Cleaning The Vacuum

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

The wife is out walking with her friends as she does most every Saturday (and Tuesday and Thursday).  Being a Saturday, the question of making a Panera Bread run afterwards has come up and with little discussion a decision was made in the affirmative.  The kids are with their aunt so that leaves me here at home all by my lonesome.  The wife did leave me a task to do however, namely to look at the cheap vacuum cleaner that we have and see if I can get it working again.  Most of you that know me will know that this decision (to have me look at it) is really the last ditch effort before the vacuum finds its way to our large trash bin.  I can read the signs that my wife is secretly (or not so secretly) hoping that I would be unsuccessful at this which would result in a new vacuum.  We had a really nice one that I bought over 10 years ago and it lasted us up until the move back to Indiana.  Once we had picked out our house here and noted that it was small and had little carpet, we decided against another high quality expensive one for now.  This one was around $100 if memory serves and was bought at Lowe's as apposed to the $500 one from 10 years ago bought at an actual vacuum (and sewing) center.  We new a salesman there that we could trust and he even threw in a box of attachments for free.  The vacuum we have not is not worth paying to have fixed hence the wife's having me look at it.  I started by taking it all apart...

This involved a wrench and a screwdriver.  I made a mental note how things went back together hoping that this I would be successful and that this knowledge would be needed for reassembly.  There were not that many parts that could come off but if it could be disconnected, I did so.  You cannot see this in the picture but notice my disregard for my safety in that part of the disconnecting occurred whilst the vacuum was still plugged in to the wall.  Notice also the fork in the right of the picture as this proved the most valuable tool in fixing the real problem, namely some serious pet hair clogging up the biggest hose.  Also notice the large amount of dust and stuff on the floor.  When the first deluge of dust poured out of the bottom I then realized my first mistake was doing this in the house for if I was indeed unsuccessful in resurrecting the device I would have somehow to clean up the carpet.

I think I could make another pet with the amount of fur that I found lodged in the hose.  Pet hair probably makes up a large percentage of stuff we sweep up anyway so I don't know why after many months the clogging happened but no matter as when I got done forking out the furballs the vacuum returned to its normal sucky self.  I wish the son could have been here to see me do this as he does not get to witness Dad doing stuff like this very often.  This is part of the reason for the pictures, proof I did something semi-husbandly today.

The kiddos should be home in about an hour and the wife has a book club this afternoon.  After that, the daughter has a recital so the day is filled and a nap is a low possibility.  Oh well, at least I have an hour more of peace and quiet here by myself now that my vacuum repair is done.  I just hope the wife is not too disappointed that I was successful.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon