Since my birthday was this week, I decided to get myself a gift. I had planned on buying myself the Lego Mindstorms robot kit because it looked pretty cool and a lot of fun. But, now that I am so much older and wiser, I decided on a more practical gift. You know, something that I need. I was a bit depressed about this, but decided it was the grown-up thing to do.

So, what did I get myself? Since my mother informed me that she would not set foot in my house again until I vacuumed the rug, I bought myself a vacuum cleaner. Now, I’m not necessarily a complete slob, but I’m also not a neat freak. I will admit that my living and dining room carpet was pretty disgusting, but mainly it’s because the house is under construction. Now that things are getting done, I really needed to clean it up.

I don’t know much about vacuum cleaners, except that Dyson advertises on tv a lot and that seemed like a good one to buy, though they are expensive. Also, it was bagless, which also seemed like a good idea. But just to check, a friend of mine looked up vacuum cleaners on Consumer Reports. I was a bit shocked to find that the Dyson scored really low on cleaning carpet. So, who had the best score? A Sears Kenmore model. Go figure. I then looked into things a bit more and found that a bagless model is not necessarily what I want. Even though I don’t have to change a bag, I’d have to empty the machine which would basically expose me to all the dust I just picked up. The more I thought about it, the better a bagged machine sounded. I could just change the bag and be done with it.

I decided to go to Sears and get the Kenmore 35923. It was listed as $300, but it happened to be on sale for $250. So, I bought it and just finished using it for the first time. This is, by far, the BEST VACUUM CLEANER I HAVE EVER USED! It’s got so many features, which I completely love. It uses both a bag and a separate HEPA filter, so it pretty much picks up everything. I also has sensors that tell you when the floor is clean. For me, this is the best feature. I just keep going over the floor until the lights are green, then I know it’s clean. It also has two motors, one for the suction and one for turning the brush at the bottom. It doesn’t come with a belt, so I don’t have to worry about that breaking. It is quite the complicated machine with the sensors and motors, so I ended up getting an extended service warranty. It just seems like there are a lot of things that can break. Hopefully, I won’t have to use it.

Anyway, I’m about to start reading the user manual so I can learn about all the other features. I’m not one who would usually rave about an appliance, but I’m really happy with the gift I bought. And I think I need to start subscribing to Consumer Reports, because it was absolutely correct.