How I Know a New Vacuum Was a Good Investment

I can't believe I forgot to mention this gem!

We have been discussing purchasing a new vacuum for quite a while now. We were using an old (crappy) Dirt Devil that Mark has had for years (pre-dating our relationship) and I'm sure it was just fine when there were no pets or pending children around, but really I questioned what it actually did. I felt like we could vacuum and vacuum and the carpets never got clean enough.

With a new addition coming to our family we both felt like we should probably look at investing some money in a better vacuum since we're going to have a little one crawling around on it soon enough! So, I started doing some research.

Vacuums are not cheap. Not at all. I think we've all heard of the Dyson and understand that it's thought to be the Cadillac of vacuums, but I am not even able to entertain the idea of spending $500+ on a dirt sucker. I did some research and the Bissell Healthy Home comes highly recommened for value, quality, durability, and all that good stuff. It's especially recommended for homes with pets!

So I started the process of trying to justify to myself spending $249.99 on a vacuum. That's a lot of money, but it's something we use often. Back and forth in my head it went.

Well, lucky us a deal came up that I just HAD to act on and snatch this baby right up! Back on the weekend before Thanksgiving I saw in the Target ad that they had a deal that with the purchase of this vacuum you got a $75 gift card. SuhWEET! This brings the price down to a more mentally managable cost of $174.99. THEN I discovered that Bissell was offering a $30 rebate on the purchase of this vacuum before 12/20/09! Which brought the price down to an even better $144.99!!!

Now, I figure that even to buy a less quality vacuum we'd be spending AT LEAST $100. At that point I could TOTALLY justify throwing in an extra $45 to get a great product! So, we raced out to Target and brought our new vacuum home.

Here's where proving the investment as a good one comes in. First I vacuumed our carpet with our old vacuum. Then, we went over it again with the new one. Keep in mind the "carpet" I'm referencing is just our family room and hallway, probably 300 - 350 square feet total.

Here are the results:

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting. I could knit a damn sweater for our dog with that junk! AND we've only had this carpet since August! THAT is what our old vacuum was leaving behind!!! So gross. After I saw that I was skeeved out just knowing that after we "cleaned" our carpets by vacuuming with our old wondervacuum we were still living among that filth!

So, in conclusion, the $145 was super well spent on our new vacuum. I feel like the carpet is SO much cleaner now and I'm mighty proud of the deal we got!