Vaccuming should be an easy, boring chore that will not make you a little bit crazy, right?
By Kel-Cie Terpstra Fecho
By Kel-Cie Terpstra Fecho
it is It’s not my sanity, it’s my kids
I’m sure we’ve all been there, when someone says, “How do you stay sane?” and you giggle a little and say “I don’t”, but really it’s not so bad being a mom, certainly something that doesn’t question your sanity, in fact, I like it. However while cleaning the house last week, I thought I really was going insane, and I’m going to tell you about it.
My upstairs gets vacuumed every day, we eat up there, the kids play up there and I hate walking on crunchy little something’s in the morning. My basement however only gets vacuumed once a week. So on this day I’m dragging my Central Vac hose and power head down two flights of stairs ( honestly I don’t see the perk of central vac compared to my old vacuum) to suck up all the crunchy little something’s that manage to migrate from my kids hands to various places on the floor. I had already done the upstairs and was ready to be done vacuuming as quickly as possible, when it happened. About 3 minutes into pushing the power head around, I lost suction. Thinking I might have sucked up a sock or a popped balloon from our balloon party earlier in the week I do the obvious thing and turn the vacuum off and check the power head. Nothing. So I start it up again and it works. For about 2 minutes and then I loose suction again. It sounds just like when you have sucked up something and it’s stuck in the hose, the suction is gone and you can hear the vacuum canister working harder to try and get more suction. At this point I’m thinking “What the heck!” So I take the power head off and try covering the hose with my hand to do that thing where you put your hand on and take it off, and put it on and take it off to try and get something that’s stuck out. And then I start it up again and it works for about 2 minutes and then I lose suction, and the suction comes back, and then I lose it again.
I have to finish vacuuming the basement, so I decide to get a reel of firm wire and see if I can unclog whatever it is that’s stopping the suction. First though I take the vaccum back upstairs to see if it does from up there, that way I’ll know which inner house the clog is in. Upstairs the vacuum works great, no problems, not ever. So back downstairs I drag this ridiculous contraption, get my wire and and start threading it through the inner hose. It goes all the way and encounters…..NOTHING! Not a single thing. And I lost suction twice while doing it. Now I’m frustrated. Throwing down my wire, I leave the vacuum plugged in to go call my husband and vent my frustrations at him. All I wanted to do was vacuum the basement, not spend 45 minutes trying to fix something with no apparent problem.
In the middle of dialling his work number, James comes up to me and says, “Watch this Mom!” and opens the connection to the Central Vac upstairs, downstairs the hose loses suction and the vacuum works harder to try and accommodate two openings. James is killing himself laughing because he can feel the suction on his hand, meanwhile I take my hands and place my head in them and give a silent scream for my sanity.
