Some people apparently find cleaning fun, but I’m not one of them. I like having things clean, but I most certainly do not like the process of cleaning. So the fact that I’m writing a TIBTIL post about cleaning contraptions should tell you that I’ve really been impressed by something. It is true. In fact, I’ve been impressed by two things.

The first thing is the Bissell SpotBot. We’ve actually had this thing since Christmas, and it continues to surprise me. It does the work of scrubbing carpet stains or spills for you. You just fill it up with water and solution, set it on the spot, push the button and let it go. It wets the spot, scrubs it and then sucks up the liquid (it doesn’t get the carpet completely dry, but it’s drier than when I scrub it manually). When it’s done, the spot is clean. If you’re not careful, the spot it cleaned will actually be cleaner than the surrounding carpet, so I don’t recommend using the SpotBot in areas where the whole carpet is visibly dirty unless you’re prepared to clean the entire thing immediately. Bright clean spots in middle of a dirty carpet are not attractive.

The second TIBTIL is the Dyson DC17 Animal vacuum. Ok, ok. I know that Dysons are trendy. And expensive. And Consumer Reports rates other vacuums higher. But several trusted friends have Dysons and love them. After reading way too many reviews of Dysons and other brands online, I came to two big conclusions. First, the vast majority of Dyson owners are very happy with them. Second, discussion about vacuum cleaner brands seems to devolve into religion quickly — people feel very strongly abut their favored brand. So I won’t claim that Dyson is the best, but I will say that we’re extremely happy with ours. It picked up an extraordinarily disgusting amount of dirt from areas that we’d been regularly vacuuming with our old vacuum.

It doesn’t make me happy that we had all that dirt in our carpet, but it does make me happy that we now have a vacuum that can pick it up…