by Fran Crawford
Housekeeping is probably one of the least popular duties of home owners even if the house that must be ‘house-kept’ is a recreational vehicle. The good part is the square footage of an RV is a fraction the size of an average ‘brick and mortar’ dwelling so it takes much less time to clean it.
Way back in 1996, before we began full time RVing, I had a Filter Queen vacuum, plus attachments that I had for years. I had chosen that brand because it was advertised as having no bags for dust collection and being the best equipment available for people with allergies. Oh, it did have a canister to collect the dust. It worked much as the advertising claimed it would …but it was BIG time cumbersome.
The space we moved into when we decided to go full time was much smaller than the three bedroom house. We needed to shed the space-hogging vacuum in favor of a hand held more lightweight, portable one.
Battery powered hand held machines worked reasonably well but always seemed to need recharging. They also did best when used with a feather duster or Swifter to loosen up dust a bit before the vacuum sucked it up.
Hand held did not do at all well in dust storms such as one we encountered at Wilderness Lakes RV Park, in southern California. We couldn’t even see the RV that was next door to us. We discovered Arizona has such bad dust storms as well.
At some point I became aware of Woot.com. It is a company out of Texas that started selling stuff on the internet, one item per day. That’s how I found out about SHARKS vacuums. Many of Woot’s items are great deals but some of them are limited quantities. They add a new, daily item at what is 10 pm California time … midnight where they are. Since they began years ago with one item, they have gotten to the point where they put up multiple items occasionally.
But back to the subject of great Sharks vacuums.
Four of the Shark vacuums I got were from Woot! and the last one I bought was on sale at Target. The ones from Woot! look as though they are prototypes. They look somewhat unfinished but are fully functional. That may be why the Shark company markets those through Woot! for less.
In case you are wondering why I bought so many … It’s complicated. But I will try to tell you.
The first one was really stripped and weird looking but I really thought it looked like it would work. It did. And it only cost forty nine dollars plus five bucks for shipping. When I saw the ad for the second one it looked more normal so I handed down the first one to someone in my family. He gave it to my grandson who was going away to college. So I bought the second one and gave it to my grandson’s father. I think he gave it to his son because it didn’t look so …prototypish (Is that a word??).
Well now, since I didn’t have a vacuum I got the third one. I still have it. It works great. It looks reasonably good. it is called a Sharks Navigator Lift Away because you can take off a part of it to use as a portable.
Then came number four. The vacuum that I have found to be almost perfect for RVs …or any other house for that matter … is the Shark Navigator Lift Around Pod. It is portable with either, or both, a handle and a shoulder strap for carrying it about. It is lightweight and quiet. It plugs into standard house current, and it never loses suction.
Well, I proofed those last paragraphs and if they are as confusing to you as they are to me you might want to check out the Amazon product page for the Shark Navigator Lift Away Pod Portable Vacuum
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