Vac

Among other things done today, I fixed the vacuum cleaner. There aren’t that many small machines I can repair, but then again only problems were a broken belt, a full bag and brush roll completely encrusted with floor crap. Once all of those problems were resolved, I tried it out on the red carpet in the living room and was prepared to curse Eurkea, our brand, since it still wasn’t working well.

Then I notice that someone – I suspect little hands – had set the thing for a high carpet, instead of the low I was working on. So I reset it. It worked wonderfully. It must have been mis-set for a while, since the red carpet hasn’t been this clean in a while.

It all made me wonder why, in customary and (partly) discredited gender divisions of labor, vacuuming is the woman’s job. It involves pushing around a loud, dirty machine with cool accessory names like HEPA and Micron filters, extension wands, and crevice tools. Something like mowing the lawn, only inside. Surely right for men, customarily speaking. Anyway, I like it better than most household jobs.