Dear Readers-What kind of vacuum do you own?

If you're a grown up who doesn't make her bed, raise your hand.  Who among you doesn't dust until you happen to be in the same room when a sunbeam alights on the inch of dust on the bookshelves?  Has anyone other than Sincerely Yours ever gone out in the middle of the night to buy a pack of little boys' underpants because you realize you just haven't gotten quite as far in the wash as you'd planned?  Perhaps that's because you ran through the sprinklers all day with those same little boys and forgot?  Who's gotten out the vacuum, plugged it in with every intention of vacuuming, gotten distracted and then walked around it for days, still there, still plugged in, feeling guilty?  And that's where we get to the heart of the matter:  vacuums and guilt.

Six months or so ago, both my sister and sister-in-law got the "Dyson" vacuum.  My family has a "Blackberry Group" that we refer to as "the circle of trust," where we brag about our children, send pictures, say "I love you" and parse out little morsels of wisdom.  Well, there came a day when both my sistahs almost got kicked out of the circle of trust for talking AD NAUSEUM about their Dyson vacuums.  Oh, the level of cleanliness that could be achieved.  You could eat off the floor.  It had changed their lives.  Seriously.  They both said that.  Instead of laughing at them like my brothers did, you guessed it, I went out and bought that God forsaken vacuum.  My life has never been the same since, either, in the sense that I am now fully aware of how filthy my house is.

When I was married, even after I had my sons, I was a clean freak.  After I got divorced and moved away, I was taking care of them alone and working full time.  I started out the same head case I'd always been, angered by the least little spot on the kitchen floor, horrified if I'd see dust in the corners or, God forbid, a dog hair tumble weed blowing around under the couch.  Then one day, after living in this house for about six months, something changed all that.  I was walking around, carrying a micro cloth like a security blanket as usual, and when I walked into the living room and absentmindedly sat down next to my son on the couch.  He was eight at the time.

"Wow, Mom," he said nonchalantly without taking his eyes off "Ben Ten" or "Sponge Bob Squarepants" (or some other idiocy I don't know how to spell, referred to around here as "the reason we don't have cable anymore"), "this is the first time you've ever sat down on our couch."

I laughed nervously.  Of course that wasn't true and I sat down on the couch all the time and what was he talking about and...oh my God!  I racked my brains for a memory of lounging on the couch watching tv (never) or reading (never) or sitting between the two of them all cozy with my arms around them-please, please don't say it-(never).  He was right!  I had NEVER ONCE sat down on my own couch that I had purchased with my own money in my own house in six months.  I felt like someone had sucked all the air out of my lungs and, stunned, wondered what the Hell I'd been doing during the amount of time one would usually spend seated each day...

Cleaning, I realized.  I'd been cleaning for six months and I knew in my heart I wasn't working towards dome point where I would be "done."  I may have been able to say that when I was still unpacking boxes but that had been finished for a long time.  If I was at work for eight hours a day and cleaning the rest of the time, what time had I been spending with my five and eight-year-old sons, the little boys who were fresh off a divorce and needing me?  I thought I was going to throw up.  I resolved right then to cut it out, and how.

"What's more important," I asked myself, "cleaning or spending time with the children who need you, are counting on you and who you love more than life itself?"

I really did change.  I started letting things go, little by little, turning from a clean freak into a person who merely flogged herself privately every few days about cleaning after looking around and seeing the raspberry jam on the counter (when did that get there?) or trail of crumbs leading to one of the kids' bedrooms like Hansel and Gretel, so they could find their way back to the living room or the Legos strewn across the floor (you'd think I would have at least gotten to that one because honestly, is there anything that hurts worse than stepping on a Lego in your stocking feet...maybe thumbscrews...I doubt it).  I went to bed with dishes in the sink once in a while.  I stopped sweeping every day.  I no longer Windexed all the picture glass and mirrors every day.  Slippery slope, I'll tell you.  The best example of the slippery slope I've ever encountered.  Pretty soon, I was the grown up who didn't make my bed, went out and bought packages of underpants because I hadn't gotten to the wash and counted a swipe across the counter with a Clorox wipe as a "deep clean."

Fast forward a few years to the Dyson conversation on the circle of trust and that ill-fated day when I went to Kohl's and purchased the Dyson vacuum with my 30% off coupon.  Back home, I took it out of the box, had my son put it together and then started vacuuming.  I could feel the suction (cue laughter from my sons who think it's pants peeingly funny every time I say "suction").  After about ten square feet, the canister was so full I had to empty it.  When I saw what was inside, I literally gagged.  I don't even know how to explain it.  It wasn't separate things-it was a pulverized mixture of pure, unadulterated dirt.  Usually you can see the dog hair and cracker crumbs and safety pins you've picked up.  Not so with the Dyson.  All of those individual pieces are obscured by the general filth.  It really looks like you've never vacuumed your house.  There could be a dead mouse amidst all of what comes out of that canister and you'd never even know it.  You run it over your kitchen floor and it looks cleaner than it did the last time you mopped.  Seriously.  I can't even tell you what the canister holds after a trip to the bathroom.  It's just too embarrassing to admit you've been allowing your children to bathe in there.

Then one day my sons started asking when we were going to start going to lap swim every day again or play
Mancala one night?  When was I going to start going grocery shopping again let alone cook again (like cereal isn't dinner?  Milk, whole grains-put banana on top and what more did they want)?  Was I ever going to check if they'd done their homework or tell them to clean their rooms?  Oh, boy.

So I stopped.  I couldn't go back to being a clean freak who never spent any time with my sons.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  Once I stopped, I couldn't get started again.  I remembered how nice it was to be with my sons, my husband, family and friends.  I remembered how much I liked reading every day.  Sleeping once in a while.  Emerging from the Dyson induced fog, I blinked and decided to rejoin the human race.

Now, rather than being a valuable cleaning tool, my Dyson is a constant source of guilt.  I get it out, plug it in, think about where I'll start vacuuming and then allow myself to get distracted by something else.  There the Dyson will sit, plugged in and ready to suck at my command (cue second round of laughter from my sons because if there's anything funnier than "suction," it's "suck").  It's sitting right in front of me this very minute.  The problem is, as soon as I even vacuum an area rug, I realize once again that my house is about as sanitary as a barn and it just makes me feel like a negligent, lazy person if I don't clean the whole house from top to bottom, starting right then and there.  I've decided I have neither the time nor the inclination to do that.

I've ruined so many vacuums in my life.  I've had three in the five years since I've lived here.  My mom says I'm "hard on things" (look for more on that in a future post, "I'll Bet You Haven't Wrecked as Many Things as I Have").  You could throw the Dyson off a 10 story building and it would keep on sucking.  This is only an inference, but I feel justified in making it based on how many times I've thrown it down the stairs.  Seriously.  It's efficiency and quality remain fully intact.  I can't justify any harsher treatment due to the exorbitant amount of money I paid for this guilt machine, though I have fantasized about running it over, beating it to death with the five pound arm weights I'm not using, covering it with gasoline and starting a bonfire with it.  What was I thinking???  I could have bought clothes with that money!  Shoes, for God's sake!  Hell, a new kitchen floor if this one was so disgusting!

The moral of this story?  Don't buy a Dyson no matter what your sistahs say.  They're younger and one doesn't even have any kids!  Let's hear what tune she's singin' in couple years when she adds a baby to her two golden retrievers (talk about dog hair tumble weeds!).  Just proceed in blissful ignorance, telling yourself you've got your priorities straight because you put more important things like love and your childrens' happiness and world peace above cleaning.

Whatever gets you through the night.  That's my motto.  Seriously.

Sincerely Yours