The Vacuum Rant

On a cleaning binge, I decided it was time to vacuum the carpets in my condo. I have long blonde hair that falls out of my head all over the place, and our handheld dustbuster just isn't cutting it anymore. So I dragged out the stupid vacuum that was given to us for free. I'm calling it stupid because I hate it. I hated it when we got it too, but it was one of those "well you can just keep it until you buy a new one" and "it works just fine, might as well take it" incidences of practicality that my "god that thing is ugly, I don't want it in my home!" simply could not fight against. So the boyfriend and I inherited this:



Yeah.. wow. Just when you thought there were no vacuums in the 17th century.. In all honesty, that picture does it tons of favor. The thing is a mechanical monster of dented, dirty metal and a red plaid bag.

Anyway, I lugged the stupid thing out of our laundry/storage room and dragged it to the living room, all the while certain that it's probably making my carpets dirtier dropping 30 years of dust all over the place. Oh well, I thought, I could just vacuum that up too.

Well, I plugged in the beast and get this: it doesn't work. It's freakin' broken.

GROAN.

So now my carpets are so dirty they're annoying the crap out of me, but I can't vacuum them because I a) don't have a functioning vacuum and 2) had been operating under the illusion that I DID own a functioning vacuum and thus did not think to purchase or put money aside for a new one.

I quick net search turns up that vacuums are expensive. I have never bought one before, and now I have learned that you can buy all kinds, and the ones with the cool commercials on TV (Dyson ball!) actually run a price tag over $500.
What the heck??
In any case, I'm not ready to shell out a few hundred on a vacuum cleaner just yet, so I have a few days of serious consumer research ahead of me, followed by a week or two of scouring for sales, discounts, promotions and other deals.

All the while long blonde hair continues to fall out of my head and onto the carpet. FRIG.