Oops!

I've been spending my late afternoon hours cleaning up bits of ceiling material from all around the house. Mike, who's doing the ceiling repairs, has been great about covering the floor with drop cloths but those little white flakes have a way of escaping. And the very location of the room affected has meant we've had to walk across those drop cloths, tracking it to new locations in the house. I'm just trying to keep it from looking like there are snowflakes on the carpet.

The little handheld Dyson has been useful for small jobs, but when it suddenly quit picking up anything, I handed it off to Wayne to investigate. He took it apart, found the filter was clogged with the fine dust the flakes turn into, and fixed the problem. Hmmm, I thought...there's a filter? A number of handheld vacs have come and gone in this house and none of them had a filter. How did I not know there was a filter in this one?

And then the light bulb went off in my head. I'll bet there's a light bulb in the big Dyson too. Sure enough, and it's supposed to be cleaned every six months. I'm sure I read the manual when I bought the sweeper...I always do, but I had six months before I had to do anything. Heck, in six months I not only forgot I needed to clean it, I forgot the filter even existed. And that vacuum cleaner is seven years old. Oops!

Personally I think the people at Dyson should embrace my poor maintenance of their awesome vacuum and use it in an advertising campaign. That's because that even going seven years without the filter having been cleaned, the sweeper worked like a charm. There was never an instance when I thought it was losing suction...it's an awesome machine.

And tonight it's a very clean machine. After I swept up today's white flakes, I took it all apart and washed everything that was washable. The water that came out was pretty dirty, I'll admit.

I can't recommend you follow my maintenance schedule...I'm sure it's better to clean the filter every six months but I can recommend a Dyson. Even dirty, it's still better than any other vacuum; imagine what it's going to be like now that it's clean.

Comments

[Suzeyq]

Love my Dyson too! As a matter of fact, I really want a 2nd one, so I can keep one upstairs! Now, I know I could just carry the other one up....But sometimes I think the smaller, thinner one would come in handy. The critics compare vacs and think Kenmore is a better choice, but after I vac with Kenmore and then with the Dyson... you should see what I still pick up! You couldn't pay me to give it up!

[Suzeyq]

As far as maintenance goes....I think it has been a couple years since I cleaned that filter too (insert red smiley face here!).