Cleaning the home can take time and a great deal of effort. We all lead busy lives, so it pays to save time on chores, as well as making them less intensive. Vacuuming is one of the necessary evils of domesticity, but unless you want to age your carpets and make your home scruffy, it has to be done on a regular basis.
Manufacturers have made small improvements to the vacuum cleaner over the years, and we’ve seen great leaps in innovation over the last decade or so. James Dyson’s vacuums have been credited for making chores sexy again, but now there’s a new kid on the block: the rechargeable vac.
Convenience
The major selling point of a rechargeable cleaner is the freedom to hoover ‘cordless’. Gone are the cleaning times of pulling a cable around you or trying to stretch it to breaking point when you move into another room. No more unplugging and replugging, and no more cable to wind around the handle.
The flipside is the battery capacity; this varies from model to model. We find that most good vacuum cleaners from Gtech can vacuum a 3-bedroom semi-detached house on one charge, providing you give it a good vac a couple of times a week.
Many models have disposed of the need for a bag and instead use bagless technology. In a rechargeable, dust collects in a small plastic box. This is great in that you don’t need to keep buying bags, but you will need to empty the box at least once for every room (sometimes twice, if you have pets).
Portability
Rechargeable vacuum cleaners are very lightweight, although sometimes a little bit awkward. The hand-held versions may not weigh much, but wielding the whole thing with one hand can give you wrist strain, which is why we advise trying one out before you buy it.
Suction power
Rechargeable uprights are sold as ‘floor sweepers’ or ‘vacuum cleaners’. If you want a true upright replacement, you need the latter, because the floor sweeper type models are really only good for lino and laminate. To get a respectable amount of suction from the vacuum cleaner types, you need to empty the dust box every few minutes and make sure the vacuum cleaner battery is fully charged. If yours has lost suction, remove and rinse the filters, or buy new ones from the manufacturer’s website.
We have found that rechargeable vacuums work better on carpet than on laminate, although don’t get right up to the edges as well as a traditional cleaner would.
What the pros use
We recommend using any vacuum cleaner that works with your lifestyle and budget. Rechargeables may not offer a complete cleaning solution, but for people who are less mobile or too busy to vacuum frequently, they can help you to keep your home cleaner than you otherwise would.
Whatever you choose, Efficient Cleaning is here to help keep your home looking spick and span. If you need the professionals to come in and give your carpets an extra vacuum each week, give us a ring today.
Image Credit: Yaniv Ben-Arie via Flickr
