Got Quads?

With four toddlers and four cats the vacuum is used in my house on a daily basis. At the end of the day there’s either tufts of cat hair from Elwood (our long hair) or plenty of crumbs leftover from snack time. When our last vacuum needed a new belt after just a year, Hubby and I knew it was time to upgrade. Through a payment plan we were able to get a Dyson. Whoo hoo!!!

During the last year that Dyson (the DC 14 if you must know) has been wonderful! It truly lives up to its hype, although I’m not a big fan of the attachments that come with it. They’re kind of useless. But the vacuum itself does a great job.

So imagine my concern when, just last week, the Dyson didn’t seem to be, well, sucking as well as it used to. We use the furniture attachment from our previous vacuum so I asked Hubby to take the attachment apart and clean it out. That wasn’t the remedy. I cut away as much of the hair stuck on the brushes as I could… still, nothing. Then Hubby took apart various removable pieces of the Dyson and we both looked in wonder at the objects hindering our vacuum’s suction.

Among the clumps of hair and dust we found an Aquadoodle pen and a cat toy. An Aquadoodle pen? Are you kidding me? Now I know I didn’t vacuum up that pen and Hubby swears he didn’t do it either. Regardless, I have a hard time believing that whoever vacuumed up that pen didn’t hear a lot of noise in the process. Even if you sucked it up with the hose I would imagine that you would suddenly notice the Dyson just isn’t working as well as it was minutes ago. An Aquadoodle pen? Seriously!

Now the Dyson is back in tip-top shape, and I guess that’s all I should be concerned about, right? Besides, I’m sure there are worse things that have been found in vacuums… I just don’t want them showing up in mine!