I’m sure the vacuum will pick that up.

Written in 2006

Michael keeps a pretty clean room…most of the time. Every now and then his room will get pretty messy. Stephen’s room is normally a wreck. If you want walk through Stephen’s room, you’ll be force to make the decision of whether step on the stuff covering the floor or to jump from area to area of exposed carpet. Both boys have a difficult time vacuuming their floor.

Have you every watched your kids vacuum? I’ve watched both of my offspring vacuum their rooms and it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Normally they drag the vacuum from the closet to their room while hitting it on of every wall and door casing on the way. They do this because they are mad we have asked them to vacuum in the first place.

Vacuuming phase one:  problem one with them vacuuming is they have failed to get the big stuff off the floor first. When I say big stuff mean the hats, shirts, etc. They will vacuum around a t-shirt and act surprised when they accidentally suck up one corner of it, which causes the vacuum belt to squeal, smoke, and then break. End of vacuuming when the belts breaks and the boys never tell us the belt is broken. It is up to use find out later.

Phase two and the second problem: the small pieces of miscellaneous debris that they fail to pick up by hand first. You know the stuff I’m talking about, BB’s, pennies, and the little lego that you normally step on when you’re barefooted. This is my favorite part to watch; in fact I don’t have to watch, I can sit in the front room and listen for this stage of vacuuming. You can recognize this stage from the familiar chunk, clunk, ping, ping, sounds you hear coming from the room.

Some of this debris never gets sucked up in the vacuum; it will roll around in the head of the machine while making a huge racket. After the debris has made its way around the beater bar few dozen times it is gets hurled out from the front of the vacuum and the cycle repeats itself again and again. Finally the boy is close to the wall when the piece of debris gets hurled out of the vacuum for the last time ending up next to the wall. The only reason the cycle stops here is because the vacuum can’t get the stuff that close to the wall without using the hose and the neither boy will work that hard at cleaning their floor.

There is always the piece of debris that will never enter the head of the vacuum. This is when the boy will go back and forth repeatedly trying to get the vacuum to pick it. Back and forth, back and forth until they realize that it will not get picked up. Now, instead of picking it up and throwing it away they will bend down and try pushing the debris under the head of the vacuum.

Stage three and problem number three: the small pieces of paper. I know by the sound of the vacuum when the boys are trying to get a small piece of paper off the floor, you know it too, it’s the sound of the vacuum going back and forth over the same spot at least a dozen times. Finally the boy will bend down, lift the front of the vacuum, and try and push the piece of paper into the base of the unit without getting their finger caught by the beater bar.

Stage four and problem number four:  the candy rappers and Kleenexes. Candy rappers are tricky devils. They make a quick crinkle and sloop sound when they get sucked up. If you aren’t close by when this happens you will not hear it. Actually the candy rappers don’t normally cause a problem; they just fill up the canister faster. Kleenexes make no sound when sucked up and create a unique problem of their own. You don’t normally know the boys sucked up a Kleenex until you go to use the vacuum for yourself. You vacuum half a room before you notice it isn’t picking anything up. Once you have determined that it isn’t picking up anything you go through the normal series of diagnostics. First the canister: is it too full? Second the filters: are they clogged? Third, it must have been the boys. Now you have to tear the hoses off the vacuum looking for a clog.

By the time you would go through the aggravation of hounding the boys to vacuum their room, replacing one vacuum cleaner belt, unclog the hose, it would have been easier to vacuum their room yourself.