, sand under your bare feet when you expect pristine smoothness is like nails on a chalkboard.  So, I learned to stop expecting pristine smoothness, or anything like it.

It does not help matters that, like most Yorkies, Pippin does not think it appropriate to eat her food all in one sitting at the bowl, but instead, selects mouthfuls at a time for consumption in various parts of the house.  Mainly, anywhere with carpeting.  Not a day goes buy without me stepping on kibble, cursing, and demanding that she come in here right now and eat this supper before it goes in the trash.  Dutifully, she comes, picks up the kibble, peers at me from under her wispy brows like a naughty child, and crunches it at my feet.   I sigh as the microscopic kibblets infiltrate the carpet.  At least she doesn’t shed.

Whenever the threat of guests finally forced me into vacuuming, of course, the process was lengthy and grueling.  My shoulders ached, my neck ached, my ears rang like broken bells.  Pippin would inevitably go into hiding, and I would wish I could be with her.  It got to the point where I swear I actually avoided cleaning, just because the mere thought of hauling Big Red out into the open made my back hurt.  Cleaning the house for my birthday dinner last month, after half a year of blissful filth, was a marathon of misery.

Once all of the guests were gone, I made a desperate pact with myself: I would NEVER let the house get dirty again.  I would wash every dish the moment the last crumb were eaten, I would sweep the floors the moment I noticed a spec of dirt, and finally, I would vacuum the rugs on a regular basis – or whenever there were more leaves on the floor than I could count in five seconds.  Besides, I LIKED a clean house.  I liked not walking on little granules of dirt, I liked laying on the rug without getting bits of broken leaves and whatever-all plastered to by back, and I liked not finding raisins in the crotch of my couch.  And all of this could be my life, if only I did not detest vacuuming.

So when a week had passed, and I stopped counting leaf-bits and started thinking of my foolish promise, I made yet another desperate decision.  I could not bear the thought of Big Red, lurking in the hall closet like a fat, ugly pile of brick, taunting me with old-fashioned profanities from its glory days (‘Od’s-bodkins!), mocking my messy carpeting.  He knew he couldn’t suck up a paperclip to save his own mother – at least, not on the first, second, or third try.  He knew that every square inch of carpeted surface meant double, even triple the effort for the poor sap – me – forced to propel his slovenly bulk.  I imagined these thoughts pleased him.  I imagined he dragged his rollers on purpose to frustrate me, like a barn-sour horse, eager to remain in his dark, cozy closet with a blanket and a fistful of grain. 

Not this time.

I left him undisturbed, so as not to alert his suspicions, and quietly tiptoed from the house.  I was going to Target.  I was going to buy a new, not-cheap vacuum cleaner.  I was ready to spend some money.

I called my mother on the way to Target, hoping to get some advice about a proper vacuum.  After five minutes of talking to her, I realized how I’d ended up with such a disregard for vacuums. 

“Why don’t you just look on Craig’s List?”  She asked, as if faintly annoyed that I would spend money so frivolously.  “There’s all kinds of good stuff on there – barely even used!”  A pang of guilt stabbed through me.  Yes, used vacuum.  Craig’s List.  Why hadn’t I thought of it?  What am I doing, wasting money on another appliance, when I already HAVE a vacuum (ugly godforsaken piece of…)?

But I calmed myself out of it.  Mom always has this effect on me.  Whatever it is that I want to do, if it involves spending money, and doesn’t particularly appeal to her, she will manage to make the whole notion seem selfish, foolish, or pointless in about five minutes.  What really sucks is that most of the time, she has a point – one that I have made my own point of ignoring.  But this time, I knew why I needed to go to Target, right now, and purchase a new vacuum.  Why spend hours hunting through Craig’s List, investigating, testing, and inspecting objects that I already dislike?  I was trying to make vacuuming into something EASIER, not a research project!

Mom expressed her complete support for my mission, probably because she knew darn well that I was determined, and about to tell her off for trying to talk me out of it, anyway.  Unfortunately, mom hates vacuuming as much as I do, which is the reason I grew up on tile and linoleum floors.  She had very little advice to offer beyond: “Well, you have tile floors, do you even NEED a vacuum?”  See what I mean? 

Once inside the vacuum aisle of Target, I was in a bit over my head.  There, displayed at eye-level like so many objets d’art, were about a hundred vacuums.  No, not really.  More like twenty vacuums, but there may as well have been a hundred.  They were sleek and tubey, squat and transparent, tall and tunnelly… some of them bore the image of little paws or cats to indicate their superior ability to suck-up pet hair.  Others boasted prowess in multiple fields of floor cleaning, from polishing a bare floor, to steaming a carpet.  They came in all colors, proudly displaying their various weights, and ranged in price between $35 and $400. 

I stood there for a moment, stunned.  Then, slowly, I began to walk up and down the aisle, peering knowledgeably at the little placards under each one – like inspecting medium and message cards in an art gallery – until I came upon one shining, green Hoover which said: “Own me.”  I made this interpretation based upon many intelligent factors, and a clever analysis of its features weighed against my personal needs.  Really, I bought it because it was green.  And, because it was the last one in the store, the box was badly damaged, and the clerk offered me a discount, bringing my $120 investment down to $85.  Sold.

Pippin skittered away in horror as I wrestled the oversized and clearly abused vacuum box through the front door.  “This is our new vacuum, Stinker!”  I announced.  (I call Pippin “Stinker” because it is Samwise Gamgee’s nickname for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.  Pippin, of course, is named after Peregrin “Pippin” Took of the same novel.  I am a nerd, so sue me.)  “You’re gonna love it!”  She knew that was bullshit, but she hung just out of its reach to watch the unwrapping go down. 

            Within moments, my lovely, green Hoover was assembled and ready for action.  It had a see-through belly so that every molecule of foul matter once coating the floor of my house could be examined for sick pleasure.  But it’s most promising feature, I thought, was the clever little mini-sucker attachment for vacuuming furniture and stairs.  This little invention even came equipped with its own mini rotating brush, which began spinning the moment you fixed the attachment onto the hose. I couldn’t wait to get at my stairs.  These were always particularly painful to cover with Big Red – a guaranteed neck ache – only to be attempted on rare and special occasions.  But now…? 

Vowing to be a responsible appliance owner, I dutifully read the instruction manual warnings at the front of the booklet.  One in particular caught my eye: “Do not place vacuum on steps while vacuuming stairs.”  Ha! thought I, of COURSE.  Only an idiot would leave the vacuum on the stairs without stabilizing it first!  But, I supposed these manuals were written for the common moron, not Clan MacGyver, PhD-holding types like myself.  Besides, how were you SUPPOSED to vacuum the stairs without having the vacuum ON THE STAIRS?  It’s not like they included an extension hose with this thing.

So I plugged in my new, green vacuum and discovered the delights of self-propelled machinery.  Not only did this vacuum not smell like a rubber factory when switched on, it ran like sucking-up filth was its job, not its penance.  Pippin still made herself scarce, but at least I wasn’t rapidly going deaf.  Steadily, the clear plastic canister in the vacuum’s belly filled with fuzzy silt and other debris.  I watched it guiltily, wondering how much of this stuff had been lingering on my floors for the past five years.  On the whole, I was – admittedly – enjoying myself.

Then came the stairs.  Vacuuming them with my lovely little rotary attachment was a revelation – Look! Look! I kept thinking; I thought they’d never be this texture again!  I was grinning ear to ear when, about halfway up the stairs, I ran out of cord.  I had plugged into a socket in the sunroom below, but obviously this was not going to suit.  The responsible thing to do would be to switch off the vacuum, secure it on the step, and pop down to unplug the cord. (I especially liked the cord feature on this vacuum because, with the press of a button, a mechanism would slurp up the cord like spaghetti.)

Remember what the manual said, a little voice told me. Don’t leave the vacuum on the stairs!  I got very defensive.  Yes, yes, yes, I told it, but I am going to be VERY careful, and balance the vacuum perfectly.  And I’m certainly not going to tug the cord; what kind of idiot do you think I am?  So, according to plan, I pushed the vacuum in its upright position, cautiously checking its steadiness before turning my back and heading down the stairs.  So far, so good.  I reached for the plug…

CRASH – crunch – BANG – bang – CLUNK! 

Silence.

For a moment, I didn’t move; I didn’t even turn around.  I think I had my eyes closed.  The stupid half of my brain kept saying, “Nah!  That CAN’T be the vacuum, can it?” while the more intelligent side sighed, scratched its ear, and said, “I can’t believe you just did that.  And you even read the manual.  I’m embarrassed to share a body with you.” 

Slowly, I looked round the corner.  Sure enough, lying on the landing, handle-end-down, was my new green vacuum.  Demoralized.  Reluctantly, I moved forward, hoisted it upright, and inspected the damage.  No wonder you never paid money for a vacuum, you jackass, nagged the little voice, if you’re just going to throw them down the stairs.  Surprisingly, once all the stray pieces had been collected and reassembled, only one little defect was visible.  The plastic lining of the cord socket had cracked.  Purely aesthetic, I told myself.  No big deal.  Then I powered thing on again and sucked the spilt rubbish back up.

Secretly, I believed that the vacuum manufacturers were partially to blame.  Had they put a little effort in, explained that there was some internal imbalance in the vacuum that made it impossible to steady on stairs, even under the most conscientious circumstances, I would’ve obeyed their warning, but no, they had just said, “Don’t”.  And who wants to be told that?

But, more openly, I acknowledged the extent of my own stupidity and resolved to abide by the consequences.  As I finished vacuuming the rest of the house, I swore the vacuum was a tad louder than it had been at first.  But that’s what you get, said my little voice.  You had to leave it on the stairs...

I told my friends about my adventure the next evening at dinner.  After they finished laughing at me, and wiping the tears from their eyes, they said, “So, did you take it back?”

“Take it back?  No!”  I was scandalized.  I really felt I had an ethical obligation to endure the damaged equipment.  “I can’t take it back!  I’m the dumbass!  And besides, I got it at discount!”

Stephanie and Tara looked at each other across the table as if to say, Who is this person?  Stephanie turned to me.  “Um,” she began, “What happened to the woman who exchanged that air mattress every three months because she was using it for a bed and it kept getting leaks?”

“But – I was poor!  It’s different!” I stammered.

“Yeahhh….right,” laughed Tara, “I’m not seeing the discrepancy here.  Besides, they don’t give a shit at Target; they won’t even look at it.”

“You don’t think?”

“Nope.”

“Jared used his weed-eater for a year,” Stephanie added, “and took it back because he decided it wasn’t cutting as well.  He didn’t even have a receipt!  They looked at him like, ‘We don’t care what’s wrong with it; just hand it over and go away.’”

“Really??”

“Actually, I think it turned out he hadn’t even bought it from Target.  I think he remembered later that he’d bought it at Lowe’s.”  Stephanie sipped her margarita while Tara grinned.

“Take it back, dude,” Tara said.  “Get a new, new vacuum.  They don’t care.”

My conscience cringed.  It was true, I WAS the Take It Back Queen, but this was different.  I had no one to blame for this but my own sheer stupidity.  At least with the airbed, I could tell myself that it was defective…even if it wasn’t actually meant for constant, daily use.  Besides, that was years ago when I lived on 12K a year T.A. pay. 

Still, my brain began stewing a good excuse.

“Well,” I said, after I’d chewed for a while.  “They gave me that discount because the box was really badly wrecked.  I could say there was something messed up with it after all!”

“Sure, go for it,” my friends told me, shaking their heads, “the kid at the counter will just look at you like, ‘Why are you telling me this?  You’re making me miss my break.’”

“Well, okay.  But if they say I have to pay the difference from the discount, I’ll say that’s fine.”  This seemed fair.

“Emmy,” Stephanie gave me an amused look, “they will NOT CARE.  They won’t ask you to pay the difference.  Trust me.”

“Really???”

“Really.”

“I think you should write the vacuum story,” Tara mused.  “This is pretty funny.”

So, it’s true.  Target does indeed suck up damaged goods, like my brand new, new vacuum sucks up broken leaves and garden grit.  And, yes, the young return counter clerk will look at you like you are an asshole for attempting ANY explanation.  So, if this is you in the foreseeable future, take my word for it: they don’t wanna hear it. 

Sure, I'm a little disgusted with myself, but then, as I listen to the unadulterated hum of my new, undamaged vacuum, I think: this could sound much more annoying than it does.  And I’m content.  Not actually enjoying myself (vacuuming is, after all, vacuuming), but content.

            Now, for the stairs…