My Ears Hurt

Every so often, I have the chance to channel my inner housewife again despite the fact I'm no longer anything like that.

Despite the fact I am now a busy bee in the public sphere and have less time to make my cuddle-atmosphere in the private one, I still like home-y sorts of things.

Except vacuuming.

I've always hated it. It's loud, hurts my ears, and I hate dragging a freeking canister around my flat, plugging and unplugging as I go.

In order to avoid my life-long hatred of vacuuming, I got a Roomba when I lived in Canada. I was quite happy about the fact I could turn it on while I took Maxie for a walk in the morning, thus killing two birds with one stone. No vacuuming on my part, and no Maxie howling at the vacuum cleaner. I tried to take the fact Roomba would always end up locking himself in my bathroom with a grain of salt.

Seeing that Roombas are much too expensive for a student budget in Germany (and why in the world would I tote along a transformer to charge my Canadian one here?), I had to get something new.

So, I got myself what seemed like a decent vacuum: the Ergorapido. Now, it may seem like the perfect thing ever. It's lightweight, has no bag (hate emptying them almost as much as I hate trying to remember to buy them) and no cord, which theoretically meant I would finally enjoy cleaning my floors. It also had excellent reviews and a good rating from the Stiftung Warentest.

I mean, in theory it wasn't bad. It was lightweight and easy to clean, but the whole "mit perfeckter Staubaufnahme" (read: perfect at collecting dust for the non-Krauts of you) is an f-ing joke. Ignoring the fact -- for just one second -- it wouldn't pick up dust or dog hair from my parquet floors, imagine my disgust at trying to vacuum carpets with that thing.

A friend who looked after Max earlier on this year even expressed her disdain at the fact you had to go over the same spot about a gazillion times to get it halfway clean, which kinda "defeats the point".

Agreed.

Needless to say, I tried -- and failed -- multiple times in the last two months to vacuum with that piece of garbage, and finally gave up. I couldn't even stand my flat anymore.

So, I went to Real to get a new vacuum. It's a Dirt Devil, half the price of the Ergo, and sounds like a plane about to take off. It also has crappy ratings for having a difficult filter to clean.

BUT it cleaned my floors.

I probably will try to avoid vacuuming with a vengeance as has been my style for the past twenty-odd years, but at least the dog hair is finally out of the carpet.

Okay, I'm off. Time to start my non-housewife-y day now.