Help! My vacuum sucked up a bathing suit!

Factual Questions
1

I just bought a new vacuum and today I am babysitting my niece. She has swimming lessons in two hours and her brand new bathing suit was left on the floor and consumed by my vacuum. My sister is going to kill me if I don’t recover the bathing suit. The suit didn’t make it into the vacuum bag and there is nothing for me to take apart to look inside and see where it is! No screws or anything!

So now that the bag is off I was thinking about turning the vacuum on to see if the suit (it’s a small piece of clothing, my niece is 4) would go up through the tube and come out where the bag should be.

What do you think? Will I end up replacing both the suit and my vacuum?

2

OK, I’ve completely disassembled the vacuum, I located the bathing suit, and unfortunately I’m only able to yank it through the opening about halfway (how many times will I say that sentence in my lifetime? ;). Guess I’m going to be replacing both.

Thanks anyway!

3

It might help if we knew what kind of vacuum cleaner it is. Canister-type? Upright? If you post the specific make and model number, we might be able to supply better information. If you can fully remove the hose, you can drop a marble into one end and see if it comes out the other. If so, the suit isn’t in there, and you’ll have to look more closely for a way to disassemble it. I have no doubt it can be taken apart, but without more details it’s difficult to be more precise.

4

Ah, well. Never mind, then.

Try using something stiff to push the suit back through the other way, to try to unbunch it, so you can then pull it out. I know that’s not very clear, but I can’t think of a good way to describe what I mean. You want to try to catch the other end away from the opening you’re trying to pull it through, to “stretch it out”, so you can pull it out more easily.

5

… and that’s how the bikini was invented.

6

I got it out! It’s shredded, but it’s out–and replacing the suit is better than replacing both the bathing suit and the vacuum.

I could have gotten it out without even disassembling it had I just looked under the flap in the hole where the hose goes (I love vacuum talk). I just stood on the base of the vacuum and pulled the suit until it came out. Perhaps that’s when the shredding happened. Oh well, at least it’s out.

There’s a lesson in this somewhere.

7

Yes, and it is twofold:

  1. Always own more than one bathing suit.

  2. Mainly for males: a vacuum cleaner is never a substitute for a good old-fashioned human orifice.

8

Yikes. After words like “yank” and “shredded” I certainly hope no males ever try such a thing. At least not with the Dirt Devil Jaguar. (The box wasn’t kidding when it said “Maximum Vacuum Power”!)

9

Too late.