Mr. Dyson: You Suck and I Mean It

I’m no domestic diva but I do like a tidy house. On a recent Monday, I was cleaning up a bit before all the girls arrived for book club when my nearly 12-year-old vacuum started wailing, reeking of burning plastic and just refusing to suck anymore without making it seem like I was torturing it. With that potpourri smelling deodorizer sprinkled all over my dining room carpet and few hours left to spare, I had to resort to breaking out my new Dust Buster to slurp up most of the white powder. I’m certain I looked ridiculous all hunched over with this hand-held device but it did the job.

A couple of days later, Hubby dragged the old Hoover to the curb for trash pick up but had a last minute change of heart. Maybe it’s the fact we got the ol’ green carpet sucker as a wedding gift. He’s a bit of a romantic after all. So he brought the vacuum back to the porch and later took it apart, attempting to resuscitate it with no real luck. When it clicked back on, it emitted the same nasty smell and refused to suck much at all.

Fast forward a couple of Sundays. We spend a good chunk of the day shopping for a new vacuum cleaner. The first vacuum cleaner you own that’s not a hand-me-down is really a sort of rite of passage into adulthood. But buy a second one and you’re clearly approaching middle age.
So anyway hubby and I sat at our computer looking for consumer reviews about vacuum cleaners. There was so much to learn. So many decisions to make. Bag or bagless? Upright or canister? HEPA filter or not? At some point Hubby picked up an ad from the Sunday paper and said, “The $79 one looks good.” I flatly told him we weren’t buying the El Cheapo and reminded him that you get what you pay for. So back to the computer we went and then off to the home improvement store.

After walking aimlessly for what seemed like miles in the warehouse type building we finally asked someone if they actually sold regular ol’ vacuums. “Why yes. I’ll take you for the long walk myself,” the sweet lady in wallpaper department said as she started leading us to the opposite side of the store.

Voila. There they were: Hoover, Bissell, Eureka, Electrolux and Dyson. Suddenly we had forgotten all we had read. Dyson, said the perky saleswoman, is the absolute best. “If I was going to buy one, it would be the Dyson.” The Dyson Absolute “Animal” D17, to be exact. With all those names it’s gotta be good – and expensive. We looked at the tag $550. WHOA! For a vacuum cleaner?

We thanked the nice lady and told her since there wasn’t a floor model we could check out we’d try another store. So off to K-mart we went and checked out El Cheapo and some slightly less cheapos and saw they were clearly trash. So we went to yet another store. This one had the Dyson floor model in all its glory. It looked like it was straight off The Jetsons set in its metallic purple and silver body. It was sleek, sexy even. But still $550. Hubby plugged it in and tried it on a sample carpet. Then he tried about six OTHER vacuums while I sat gloomily on a microwave box. “Just pick one,” I nudged. He took down a $150 or so Eureka and started to walk toward me when a store associate walked by. Hubby asked what he thought was the best vacuum. “There’s no comparison,” the tattooed young man said. “The Dyson. With all the others you might as well just pick a color. You’d buy three of the others to reach the price of the Dyson but the Dyson would outlast them all.”

We were sold. Hubby looked at the empty spot on the shelves. No Dyson Animal. “Oh, we’re all sold out,” the helpful man said.

So off to Store No. 4, the Super Target, across the parking lot. They had one left. We grabbed it. As the cashier rang it though she practically beamed. “You’re one of the lucky ones,” she said. “Are they that good?” I asked. Yep, she said, adding they can’t keep them in stock.
We loaded our $550-plus-tax carpet sucker into my Jeep and drove home, too exhausted to even try it out that night.

But the next day when I switched it on, it grabbed my dining room carpet and sucked, and sucked and sucked. Then I ran it over the living room area rug and then upstairs to the bedroom and the carpet runner in the second-floor bathroom. Man, did that Dyson suck. I was in love with a vacuum cleaner like I never could have imagined. Granted, it was a bit nauseating to see how much crap is in what you think is a relatively clean carpet, but I swear our carpets look new now. Watching the Dyson’s power was like having the equivalent to the domestic BIG O – as in OHMYGOD was my carpet that dirty? But it’s so clean now. If you think your Hoovers, your Bissells, your Eurekas are getting your carpets clean you are so very wrong. Buy a Dyson.

Mr. Dyson, your more than 5,000 prototypes and near bankruptcy was worth the effort. It was even worth the $550 out of my pocket.

And to my dear friend, who years ago purchased a $1,000-plus vacuum cleaner I say, please forgive me if I ever showed any doubt. With what I paid, I can only imagine that yours must make a grilled cheese and then clean it all up by the time you’re done vacuuming. I believe, my friend. I believe.

Writer’s note: This is not a paid endorsement... but could be. Call me Mr. Dyson.