I have a love-hate relationship with my vacuum cleaner, cuz it sucks… (ba ba bum….)

Personally, I hate vacuuming, but with a little one, it’s something I’m going to have to start tackling every day, especially since I have a german shepherd dog who sheds an amazing amount of fur daily, and a long-haired russian blue cat.

The past two weeks, my vacuum has been clogged. Prior to Lilly, I didn’t have the energy to take it apart (which is a tedious time-wasting task) and post Lilly 1-week, I’ve been busy with Lilly and with being ill.

My carpet was over-run with dog/cat fur, totally DISGUSTING!!!

After getting some well needed rest last night and again this afternoon (thanks to Ray and Mom for letting me rest!), I had the energy to start tackling things.

Growing up, we had a kirby like this one, which I swear could have sucked a bowling ball through a garden hose, but alas, no, I have a crappy bag-type bissel that clogs every other time I use it…

So I set out tonight to get it unclogged. I took apart the short tube where every other time, the clog is always at. Yes, it was clogged but when I put it back together, it still wasn’t working right.  The hair had gotten clogged in the “long” tube… oh… crap….

So I pulled it apart and tried using a metal hanger (untwisted and pulled somewhat straight) and tried for 20 minutes to get the clog out… no…such…luck… mind you, I was attempting to do this outside, while it was raining, and with fire-ants biting my feet again…

I was on the verge of putting a hose down the tube and flushing it out, but I didn’t want to because then it would take forever to dry out, thus delaying my vacuuming and adding more hair to my poor carpet. Ray said I should try the shop-vac, and I tried suctioning it out, nothing… and then I remembered the unfortunate incident when I attempted to clean the bunny cage and had the shop-vac on reverse and shot nasty rabbit bedding across the room a few months ago… Hrmmm, wonder if I can “shoot” it out…

Flipped the shop-vac hose to the other side, hooked up the hose, and POOF! Out went a wad of compacted shepherd hair in like 2 seconds flat like I’d just shot it out of a tee-shirt canon!

It stayed compacted thankfully, or I would have been cleaning another mess in the bedroom.

So I think this will be a weekly adventure, shooting hairballs out of my vacuum. I wonder how much distance I can get on it….