Vacuuming

A lesson in using a vacuum cleaner?

1) Vacuuming posture; just like throwing a ball, you should have one foot in front of the other! If you push the vacuum forward and back with your right hand, place your left foot forward and rock back and forth from forward to back foot. Tighten your tummy muscles, but keep breathing!

2) Vacuuming carpets: it is said you need to vacuum 3-5 times over the same area of the carpet to get it clean. Think of the first run for loosening dirt, the second to suck up the dirt and loosen some more, and the third to get more dirt. Obviously the more times the better, but who has time? Also, like mowing the lawn, you need to overlap runs, to make sure you are reaching all areas. So what I do is to overlap half the run. That way each section gets double coverage and if I do only two runs per section, that means each area gets four runs of vacuuming. If I have time, I will do three or four runs for more thorough cleaning.

3) I just cleaned an apartment that had a one-inch wide swath of dirt around all edges of the room. You have to use the proper tool to get the edges of a room, the vacuum head won't reach.

4) After vacuuming, you have to clean the vacuum! Check the bottom of the brushes and rollers, and pick out all the dust and hair that you can see. Vacuum the brushes and rollers. Dust and lint on the brushes will decrease the amount they can pick up. Hair and pieces of string wound up in the rollers will decrease efficiency of the vacuum. If the bottom of the vacuum cleaner is full of dust, get a damp cloth and wipe it off. Why spread around more dust?

5) Vacuum cleaner bags. Of course, when they are full you need to replace them. Otherwise you are not only no longer collecting dirt, you are more likely to be spreading dirt. HEPA bags or not? Unless you truly have allergies, don't waste your money on the special bags. Just get the regular kind and change them as needed. Also, whenever changing the vacuum cleaner bag, you should probably wipe out the canister with a damp cloth.