Monday, February 4, 2013

Sweeping it under the carpet

I have a confession. It's sordid.

Oh, alright, it's not sordid. Not even a little bit, in fact.

Actually, I don't know why I started like that, let me try again:

I bought a carpet sweeper.

(Now I know why I started like that. You've all just rolled your eyes and scrolled away, right? Riveting. Woohoo! Mrs Accident's found a new housewifery tool! Call the Associated Press! Man the phones! We're onto a winner!)

My carpet sweeper is a bold blue, like the colour of a banana in a surrealist painting.

It has gears and cogs and bristles and brushes, and I've seen them all, because the damn thing falls apart at the slightest provocation. (Or violent provocation. Bug thumped it down the stairs.) But the nice thing about simple machinery is the ability for it to be repaired, so my fine carpety friend lives to sweep another day.

And it gets a work out every day.

And here we do have a sordid confession. My floors used to be shocking. I was embarrassed to be called the Accidental Housewife, because anyone who came to my house would have taken one horrified, shaking glance at my leprosy withered floors and assumed that any housewife that may have once inhabited the home had indeed met with a nasty, career ending accident.

But no more!

I hated pulling around our heavy old vacuume. I felt like I was enduring some kind of Ancient Grecian punishment. The thing was effective, but the outcome was barely worth the effort involved. It was not something to be done daily, but with two small kids and two dogs, it certainly should have been!

Enter carpet sweeper, stage left, (and exit, and enter, and exit... it usually takes a few passes... ok...wait... got it!)

It's light and quick enough that I can do a zip around every day, keeping the floors looking nice and holding off the vacuuming for absolutely ages. Yonks. Eons! (I recently went three weeks without vacuuming once. It was heaven. And probably terribly unhygienic. Please don't tell Martha Stewart!)

It's also good for that heartbreaking dilemma when you just finished vacuuming, the floors are pristine, then the toddler wakes up and grinds her post-nap corn cracker into the carpet. Instead of throwing the toddler, carpet and cracker out the window, you can simply grab ol' sweepy and divert years of pesky police involvement!  Mrs Accident, saving you from yourself since 2013. Your welcome.

So embrace your inner 1950s housewife, and get in early on my newly proclaimed carpet sweeper fad!

(Or, you know, not. I don't want to boss you around or anything. It's entirely up to you. I'm just saying they're good, that's all.)

14 comments:

  1. Hehehe my grandmother had a carpet sweeper and said it was the best thing since sliced bread...lol. She didn't like vacuuming either so you aren't alone. Come to think of it I'm not much of a fan either. Maybe I should look into one of those "new fangled" gadgets.

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  2. I like the relative quiet of these contraptions as opposed to the loud hum of the vacuum. Now that we're a carpet-free household, I sweep and mop more and the vacuum rarely gets used.

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  3. You mean I wasn't the only one with dustyhairycrumbly floors?
    I actively hate sweeping. So during our 8 month sojourn in Aus, in a house with tiles throughout the living room/kitchen/everywhere, I learnt to...vacuum :-) I still vacuum instead of sweep, and specially did concrete floors in our newish kitchen/living room addition. But it still is a schlep - I long for a light, slimline vacuumthingey that takes 2.5 sec to use.

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  4. If ONLY my mother's 1950s carpet sweeper hadn't been tossed aside! We used to call it The Peepit Scwarper and it invariably distributed more 'oose' than it collected. I expect the new all-singing, all-dancing ones do an amazing job - I wish you joy of your immaculate floors.

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  5. I loved our carpet sweeper, fab things and much easier than lugging the big cleaner out....and three weeks, cough cough.....I would just like to say, I have beaten that...big time.....
    I had one of those dust bustery things that was attached to a bigger thingamajig and that was okay till it pooped itself...and ran out of charge all the time...at least the carpet sweeper wont run out of charge..unless you are asleep that is........... happy sweeping, crumb making, sweeping, crumb making, sweeping..etc, etc, etc...

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  6. It is really a headache to sweep the floor every single day. I myself just let dust bunnies grow under different parts of my apartment but this man-made machine could help me fix this problem. Vacuums are a lazy man's best friend. You just have to plug it in and it does your job a hundred times better.

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  7. This is why I have an eight year old. We have no carpet, but live near to both beaches and bluescope, so there is lots of dust. The large child does the vacuuming once or twice a week, and I sweep as needed. Mainly under the table eight times a day. (Where do all the crumbs come from?? Steak doesn't make crumbs!!)

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  8. I have a love hate relationship with my carpet sweeper.

    I don't think it's very effective on my thick, plush carpet.

    it's awkward to clean as well.

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  9. I am addicted to vacuuming. And I can never spell vacuum correctly. Sadly. I would vacuum every single day if possible. Especially now that I have a canister that shows just how incredibly nasty my carpet is with two shedding dogs, indoor/outdoor cats, and let us not forget four humans!

    The sweeper sounds like the thing to have. It would probably be gentler on my back. However, I don't know how much golden retriever hair it would gather up.

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  10. Since our house is 90% hard floors I want a hardfloor sweeper. Battery operated preferred since I always get tangled in the cords. I've a brand new vacuum cleaner, which is a fantastic floor cleaner (as it should be since it cost a small fortune) but the damn thing weighs a tonne and is IMPOSSIBLE to maneuver. I actually have to repair and repaint half the skirting boards and just about every single architrave in our house now because the vacuum cleaner doesn't swivel, and no matter how hard I try to guide it through a doorway it still manages to collide with the frame every single time. DRIVES ME INSANE.
    ~S.

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  11. I had one of these when we rented because I knew I wouldn't need one when we got our own house (I later relented, realising how many years I had till then) and it worked perfectly wonderfully - it is definitely the Green option as you can use no power, get a work out and do it when kids are down to naps!! Genius if you ask me.

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  12. I have a carpet sweeper, too, and couldn't live without it! My cats seem to prefer wrestling the instant I've finished vacuuming, so within minutes my carpet is coated with fuzzy black hair. The carpet sweeper saves the day!

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  13. Vacuuming is one of my least favorite chores. I even bought a robotic roomba once in hopes I could pretend it was my maid. The darned thing would get stuck under the chairs and fall down the stairs, even though they guaranteed it couldn't.
    Still hating to clean the floor, but doing it.

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