ShopVac: better living through suction
Last night I cleaned like an obsessive starfish in a fetid tank. It started with a trip into Josh’s closet. But it wasn’t to check up on all the decaying bodies and heroin blocks he keeps in there.
No, behind the dresser in his closet there is a secret door which leads to a mysterious place: the bathroom plumbing. Mysssstery!
No, not mystery, but yes leaky. Something back there drips water with a snail-like persistence. And when the previous owner redid the bathroom, what did they decide to put directly below the leaky bathtub plumbing?
Ceiling tiles! That’s right; the kitchen ceiling, to be precise. They’re made of some kind of foam, and they behave exactly like big, permeable sponges when the water drips down.
Now, the ingenious solution to this problem was to put a garbage bag below the pipes, creating a reservoir worthy of even finest third-world tin-roofed shack.
Every few months, the bag fills up and then overflows, spewing water onto the thirsty sponges below. They drink as much as they can, and what’s left comes dripping into the kitchen.
It’s great for the houseplants, but undesirable nonetheless.
So every so often I go up there with my trusty ShopVac, push Josh’s dresser aside, and vacuum out the water.
But there’s something mildly narcotic about the ShopVac. Maybe it’s the fact that it can suck up anything. Maybe it’s the deafening white noise it makes. Or perhaps the endless variety of useless attachments for the end of the hose.
Whatever it is, I can never just ShopVac one thing. Because for me the ShopVac is the ultimate cleaning implement.
Dust on the floor? ShopVac it.
Clogged drain? ShopVac it.
Garbage can overflowing? ShopVac it.
I even use the ShopVac to clean the ShopVac when it gets dirty. I’m so meta.
So after sucking up what was probably a top vacation spot for all the animals that live in the walls, I went on to the bathroom.
After scrubbing things down with bleach and then spraying the whole place with the shower head, I had quite a lot of brown, toxic liquid around. I could wipe everything with paper towels, endangering the planet and wasting last year’s best house-warming present, or I could just suck it all up with the all-powerful hose.
I chose to suck.
The hallway and my bedroom were next, and by this time I had worked up a sweat. My shirt came off, then my pants. The boxers remained out of respect for the neighbors (we are still curtain-less in most of the house).
Now, with the hose held aloft like a sword, I jabbed and poked at my enemy – dust. Wherever he went, I followed. His cloudy attacks I repelled with fearless coughing and running away.
We struggled down the stairs and into the kitchen, where I was joined by an inept ally, the broom.
Together we fought bravely, but my strength was failing me. The ShopVac’s hollow belly had filled with a repulsive, sloshing mix of dirty water and filth. It was getting heavy, and harder to pull behind me.
In the end, I was too weak. I had flown too close to the Black & Decker 1.5 horsepower sun, and paid the price.
Now I had four gallons of nasty waste sitting in the middle of the kitchen. I had no idea how to dispose of it (no chance of pouring it down the drain, it would clog the pipes like Kentucky Fried Chicken). And anyway, it was too heavy to move.
But on the bright side, I was near the living room, and close to the television. There’s no better way to solve your problems than to forget them, I always say. And TV makes me forget everything.
So I soothed my wounds with the glowing salve of a syndicated sitcom, and decided the only way to solve the ShopVac problem was to buy another, bigger ShopVac to suck up the smaller one.
When the big ShopVac gets full, well just move it out with a crane. Or buy a new house.