The Shop-Vac Experiment
I know I said that each blogger should be allowed only one shop-vac posting, but a lot of people sent email asking me to tell them what happened when I used a shop-vac to clean my own home.
Okay, here’s the deal. If you keep your house clean most of the time, and you want to give your pristine, white carpet a quick going over while you wait for your guests to arrive for your fancy dinner party, then you probably want a standard vacuum cleaner. The wheels and the rotating brush on the bottom make for easy pushing.
If you have kids, you live in the trenches. Perhaps you dream of a clean house, but your children are constantly working against you. Your floors get really messy, and there is clutter everywhere. You fight a never ending battle. When it’s time to vacuum, it’s a serious job, and you don’t mind working harder to get the job done well.
If this describes your life, the shop-vac might be for you.
The vacuum cleaner is okay for a speck of lint, a little dust, and the crumbs from your Hors D'Oeuvres. If you have ever found an entire sandwich under your couch, you might want to consider a shop-vac.
It’s harder to push a shop-vac around on carpet. The suction is so strong that you have to push pretty hard, even with the wide attachment. On the other hand, there is nothing you can’t suck up. So you work a little harder pushing the thing around, but you work easier in that you only have to go over things once.
Parents, how many times have you pushed a vacuum cleaner over a cheerio or a little piece of plastic from some broken toy, only to have the cheerio or whatever get stuck in the brushes? You wait and wait, listening to it rattle around until the vacuum cleaner spits it back out on the carpet. You try it one or two more times, then you give up and pick it up yourself, right?
Doesn't that piss you off?
So you have to ask yourself, what am I trying to do here? If you are doing heavy-duty, kid cleaning, the shop-vac is a serious piece of equipment that fits a serious job. If you are doing touch-up work and mostly just want the pretty pattern on your carpet to show your guests you cleaned before they came, stick with a vacuum cleaner.
As for me and my house, we’re leaning toward using the shop-vac most of the time. When it's time for me to vacuum, I don't want to mess around. I want to get down to business, and I want a piece of equipment that can handle whatever I might find under the bed or between the cushions of the couch. I want a shop-vac.
But that’s just me.
rlp
11:29:33 PM 
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