My darling Oreck!

In January, I finally got a really great vacuum cleaner. It was a hard decision because I've used plenty of vacuums that just didn't cut it. When you have 4 cats and dog, that's tons of hair, you need more than just a toy. Every vacuum that I previously owned would always clog or break and constantly had to be taking them apart to unjam the tube and other parts. It was very distressing. Not to mention that they didn't even pick up all the hair.

It was tough researching the vacuums and it came down to the Oreck XL or the popular Dyson pet model. The choice was made when we went to the store to check out the Dyson. It's plastic parts and attachments seemed like they were easy to break and I am known to be pretty brutal with things. But I did like how all the parts were contained and it had the extender nozzle to like reach the ceilings and such. When I turned it on to see how well it sucked up dirt, it wasn't impressive at all. There was a little piece of wood on the floor and after going over it 10 times, it still wouldn't suck it up. You lost my business right there.

The Oreck store lets you try out the vacs and the suction is great. Is is an upright vacuum and there are no attachments, but it does come with a free canister vac. We bought one and I loved it right away. It sucks up dust bunnies about 2 inches from the front of the head. Now that is power. Only drawback is the loudness of the motor and the fact that for deep cleaning periods, I need to have two vacuums going at once. Another great thing is the outer bag and the dirt bag work together to pull a ton of dust from the air. This feature was very appealing to me and didn't really appreciate it until one day I saw there wasn't any dust particles and hair floating about through the air. The totally blew me away.

You would think that someone that loves their vacuum this much would cherish it always. Every month you are supposed to change the inner bag if it is full or not because of the air filtration I guess. When I first got it, I didn't change the bag like it said to in one month, but waited until it was full. One day I saw this liquid puddle next to vacuum. At first I thought it may have been the cat and for some reason he peed there. I soon realized that the inner bag was leaking out through the outer bag and all over the floor. With further investigation of cutting open the inner bag to see what was going on, found out that the contents (dirt) were composting in the bag and producing this liquid that was seeping out. Easy fix, just change the bag and be on our way. So that is what I did.

If you think that was a horrible thing to do, wait until you hear this. Like a good Oreck owner I started to change the bag once a month. The last time I took the bag out, apparently I forgot to replace the bag (unknowingly). So I started vacuum regimen as usual another month goes by and it's time to change the bag again. Open up the outer bag and all this dust started seeping out of the zipper. I was appalled to find out that I forgot to replace the bag all this time. The outer bag was ruined. I was embarrassed for a few weeks and couldn't bring myself to go to the store to see what could be done. Finally, yesterday I got out to the store and they immediately said the bag was ruined and it would need to be replaced. Of course it's not covered under warranty so we had to fork out the cash. It cost $60 to replace the outer bag. Let's hope I learned my lesson.