My fight with the hoover (vaccum cleaner!!)

Yesterday I decided to clean out my chimney.

I put on old clothes, got the necessary cleaning equipment and faced the job that had been hanging over me for the past couple of weeks.

I don´t know what it is about conquering certain types of jobs that makes any time other than "NOW", the better option! Maybe because it´s going to require some extra effort or simply because deep down you know that it is most likely to look WORSE before it looks better. Or better said, that before it is clean, it usually gets very dirty first. One of life´s great ironys!

I loaded the remaining ashes of past cosy fires, now just reduced to nothing but bothersome dirt, into a double lined plastic bag checking previously for holes!!!(hmm, can you tell that I have had experience in this!!)

I was quite satisfied with my efforts, as I scooped up mounds of gray dust carefully, slowly laying it down into the plastic bag as if it were a newborn baby, knowing that with just one false move this seemly powerless gray substance had the potential to be all over the place in seconds!!!!!

I just thought of a interesting bit of trivia! While women clean up chimney dust, house dust and any type of dust for that matter, men go to MARS, pay billions of dollars, 2 years of precious time: in search of theirs!!! I rest my case!!!

Anyway, back to my chimney! Things were getting cleaned up pretty well and I figured that the remaining dust could be collected with the hoover. A quick rapid finish thinks me, all proud of my bight idea!

So here I am, hoover in hand, sucking up the left over ashes with ease. Man this was a dream- everything was going smoothly. Life was smiling upon me!

What I didn´t know was that I was on the brink of a technical disaster! All a sudden, bursting out of the vents of the hoover, came streams upon streams of silver dust, like a volcanic eruption, filling the air with a heavy gray mist. At first I didn´t quite know what was happening, and my reaction to turn the hoover off seemed delayed, as if in slow-motion. "We have a problem Houston!!" During this time you are thinking... boy, am I glad no-one is here to witness this phenomenon...especially my Dad!!!

It looked some what like the picture below, only without the helicopter! Upon opening the hoover, I discovered that the bag inside had ripped open, allowing for a kind of "re-cycling" system: intake ash - outake ash to occur ...... the chimney cleaners nightmare!


At least changing the hoover bags does not require any kind of technical diplomas or expertise, so actually fixing the problem wasn´t complicated. Cleaning up, naturally was another story. Now, instead of just cleaning up the chimney, I found myself with the "worse before it gets better syndrome" and my work expanding to dusting the WHOLE room and washing the curtains!

Is this Murphy´s law in action?
Where is that man? I want to have a few words with him and his so called "law!"

Moral of the story?

Option a) Don´t clean your chimney!
Option b) Call in a professional!
Option c) Discover ways to introduce ash dust into your interior decoration!
Option d) Check your hoover bag first!

***** PREVENTION IS BETTER THAN CURE!*****

There is another perspective on dust that might leave room for thought and inspiration. I discovered this on my travels through google and thought rather cute:

Love, Ally