A Spring Cleaning Reminder

It's spring! Hooray!
The weather is slowly starting to get warmer around here, the grass is getting greener, and I heard some birds happily chirping this morning at an obnoxious time. Have you started spring cleaning?

I don't really have a special spring cleaning plan or routine, but the warmer weather is a good reminder to let some fresh air in and get some of the winter dust that hasn't budged out. Sometimes that may involve changing out the linens, trying a new cleaning product, or in my case, taking a closer look at the vacuum.

...or just pushing dirt around?

This is what I asked myself the other day, as I rolled over the same piece of lint on the carpet multiple times before the vacuum finally picked it up. I have an upright, bagless, canister vacuum, as I assume many people do based on the number of them in the stores. There have been a couple times during its time with us when I thought it was broken and ready for a trade-in, before I remembered that it has multiple filters that maybe, just maybe, would affect its performance.

I did a little experiment after wondering if I was vacuuming or pushing dirt around. I vacuumed the apartment, and got about a half canister full of stuff. It took a lot of going back and forth over the same spots, and while there were neat little vacuum lines on the carpet, I still saw a few flecks of paper and crumb left behind.

Of course I empty the canister every time I vacuum, but that was no longer enough. So, I took all the hand-washable filters apart (everything but the HEPA filter on mine), pulled the major chunks of lint off of them, and rinsed them all out in the sink till the water ran clear. While the filters dried, I laid the vacuum down and made sure the little brush thing that spins wasn't tied up in string and Barbie hair. Once everything was dry I put it all back together and vacuumed again.

This time things went a little more smoothly, without having to run over the same piece of lint over and over, and the canister was full when I finished. There it was - my confirmation that I was not really vacuuming before.

Ew.
This is after living here just two weeks, and vacuuming probably four or five times in that two weeks. All this had been left behind. 

Long story short, here's your spring cleaning reminder:
You can only be as clean as your cleaner, so clean it.