My Husband is Obsessed

Vacuum cleaners. He is completely obsessed with them. To understand the full story you must go back, back, back in time with me to when we were newly weds and moving out of our first apartment. It was a cute little doll house style, 2 bedroom place called Nantucket. The carpet was light blue (it was the 90s). We had packed up all our possessions and belongings and were deep into the cleaning phase of moving. I was ready to say good bye to our sweet little love nest and move onto the next chapter of our lives: Wymount. In fact, I thought we were all done cleaning and ready to go get in the car to actually drive to Wymount. We were standing together on the little porch landing, looking into our first apartment, biding it a fond farwell.

Says my new husband: "I'm gonna vacuum us outta here."

Admittedly this was not the first time in our few months together as husband and wife that I had no idea what he was talking about. "Vacuum us outta here?" I questioned. We had already vacuumed. What more could be done?

"Yha. Leave the vacuum here with me and I'll vacuum ourselves out of here. (Note he repeated his idea with no further explanation.)

Me: puzzled looks

His (finally) explanation: "That way there will be no foot prints on the carpet. No where in the entire apartment."

I had been warned you'd learn new things about your spouse after you married him. I had no idea it would be about his extreme vacuuming techniques.

Until this exact moment in time I had no idea that noticeable foot prints on the carpet were so undesirable. I also thought it was a ridiculous waste of time seeing as how anyone who was to walk into the apartment would be (ahem) leaving their own fresh foot prints there. Would a single person ever notice the efforts this vacuuming maniac had gone to?

That was my introduction to his obsessed ways.

Thankfully over the past 13 years he has not once gotten after me for neglecting to vacuum. He keeps his obsessions to himself that way.

But the love of clean carpet has recently flared up again in a big way. It started when, about 5 days ago, he came home from work with a gleam of excitement in his eyes: "I bought my first robot today." he said with a grin.

I shook my head. "The Roomba." I knew right what he meant when he said 'robot'. And I knew what was coming, too. Vacuum mania.



Since then he has stayed up every night (sometimes past midnight) prepping the floor for its rendezvous with "The Robot" (as Mr. Handsome and the kids have affectionately dubbed him). He's done the basement 3 times, the front rooms, each of the children's rooms. Each time he empties the lint basket its like he gets some vacuum addicts "fix". I get to hear things like: " You should see how much lint this thing can pick up!" & "The Robot can get the dust bunnies out from under the bed and the couch. Places that humans are unlikely to go. That's one of its selling points."

I smile and shake my head at the man I love.

So I must tell you that my husband is obsessed. But our floors are looking good.