A New Level of Suckiness

Almost two years ago, Tim and I decided that rather than spend every Saturday - nearly all day - cleaning the house, we would splurge and spoil ourselves and hire a cleaning person to come every other week. When she first started, we were thrilled. I looked forward to "Cleaning Day Thursdays" with glee because I knew I would leave for work in the morning and come home to a magically clean house.

As the weeks wore on, I noticed that things weren't getting as clean as they had been and I started occasionally leaving little notes along with the check - things like "I noticed the basement bathroom toilet is looking particularly grungy this week" or "Please be sure to scrub the floor of the master bath shower." And those items would get taken care of and quality would have a little surge and life would, once more, be idyllic and happy.

We considered stopping her service last summer when she wanted to charge us 25% more each time she came. It was unfortunate for her that she chose the week before I had to leave my first snippy note about things that weren't getting cleaned to ask for this. After letting her know that if that was her new price I just couldn't bring myself to pay it, she said she'd be fine to stay where she was. And, trying to "meet in the middle", I increased what we paid by 10% without her asking. And other than a few little bumps along the way with things not getting done to my admittedly exacting standards, I've been reveling in the fact that I don't have to spend every Saturday cleaning the house.

Now, however, I think the time has come to stop this little service. Because while we were both working, the expense wasn't such that it really made an impact but with my job ending on Tuesday and no immediate replacement on the horizon, it seems to make more sense to me to cut that out rather than, say, putting money in savings. Especially since I won't be able to say I don't have the time anymore. (And secretly? I'm kind of looking forward to being in charge of it again. Because I doubt I'll have to leave myself little notes. At least not very often.)

So, in preparation for this I poked around here, there and everywhere last night looking for all my regular cleaning supplies and embarked upon the following conversation with Tim:

Me: Hey, Tim? Where's the vacuum?
Tim: In the guest room closet.
Me: Ok.
Tim: Why?
Me: Um...because I'll need to use it to clean?
Tim: Oh. It doesn't work.
Me: When did that happen?
Tim: A few weeks before the cleaning lady started.
Me: Can we get it fixed?
Tim: Probably. Also probably easier and cheaper to get a new one.

And thus I find myself looking for a new vacuum cleaner. So, since I've little to nothing to do at work for the next 3 and a half days, I spent some time poking around looking at various vacuum reviews (Now there's some exciting reading!) and have kind of come to the conclusion that I want this one (a Eureka Boss SmartVac Ultra 4870GZ). Consumer reports gave it high marks, as did the majority of the Amazon folks (and the negative stuff centered around it being heavy, which I'm ok with.) But I was wondering if any of y'all actually have one and/or have used it and what your thoughts might be. Or if you have suggestions for something else to look at, I'm open to them. (Though our last one was a Kenmore and it sucked in the not good way for a vacuum cleaner to suck way. And given what we paid for it, that's a bad, bad thing. So I'm thinking cheaper is better at this point, so that if it only lasts 3 years I'll feel like I got my money out of it.)