A Virtuous Woman Cleans the Floors--and Loves Her Wonderful Husband

• Who can find a virtuous woman?  her price is far above rubies
• She looketh well to the ways of her household
• She eateth not the bread of idleness
• The heart of her husband trusts safely in her...(and hers in his)

I started this post yesterday ('Tuesday) but had some computer issues and didn't get this posted, but in the end, it turned into a whole different kind of post.  First, read the original:

Here we are at Day 23 of the 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge from Money Saving Mom. Today's task is to vacuum and/or sweep all of the floors in the house, or if that was too overwhelming, to do just the main traffic areas. 

Sounds simple, right?  Wrong.

It's not enough that, to honest with you, I hate intensely dislike doing floors. But my vacuum cleaner sucks!  As in, it doesn't suck.

Ya'll remember me telling you about how I broke our vacuum cleaner trying to get all of the hair off the carpet on my side of the bedroom? The hair got wrapped around the beater bar, and the next thing I knew, I smelled smoke.  I thought at the time that the belt had burned through and broken--why, because I broke a belt on a vacuum cleaner once before, doing something similar.  I'm not sure how exactly, but I did manage to take that one apart and replace the belt. This time, though, it wasn't something simple like the belt, apparently I burned the motor up that drives the belt, or stripped the gear drive that moves it or something way beyond me being able to fix it. My husband is a genius with vacuums, though, so he assured me that he could fix it if we could get the parts.  And believe it our not, we found an almost exact replica that our church was throwing away after getting a replacement, which we snagged to scavenge for parts.  But since my husband has been working practically non-stop the last few weeks, he hasn't had time to take the two broken vacuums and make one good one out of it.

Well, fast forward to today.  I was planning to use our back-up vacuum. Yes, we have a back-up, another scrounged one.  When we lived in a corporate apartment in Georgia, it 'belonged 'to our apartment, but started to have problems, so it was replaced with a new one at the housekeeper's request.  (Yes, I had a housekeeper for a few years! Twice a month, like clockwork.)  The old one was slated for the dumpster, but we asked if we could have it, and after receiving permission, my husband took it apart and cleaned it good, and it works worked as good as new.

So, as I was saying, I took our back-up vacuum to the bedroom, and I decided to start on my husband's side of the bed, which was the easiest. First I had to figure out how to turn it on, since the switch was in the "wrong" place, but I managed to turn it on and run it back and forth, but nothing was being picked up, even the simplest of fuzz.  So I adjusted the height.  Still nothing.  Pulled out the attachment wand, and it was barely sucking.  The canister had some dirt in it, not enough to fill it, but I thought, well, maybe if I empty the canister.  So I carried the canister to the kitchen to empty into the trash. 

Now, I know bagless vacuums are the newest thing and all, but it's never as easy as it looks on the commercials.  If it has any actually dirt in at all, dumping it raises a dust storm around the trashcan, I don't care how careful you are, and this one was no exception.

Noting carefully the instructions on the side, which say that the filter at the top should be cleaned every time the canister is emptied, I took the top of the canister and off and gently tapped it on the side of the trashcan as instructed.  Not much came out, and it did seem really clogged, so I tapped it just a little harder.  I promise, I barely tapped it.  It just happened to fly out of my hand and bounced on the kitchen floor.  At which point it disgorged itself of dust, all over the kitchen floor.

So what did I do?  I left it there and went back and tried to vacuum.  This time, the attachment hose sucked very well, but the bottom part still didn't.  I debated crawling around the floor using the attachment hose to vacuum with, but I decided to wait until my husband gets home to see if he can figure out what's wrong with it.  I'm hoping it's an easy fix, like a plastic bag sucked up inside and stopping it up.  (That's what was wrong with it last time).

So what did I do? I left it there and went back and tried to vacuum. This time, the attachment hose sucked very well, but the bottom part still didn't. I debated crawling around the floor using the attachment hose to vacuum with, but I decided to wait until my husband gets home to see if he can figure out what's wrong with it. I'm hoping it's an easy fix, like a plastic bag sucked up inside and stopping it up. (That's what was wrong with it last time).

So, I swept the floors in the rest of the house, and gave up on vacuuming for now. This is including the dust from the vacuum cleaner filter.

And now, for the REST of the story.

As soon as my husband made it in from work, as I was regaling him with my story of the vacuum, he went straight to the bedroom to take a look. 

Sure enough, the beater bar had something wrapped around it, and the belt was broken.  And it wasn't my fault this time, I hadn't used the vacuum since the last time I broke the other one. At any rate, it was an easy fix, for, I assumed, the weekend. 

But it just so happens that my clever husband had bought new belts for both vacuum cleaners, along with new filters for the main, #1 one that we're scavenging parts for.  He knew they both needed a bit of an overhaul, and he was preparing for it, he just hadn't had the time to get it yet. 

In a matter of minutes, he had the back-up apart, fixed, and back up and running. 

By this point in my day, I was ready to just put it off for tomorrow (today), but, get this, ladies--my sweet husband, who had been working all day, and had come in and fixed the broken vacuum, said, "Let me get a bite to eat first, and I'll do it.  And if you want to, we can go ahead and move the bed and clean under it, like you mentioned last week ."

And he did. 

We moved the mattress and foundation, and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned under the bed.  We had to stop and clean the filter three times before we finished, or should I say, before he finished, because he did most of it. 

I had griped and grumbled to myself about having "all of these vacuums and none of them work", and about the frayed old broom I had to sweep with, and even about the dustpan with the too-tall lip that's hard to sweep the dirt onto without making a mess. And he did all of that, after a full day of work, without complaining.  Or sighing. 

It reminded me of the time of the time when we were dating, when I was trying to finish my weekend cleaning in the tiny little bachelor-girl house I was renting, so we could spend the day together, and he got down on his hands and knees and helped me scrub the kitchen floor.  That's when I knew he was a keeper.

Did I tell you that Monday evening when I was telling him that I'd cleaned four rooms that day for the challenge, he asked me how long it took--he was concerned that I wasn't allowing enough time for myself to do the things I wanted to do.  Another reason to keep him around for another twenty-nine years. 

He's put up with a lot of less-than-virtuous qualities in me in the last few months, mostly without complaining.  He's spoken to me about it a few time with concern, because he knows I haven't been myself and he was worried about me.  And he's so proud of me for what I've accomplished the last few weeks, as I've pulled out of the physical, mental, and spiritual slump that I found myself in. 

Ladies, I know the Proverbs 31 verses speak of "the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her," but in this case, I think it's the other way around. My heart can safely trust in him.


I hope you have one just like mine.

Until next time...

This post is linked to:
Matrimonial Monday at Exceptionalistic
Titus 2sday at The Time Warp Wife
A Wise Woman Builds Her Home