What are the most overrated things in your life?
In the Alien household, we are cursed with a Dyson upright vacuum cleaner. It is a crock of shite. They are advertised heavily as being innovative, with lots of patents on Mr Dyson’s wonderful ideas, and as the “in” vacuum cleaner to have.
In actual fact, they are nothing of the sort. They are badly designed, with Mr Dyson, having invented the cyclone bagless cleaner, deciding that he can reinvent the wheel. Here is a short list of design flaws.
Lack of bag – a key selling point. But, when emptying the cleaner, you have to remove a large diameter cylinder with an open top. It is awkwardly fitted, so that loose dust always tips out over the cleaner itself and the floor. So, never empty the machine after cleaning.
Cable – the cable does not rewind automatically when you press a button. No, the whole cable has to be unwound and draped over the floor. And moved out of the way when cleaning, constantly.
Exhaust blows forwards – which means that as you move to suck up spilt talc or feathers, the exhaust blows the mess away from you.
The extension pipe – this is a classic. The extension pipe (the flexible pipe for sucking in dust from corners and off the top of things) ends in a two feet long solid aluminium pipe to which the plastic handle and different shaped sucking devices are attached, increasing the overall rigid length to about three feet. Why? It is fucking difficult to manoeuvre, you can’t use it to clean the top of a surface that’s more than about four feet tall.
Come the home cleaning revolution, the Dyson will be first up against the wall.
What are your candidates?