Thursday, December 10, 2009

Ho Ho Humbug

I put up the family Christmas tree the other day, a 12-year-old artificial monster in a box that has more duct tape than cardboard.

Even a fake tree falls prey to old age. When I finished putting it up there were as many fake needles on the carpeted floor as there were on the tree.

Normally cleaning the living room floor takes about 15 minutes. This time it took a good hour. I started by running the central vacuum power head across the carpet, but after a while I noticed that needles were showing up in places they hadn't been earlier. What happened was the needles wrapped themselves around the brush roll and eventually worked themselves free when the roller made a complete rotation.

Then it dawned on me. If I simply disconnected the electric power brush, I could use the wand without an attachment. The suction power of the central vac was more than adequate to make snare the needles without allowing them to clog the hose.

It took awhile because I had to hunt down the needles one by one. But I got the job done.
Posted by at 1:26 PM

3 comments:

  1. For us it wasn't putting up the tree that was so hard but taking it down. The needles came off in huge clumps as I dragged it out of the house.

    Luckily I had just installed a central vacuum and cleanup was a breeze. I was amazed how easy it was and don't believe I could have ever gotten up all the needles with my old vacuum cleaner.

    Thanks ElectroluxOxygen for saving my afternoon.
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  2. that would have been a mess .. to pick needles one by one .. but the good thing is that you had a experience and you will never do that thing again . thanks for the story it was interesting
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  3. It is so boring and hard job which you have done to pick every single needles.....anyway experience is the best teacher now you got a lesson so you wont do this kind of mistake again.
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