Bagless Vacuum Cleaners Are Dirty and Messy
I’m a clean freak. I like to vacuum up every dust bunny in sight, and hunt down those that try to hide. When my trusty vacuum finally died, it was time to enter the vacuum cleaner marketplace. I was amazed at the plethora of choices available-upright, canister, filtered, extra-large bags, and even bagLESS. Yep, a vacuum cleaner without bags. It sounded like a good idea, and I was sold. I brought home my bagless vacuum, and disaster seemed to come right along with it. Within a few months, my bagless vacuum was on its way to the Goodwill and a traditional vacuum cleaner–the kind that uses actual bags–found a happy home.
There are some things that I definitely liked about the bagless vacuum cleaner, and other things that drove me crazy. Here are some pros and cons that I encountered. Your experience may differ.
Pros
Convenience
It’s convenient because you don’t need to be concerned about running out of bags. You can see into the canister so you can judge when to clean out your bagless container.
Cost
It’s a bit cheaper because you don’t need to spend more money buying bags. The price of the vacuum cleaner itself is also typically less expensive than a vacuum cleaner with bags.
Retrieval
It seems like my kids are always leaving bits and pieces of important things on the floor. Somehow, they’re noticed as soon as they’re sucked up into the vacuum. So, if your family members often leave things out that they want back, it’s easy to retrieve.
Cons
Size
The bagless bag on my vacuum was much smaller than the bag on my old vacuum. I found that the vacuum worked best when the bagless bag was near empty, so I ended up cleaning out the bagless bag every few days.
Dust, dust, and more dust
I felt like someone stuck in a bad comedy show! It didn’t matter what I did–the process of emptying my bagless bag created an ominous cloud of dustall over my newly vacuumed home! So I tried emptying it outside. I laughed as I watched the wind blow all my dust away. I felt a bit guilty watching my dustballs blow into my neighbors garden, and the idea of going outside in 5 degree weather wasn’t appealing, so I didn’t try this tactic again. I ended up putting it inside a larger trash bag, holding it closed, and holding my breath. I’d tap, well, hit actually, the filter on the inside of the larger bag to shake loose all the dirt. After getting the big particles of dirt out, the fiter and cannister that had held the dirt was, well, dirty! And I had to touch it to clean it! I can change out the bag on my regular vacuum cleaner in half the time with none of the mess!
Inconvenience
It didn’t matter how many times I tried tapping the filter inside a bag to empty it, dirt and fuzz always stuck to the filter and refused to go away. The solution? Simple–wash the filter. The only problem I had is that it took at least 24 hours to dry, so I had to plan when to wash the filter, allowing time to dry, carefully since I was not able to vacuum without it. I was relieved to find out that I wasn’t the only person with this problem.
In the end?
Overall the bad outweighed the good, and my life with a bagless vacuum cleaner was short lived, never to be attempted again. I’m sure there are others who love their bagless vacuum, I’m just not one of them. I’ve decided that there are two types of people in the world..bagless or bags. I’m definitely the bag type–are you?
