Starting fall cleaning.......and why your vacuum won't suck

Been a while since I posted. Had a couple of out-of-town trips, but now hope to be home for a few weeks.

In my house, I have a huge 20'x 20' basement room that is my sewing studio. Over the past year, it has kinda gotten cluttered up with stuff that just had no other home. And a few weeks ago, my second refrigerator and chest freezer that is in the back of my storage room (which is about 20' x 10'......and packed) decided to blow a circuit, and everything inside them spoiled. The onlyl way to get to them was to totally empty the entire room, and jus stack stuff in my sewing room........pretty much filled up the whole space. Got the refrig and freezer cleaned out, did some electrical work, and they are back in place. Now, I am slowly going through everything that was in the storage room and repacking things, throwing some away, putting things aside for yard sale, etc.

Those of you who know me well know that Christmas is a big hobby of mine. I was repacking all my Christmas stuff and John noticed that it was taking up most of my storage room. So today he decided that we needed to clean out my 12' x 11' outdoor shed and make a place for holiday decorations there. Ugh.

Took all afternoon. Filled up his truck with trash. It looks great now! He is going to build high shelves for me to put all the stuff up there that won't fit into those big plastic bins. Things like stuffed reindeer, a sled, lotsa wooden figurines, stuffed teddy bears, etc. Then my boxes can stack under the shelf. I'll probably have 50 boxes of decorations, and probaby 3 big trees that won't fit into boxes, along with my other 15 smaller trees and all the loose stuff. Fun, fun.

I still have a sewing room that is a disaster, so I have to chip away at that a little at a time. But what sucks is that I will get it all done, and then have to dismantle part of it at the end of November, since my son, his wife, and their little girl are going to spend a couple of months here while they get their new business up and running and get settled into a house. Oh well. At least I'll know what I have and where everything is.........

I had 3 customers today call and ask why their vacuum wouldn't suck anymore. As long as it's running well, there are only a few things that could be wrong.....none of them serious. If your vacuum isn't sucking as well as you would like, check the following:
1. Make sure your bag isn't full. If so, replace it. If you have a bagless model, clean off the filters, or replace if necessary (most filters on vacs only last a year, less if you have lotsa animals)
2. Check to see if it's stopped up somewhere. Often, you could accidentally pick up something like a toothpick, and it gets stuck sideways in the hose, creating a sorta dam effect.
3. Replace your belt. Even if it's not broken, it can stretch to the point where the roller brush isn't turning as fast as it could, and causing the vac not to suck.

Probably 99% of the time, one of these reasons is why the vacuum won't work well.

Til next time.........
Cathy