How to Break a Vacuum

Christmas is fun. You get to decorate the house, making it all festive. You get to bake cookies, buy gifts, wrap presents, and best of all, buy a lovely pine tree. I think the Christmas/Yule tree is among my favorite of all the decor because it smells divine and looks wonderful. Hanging up our special collection of ornaments (which we are still working to build up) and adding something edible to it. This year was particularly fun because our son was able to enjoy the process just a little bit more than his two previous holiday seasons. Each morning he would bring me a candy cane from the tree and ask to eat it.

The worst part of the whole thing I'd have to say is the dry brittle tree that must somehow be removed from the house after all the fun has left. My husband wanted to wait until after the New Year to bring all of Christmas down. However, I am a super neat freak, and after putting away the clutter and the gifts we all received, the only thing left to do to make me feel complete, was to remove the decorations. Well, it turned out we were both free and willing New Year's eve afternoon and we set about boxing it all up. We live in a small apartment and have not had much money anyway the last few years that we have been here, so we still fit everything into one fancy green and red box. That part was easy. It was the tree that we struggled with.

As mentioned in previous posts, this was our first large tree. Also as mentioned in previous posts, my Husband seems to do everything the hard way. That meant instead of going around the small couch and out the front door with the tree, he went across the living room, through the kitchen and out the back door. Well, he tried to go out the back door. I had to remind him if he went bottom first the tree would then fold up and fit through. Of course, all of this left a ginormous pine needle mess to be cleaned. It was all funny, and I was laughing. (Thinking back now I just get annoyed because I always enjoy moments in life so much I forget to take pictures that would greatly aid my blogs and articles. Oh well, that's not a very good thing to complain about. Enjoy life!)

So, there we were, surrounded by a mess. I pulled out our handy dandy little 2+ year old Shark vacuum from Macy's which cost us $75 when we moved in. I started to suck all the pine needles up, but it didn't take long before the vacuum was spitting them back out. Can't blame it much, they were sharp and dry, I too would have spit them out if forced to eat them. I emptied the clog and repeated this process about three times before I ended up doing something else that just clogged it up way worse. That was the end of that. The thing wasn't designed to handle much of anything. It had also been performing far worse than ever before as of lately. We borrowed my brother in laws vacuum and took care of the mess. But we were left without a vacuum of our own.

Never fear, Target is here. I saw in the weekly ad, a vacuum similar to our old broken one for only $39. This one was a Dirt Devil though and it was also about all the money we had at the time. So we set off to buy a new vacuum. Naturally, with sales like that, Target was out of them. They had one for $9 more next to it and it was slightly bigger in size, very similar to my brother in laws and also a Dirt Devil. We both knew the extra $9 would give us a much better quality and much longer lasting vacuum for the next years to come when we have two little ones making messes. So we got it. I took it home, set it up and went to work. Oh man! I wish I would have bought it sooner. It is amazing and sucked up so much fine sand and dirt the other had been missing. It was sad actually, the whole thing was half full by the time I was done and the carpet didn't even look dirty when I started. I am in love with this new vacuum and it just happens to fit in the spot I had for our smaller vacuum. We have clean floors, and it SHOULD last through another Christmas tree :)


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