COURTNEY: There was a famous story about a guy whose robot vacuum rolled over dog poop and spread it over every sort of square foot of his carpet, very, very methodically
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
CAIRA: I’m Caira Blackwell.
ROSIE: I’m Rosie Guerin. And you’re listening to The Wirecutter Show.
CAIRA: This episode is called Vacuums that don’t suck.
ROSIE: Hello, Christine and Caira.
CHRISTINE: Hi.
CAIRA: Hello, Rosie.
ROSIE: I’m excited to bring in the first of our spring-cleaning episodes.
CHRISTINE: Ohh la la, yes.
ROSIE: We’re really leaning into it this month.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. March.
ROSIE: Yeah, it’s March, it’s spring. I’m personally holding my own feet to the fire. We got to do better.
CAIRA: Oh, we?
ROSIE: Excuse me. I got to do better.
CHRISTINE: Well, Rosie, do you have a good vacuum?
ROSIE: I have an okay vacuum is what I’m prepared to say at this time.
CHRISTINE: I think that’s like a box a lot of people would check, honestly.
ROSIE: Yeah. I have had very bad vacuums. I have used very good vacuums. Right now I have an okay vacuum.
CHRISTINE: I have been editing a ton of Wirecutter’s cleaning coverage lately for a little project I can’t quite share yet, but it’s going to be big. It’s going to be awesome. But what I’ve found remarkable is that in so many of these pieces we have on the site about how to clean basically anything in your home, vacuums show up so often and sometimes in surprising ways because they’re just so versatile and I think if you’re going to invest in one thing to really clean your home, a vacuum is almost always going to be one of the best investments you can make just because it’s the best thing for getting up that dust for cleaning weird places in your home can be really effective for capturing allergens in your home. And it is really terrible when you have a bad vacuum.
CAIRA: I do remember when my mom bought a Kirby vacuum in the ’90s because a door-to-door salesman convinced her that it was the best thing in the world.
CHRISTINE: That’s right. That was a thing. What did these look like?
CAIRA: They look like these gigantic tanks. I mean the design has changed now, but the one that’s still currently sitting in my parents’ house is like chrome and huge and it weighs a thousand pounds. And when it gets to be that hard to use, you never use it, and then there’s no point in buying it in the first place.
CHRISTINE: We have a lot of vacuum recommendations on our site. Kirby, I don’t think is one of them, but-
ROSIE: We’ve come a long way.
CHRISTINE: We have come a long way. I don’t think you have to buy a tank these days, although maybe that is what floats your boat. That’s great. We have lots of options and we’re going to talk a little bit about what is worth your money and time because I think that’s another thing, right? Cleaning takes time. If you get something that’s kind of suboptimal, it’s going to take you more time. You’re going to waste time. This is all about the life value proposition, like the money, time trade off.
ROSIE: What is more precious than time?
CHRISTINE: That’s right.
CAIRA: Today we’re going to be talking with Courtney Schley, who has been overseeing our vacuum coverage for years. She’s also been at Wirecutter for nearly a decade now. She knows a ton about vacuums and basically runs a testing lab out of her own house in Philly.
CHRISTINE: We’re going to take a quick break, and when we’re back, we’ll dive into the first things you should ask yourself. If you’re finding that your current vacuum is just terrible, maybe say it kind of sucks, and how to find one that will actually get the job done. We’ll be right back.
CAIRA: Welcome back. With us now is Courtney Schley. Courtney is an editor, who has edited all of our vacuum coverage. Courtney has done a lot of real world testing because she has a lot of our vacuum picks in her house because she has four kids and she has a new cat, so she’s constantly cleaning.
CHRISTINE: Courtney, welcome to The Wirecutter Show.
COURTNEY: Thank you.
CHRISTINE: I love that you’re here. We have worked very closely together. You’ve worked very closely with Caira for many years, so it’s awesome to have you here. You also work really closely with our vacuum testers in the office, and we’re going to talk a little bit more about that later. But something I find really interesting about you and the way that you work is that you’re basically kind of like running a vacuum testing laboratory out of your home. Can you tell us a little bit about your setup at home and how many vacuums you have?
COURTNEY: Sure. Yeah. It’s very much a real life testing scenario. I live in a big old stone house on the outskirts of Philadelphia. It’s four storeys, so a basement and three storeys. I have wall-to-wall carpet in some areas. I have older, delicate antique hardwood flooring. I have rugs. I have three staircases, lots of dust and various old house schmutz that tends to accumulate and lots of nooks and crannies. And I also have four young kids.
CHRISTINE: They are the real test for a vacuum, right?
CAIRA: And you now have a cat now, right?
COURTNEY: And we now have a cat.
CHRISTINE: So how many vacuums do you have to clean the house?
COURTNEY: So I mean, I probably wouldn’t have quite this many if I didn’t work for Wirecutter, but I currently have four vacuums and a carpet cleaner.
CAIRA: Wow.
ROSIE: So either you hate vacuuming or you love vacuuming so much, because you have four vacuums or each kid has a vacuum that’s dedicated.
CHRISTINE: That’s how I would choose to do it.
ROSIE: Yeah. Four floors, four kids, four vacs.
CAIRA: Which is it? Do you love it or do you hate it?
COURTNEY: A little bit of both. The way that I feel about vacuuming in general is that it is a lot of work, but your floor is one of the largest surfaces in your home, and so I think that a good vacuum can have an outsize impact on how your home feels. It also, it’s not just the floor that’s getting cleaned when you vacuum. It’s the air quality in your home and it’s generally improving the health and the well-being of your living environment.
CHRISTINE: And by improving the air, do you mean that if you’ve got a lot of dust on surfaces, it can kick up into the air and then you’re breathing it, so by vacuuming, you’re kind of capturing that all?
COURTNEY: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the more that you suck out of the carpets or off the floor, that’s less particulate matter and pollutants and dander and other allergens that are going to be making their way into the air you breathe.
ROSIE: So you have your setup at home with your vacuums. How do you test them at the office? What does that setup look like?
COURTNEY: At the office, we do a lot of, especially our initial testing, when we’re evaluating just a ton of different models, cordless stick vacuums or robot vacuums or plug-in vacuums. We do a lot of the more quantitative testing to get a baseline measure of how these different machines perform. So we have a variety of different rugs and flooring surfaces, shag carpet, medium pile carpet, we have runners, vinyl flooring. We really want to figure out how these work on a variety of surfaces and we have a lot of different test substances, so things to represent the kind of dirt and schmutz is the word I tend to use, but debris that people encounter a lot at home. So we have some specific ones we like to test with. We always test with glitter.
CAIRA: That’s a good one.
CHRISTINE: Yeah.
COURTNEY: And we always test with Cheerios. We focus on the things that really drive people crazy, but also can be strangely challenging for vacuum cleaners to pick up. Glitter is tough because it spreads everywhere. It’s very lightweight and it also kind of sticks. And then Cheerios and things like Cheerios bird seed is something else that we use a lot. They tend to scatter around if the vacuum doesn’t have a good brush roll system. So that’s where you can end up just spreading the mess further if the vacuum isn’t really equipped to handle it. We also test with pet fur and hair, so we buy bright rainbow-colored hair extensions because once the vacuum sucks them up, we can really easily see how tangled they get in the brush roll. Does the vacuum actually get it up into the bag or is it just going to wrap around the brush roll, which eventually you’re going to have to cut it out or untangle it.
ROSIE: I find that to be just the worst when you have to take the scissors.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, it’s super annoying.
COURTNEY: Christine you probably…
CHRISTINE: I actually have mostly hardwood. So i don’t use a roll–
COURTNEY: A brush roll.
CHRISTINE: A brush roll. I actually just the hardwood thing. I am never going to live in a home with carpet for that reason.
ROSIE: That reason alone.
CAIRA: Where are you gathering the pet hair from?
COURTNEY: We have a connection with a dog groomer and-
CHRISTINE: A hookup? A dog groomer hookup?
CAIRA: [inaudible 00:08:49].
COURTNEY: [inaudible 00:08:49] every so often and sometimes we just ask people in the office like, hey, can you bring in a bag of fur next time you go to the groomer?
CAIRA: So when you guys are testing the office and it looks like you guys are setting up a makeshift obstacle course with chairs and stuff.
COURTNEY: Yeah. We set up a scenario that would feel like you’re vacuuming at home. So what is it like to maneuver this vacuum around a coffee table or around a chair leg or a potted plant or whatever it might be getting in your way. And we want to see how does the vacuum handle transitions from bare floor to a rug. Sometimes they’ll jam or it won’t have enough [inaudible 00:09:37] on the hardwood floor when you’re switching.
CAIRA: So I know that there are tons of different types of vacuums that you can buy, but I’m trying to imagine what these vacuums look like when you’re talking about them in your house or at the office. Can you tell us what you might expect to find when you’re looking at these different types of vacuums? When you say a canister vacuum, I imagine something from the 1950s and one of those vintage posters or something.
COURTNEY: So vacuums broadly, you can divide them into plug-in vacuums which have cords and then battery powered rechargeable vacuums. So with plug-in vacuums, you have an upright vacuum and a canister vacuum. Those are the two main styles. An upright vacuum looks probably what most people have in their mind when they picture a classic vacuum. It stands up, it has a handle, it has a bag, and it’s all kind of one unit and it has a long cord. A canister vacuum is a little different. It’s sort of more like a pod that’s on wheels, usually with a long hose and sometimes this sort of long telescoping wand. So you vacuum with the wand and the canister sort of follows you along on wheels.
CAIRA: Got it.
COURTNEY: Plug-in vacuums, vacuums that have a cord. They are across the board more powerful cleaners than a cordless vacuum can be. They’re just stronger and more versatile cleaners. For battery powered vacuums, you have cordless stick vacuums and robot vacuums.
CHRISTINE: So we’re going to get into the differences between those two in a bit, but if you’re someone listening to this podcast, how do you decide what kind of thought process should you go through in terms of deciding the type of vacuum to get?
COURTNEY: I think the first question someone should ask is what do you have in your home? First of all, what’s the size of your home, and then what is your carpet to bare floor ratio? Because carpets typically need a lot more power to really deep clean effectively than if you have mostly hardwood or otherwise bare floors. The other questions to ask is who’s making the mess in your home? Do you have kids? Do you have pets? Those are also things that are going to need specific way to attack that.
And then probably the most important question is, who’s going to be using the vacuum? Whatever vacuum you get, it has to be something that you can use effectively. I don’t want to say that you enjoy using because I think that can be a bridge too far, but you have to at least be able to use it. That may mean thinking about your physical abilities, how comfortable are you moving the vacuum around. It’s going to be better to use something that is easier for you to use so that you will actually use it than the most powerful high-tech vacuum that you can buy.
CHRISTINE: Right. So you might want to be thinking about the weight if you’re going to schlep it upstairs, if you’re-
CAIRA: If you’re going to have your kids schlep it upstairs.
CHRISTINE: Yeah. If your kids are going to do it, or if you have maybe arthritis, is it easy to turn on and turn off? Kind of secondary questions.
COURTNEY: Yeah. And also just what is your cleaning style? Are you a person who likes to attack a mass right away? In which case something really quick and convenient, like a cordless stick vacuum that you have right at hand that you’re going to whiz on for a couple of minutes. Or are you someone who has Sunday is vacuuming day? And you do it once a week, but you’re going to spend 45 minutes to an hour really deeply vacuuming? Or are you someone who wants something that will just kind of run automatically and do maintenance cleaning? That’s where robot vacuums can be really effective.
ROSIE: So if I have a ton of carpet and rugs, I might decide I need a more powerful cleaner versus if I have all hardwood floors, that narrows it down to either an upright or a canister. Is that right?
COURTNEY: Yeah. So both upright and canister vacuums are very powerful cleaners and which one you choose really comes down more to preference. So upright vacuums, they are easy to store because they stand upright. Some of them honestly look really stylish. The good ones will include a lot of attachments and a hose that you can use for dusting baseboards or getting into crevices, cleaning your upholstery or sofas or armchairs. They’re usually a bit heavier to use on the arm because just the way they’re designed, the weight of the machine sort of rests on your arm and you’re pushing it forward. Canister vacuums, there’s a lot of different accessories that tend to be available for canister vacuums. Some of them you can even get dog grooming tools to attach to them.
CHRISTINE: Oh, just to suction up your dog really, literally?
COURTNEY: Yeah.
CHRISTINE: Okay. Wow.
COURTNEY: I think they’re like brushes that, yeah, suction-
CHRISTINE: I know some dogs who would love that.
CAIRA: [inaudible 00:14:23] their owners would love that.
COURTNEY: So the reason why people tend to canister vacuums is most of the weight is not in your hand. It’s in this pod that is on wheels that sort of follows you around as you go through the house. They usually have really, really long cords, so you can cover a lot of distance without having to replug it in somewhere else, but they can take some getting used to if it’s not something that you’re used to using.
It can sometimes feel like a lot of vacuum to handle. Even the one that I have, I sometimes kind of feel like I’m wrestling an octopus, things can get a little tangled and twisted, but once you get a rhythm going, it can be a really efficient, effective way to deep clean carpet. Probably the biggest con to both a good upright and a good canister vacuum is that they are expensive. The ones that we’ve tested and recommend, they’re 700, $800. Now, along with that, these models usually have very good warranties and very good customer service track records, and these types of vacuums tend to be easily repairable. You can get replacement parts for them. They’re designed to be maintained and repaired over the long-term.
CHRISTINE: And by long-term, what do you mean by that? How long should one of these last?
COURTNEY: At least 10 years for a good quality canister upright vacuum, we have experience with them lasting that long or longer, as long as they’re maintained well.
CHRISTINE: I have a Miele. It is like the basic model, and I’ve used it for 10 years, been very happy with it. I think it might be reaching its last year and it might need to be replaced.
CAIRA: But it’s done its job.
CHRISTINE: But it’s done a great job for the last 10 years. And the reason I got this vacuum actually is because I got it around the time I first had a kid, and one thing I was concerned about were allergies, like allergens in the air. Should you also be considering whether you have allergies? Does that kind of play into the type of vacuum you’re going to get?
COURTNEY: Yeah. So in your case, I think there’s two things that probably made that an effective choice if you were worried about allergies in your kids. One is that a plug-in vacuum, it is more powerful. It’s going to capture and collect more dust and all the things that we can’t necessarily see, but that may cause irritation or asthma or allergies. And also it seals it. So you have bagless vacuums and you also have bagged vacuums. The plug-in vacuums that we recommend are bagged models, and effectively it’s just sealing all the debris that it sucks into a bag so that when you are then emptying the vacuum, you’re not reintroducing some of that back into the air. You’re not going to encounter it yourself. And so that’s an important feature to consider is a bag.
CHRISTINE: Okay. Yeah. So if you’ve got allergies, think about getting a bagged model, basically.
COURTNEY: A bagged model.
CHRISTINE: Okay.
COURTNEY: Yeah. And then the other part is how well sealed the vacuum is and the filtration that it offers. There’s two types of filters that you are likely to see on a plug-in canister or upright vacuum. One is a HEPA filter and the other is called an S-class filter.
CAIRA: And that’s the European version of a HEPA filter, right?
COURTNEY: Yes.
CHRISTINE: And we talked about HEPA filters in one of our episodes on air purification, and basically it’s this filter that can filter out really, really, really tiny particles out of the air.
COURTNEY: Correct. It also has to do with overall how well the vacuum is made. Because a vacuum that has a HEPA filter, but the gaskets aren’t well sealed, there’s still then places that those particles could leak back out of the vacuum.
CHRISTINE: And for what it’s worth, my vacuum I don’t think has HEPA, but it is really, really well-sealed, and so it’s taken care of a lot of the issues in my home. So I think like you’re saying, it’s just a high-quality vacuum.
ROSIE: Let’s just say, someone’s listening, none of these scenarios sound quite right for their situation. They want something lighter and maybe less intense than a canister or an upright vac, but what are you going to recommend to that person?
COURTNEY: So for that case, you could look at a cordless stick vacuum or a robot vacuum. A cordless stick vacuum, they are lightweight, they’re rechargeable. They usually run for anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the size of the battery, and they’re great for quick pickups. And then a robot vacuum, of course, that’s where it’s going to clean for you.
CAIRA: So I still kind of think of robot vacuums as these dumb little machines that bump into corners and run over your toes. Are they actually good now?
COURTNEY: Robot vacuums have come a long way in the last 10 years. The ones that I remember from five to 10 years ago, and I was somewhat of an early adopter. I bought a Roomba maybe close to 10 years ago at this point. They would bump into things, knock things over, suck up cords, get tangled, sometimes fall down staircases. There was a famous story about a guy whose robot vacuum rolled over dog poop and spread it over every sort of square foot of his carpet, very, very methodically because-
CHRISTINE: Painted the floor?
COURTNEY: Yeah. Because that’s the thing is that in their earlier incarnations, they were very diligent, but very stupid. But robot vacuums, nowadays, they’ve really come a long way, and especially in terms of the navigation and the obstacle avoidance and also in just how user-friendly they are. They can be very easy to use and very, very convenient and very effective.
ROSIE: We’re going to take a quick break in just a minute, but I want to recap what I’ve learned here. So you’ve got some options when you’re looking at vacuums.
You’ve got upright, you’ve got a canister, you’ve got a cordless stick vacuum, and you’ve got a robot vacuum. And those are kind of the options that are out on the market right now. The main question that you’re going to want to ask yourself before you make this purchase is really how are you going to use the vac? And at the end of the day, really what is actually going to be conducive to your lifestyle? What are your needs? What will you actually use?
I think also thinking about things like filtration, bags. Especially if you have allergies, if you have asthma, not every upright vacuum is going to have a bag. Almost all, if not all canister vacuums are getting dust and particles in those bags is going to be really, really important, as is a really tight seal on your vacuum. So those are going to be really, really important things for people with allergies and asthma. Those are the types of things that you want to start thinking about when you’re thinking about making this purchase.
CHRISTINE: We’re going to take a quick break and when we come back, we’re going to talk about when you might want to get more than one vacuum, how to fix your current vacuum if it’s not working that well. And then my favorite, the wacky underworld of vacuum culture. We’ll be right back.
Welcome back. Courtney, before we get into more nitty-gritty about vacuums, I want to step back a little. There’s a really intense subculture around vacuums both online and in person. There are conventions of vintage vacuum collectors. The first time I saw this was on How To With John Wilson on HBO. There’s just this great episode in, I think it’s season 3, where he goes to one of these conventions and it’s hilarious and amazing and just kind of wild. And then there’s also these subreddit dedicated to vacuums. How has that sort of subculture really impacted your reporters’ pieces?
COURTNEY: Yes. So there is definitely a subculture of people who are very enthusiastic about and interested in, and really, really knowledgeable about vacuum cleaners. We did send one of our reporters to a yearly vacuum convention. It was at a vacuum museum in Missouri. They have a collection of vacuums, I think, going back to the 19th century. Which is interesting because vacuums, they’re a pretty early labor-saving invention. I’ve thought about it. I don’t know if there’s any other home cleaning device that has such a sort of devoted following.
CHRISTINE: I’m imagining like a Christopher Guest movie, that’s based off of a vacuum convention.
COURTNEY: Oh, that would be very cool.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, I want to see that.
COURTNEY: Yeah. I love that people love vacuums, and they’re cool machines. They have motors and suction and hoses and spinning things, and I get why people find them appealing and interesting and want to take them apart and fix them and figure out how they work. And so we definitely, at Wirecutter, I mean when we’re looking for new models to test, we do look really deeply into some of these subreddits, and we also recognize that we’re testing and writing both for the person who is really into vacuums and really wants to know all the ins and outs of them, and also the person that hates vacuuming and just wants to know what’s going to help them get it over with quickest and painlessly.
CAIRA: I love using Reddit when I’m doing mattress research because I feel like a lot of people in the subreddits take a Wirecutter approach. They’ll build spreadsheets and then they will give you their long-term testing data. And it’s really valuable. But I do remember at one point I was kind of just breezing through Reddit, and I saw that we had changed our main canister pick from the Miele to a SEBO, and the vacuum subreddit was rioting. I thought it was kind of funny, but really interesting that people are watching what your reporters are doing and they’re having reactions to it.
COURTNEY: Yeah. That was a big moment when we started recommending Canister and upright vacuum made by SEBO, which is another German company like Miele. There was definitely a contingency of very loyal vacuum lovers who felt like Wirecutter had been sleeping on SEBO for a long time. And I agree, they’re incredible vacuums. I have two of them in my home today. They’re really, really well-made, really powerful, really great to use machines.
ROSIE: Courtney, what about Dyson? Can we talk about Dyson? Because I personally have been obsessed with their products from afar. To be clear, I can’t afford most Dyson things, but I do love the design and how intuitive, at least they seem. Are they worth the giant price tag? Because they’re very expensive.
COURTNEY: Dyson makes really excellent cordless stick vacuums. They really set the standard, and we have tested dozens and dozens of other cordless stick vacuums. There are other good ones. We recommend several cordless stick vacuums depending on what someone’s priority is and what their budget is. But nothing that we’ve tested is lighter, zippier, more fun to use, better designed than Dyson’s cordless stick vacs are.
CHRISTINE: So to your earlier point, when you said you couldn’t say that vacuuming is fun, it does sound like maybe Dyson could make it fun.
COURTNEY: Dyson can make it fun. They have these features that almost gamify the vacuuming experience. They have this cool green laser that illuminates all the dust that’s on your floor and floating in the air, and they have this particle counter built into the display screen that supposedly tells you how many particles you’re sucking up.
CAIRA: Like I got a new high score.
ROSIE: I feel very validated by your answer because I kind of thought I was a millennial sucker for buying into the Dyson hype, but it sounds like at least with the cordless stick vac, it lives up to it.
COURTNEY: It does. We were not as impressed by one of their plug-in models. They came out last year with a robot vacuum. We didn’t love it. We tested it thoroughly and we would not recommend it over other brands that we recommend. But in terms of cordless stick vacuums, it’s not wrong to covet a Dyson.
CHRISTINE: Courtney, there’s a theme on this show, and it’s the theme that to get something good, you often have to pay for it.
COURTNEY: Boo.
CHRISTINE: So we’ve already talked about how some of these vacuums can be pretty expensive, right? Like the canisters, the uprights, the ones we recommend currently are between 7 and $800. You talked about the very expensive Dyson’s. So you can look for these things on sale, but if somebody doesn’t have $800 to spend on a vacuum right now, what do you tell them? Can you spend less without basically just getting something-
CAIRA: Buying junk?
CHRISTINE: Yeah, buying junk.
COURTNEY: We spend a lot of time testing and really looking for that sweet spot, especially the under $200 vacuum, whether it’s a robot vacuum or a cordless vacuum or a plug-in vacuum. There is a lot out there that I would not advise buying, but there are some gems. In terms of plug-in vacuums, we have recommended the Shark Navigator. It’s this purple vacuum a lot of people recognize, and that’s $200, $180. Sometimes it’s on sale for 150. And in terms of a good, reliable, cheap vacuum, that’s what we’ve recommended. You’re definitely compromising in terms of the performance and the durability, but that’s going to be the case across the board at that price point. But the Navigator is one that we have stood behind and many, many people work at Wirecutter have bought the Shark Navigator over the years.
CAIRA: What about a good robot vacuum? Can you get one that’s relatively cheap, that’s good?
COURTNEY: Yeah. We for several years have recommended a kind of entry-level robot vacuum made by Eufy, and it’s maybe $150 and it can sometimes be less depending on sales, and it’s a great robot vacuum. It’s reliable, it’s consistent, it cleans well, it can fit under your couch. If somebody just wants to try out a robot vacuum, that’s the one I would recommend that they get.
CAIRA: So Courtney, what if your vacuum just doesn’t seem to be doing its job well? Does that mean that it’s at the end of its life, or is there something you can do before you throw it out?
COURTNEY: So it’s not necessarily at the end of its life? Sometimes they just need to be cleaned themselves. So the first step, if your vacuum isn’t performing the way that you expect it to is take it apart. Get all the hair that’s tangled out of the brush roll. You might need to get in there with a razor blade or some scissors and really get all that hair out. You may need to change or wash the filters. The filters get all clogged with dust. It may impact the suction. You may need to empty out the canister, change the bag. All of that can impact how well it works. If you have a high quality vacuum, you can often replace parts if they wear out or break. And you can also still find old-school vacuum repair shops, where you can take your machine in and get it serviced.
ROSIE: All right. Courtney, let’s do a quick lightning round. What vacuum do you recommend for the following tasks? Okay, first scenario, I have an enormous shedding dog and a tiny apartment, no carpet, no rugs.
COURTNEY: So my first question is how do you have an enormous dog in a tiny apartment? But I mean, I think a lot of people will probably do best with two of the three types of vacuums that we’ve talked about today. In this case, I would say a robot vacuum because that’s what’s going to just pick up the hair before it even spreads everywhere and gets into everything. And then you’re probably going to want a good handheld vacuum with a pet fur attachment for the upholstery.
CAIRA: Okay. What if I live in a medium-sized house with a normal-sized dog that sheds, a cat and some carpeting?
COURTNEY: So this is where you’re definitely going to want to plug-in vacuum for that carpet. You could go with a cheaper bagless model. If you’re not super dealing with allergies, worried about allergies and you don’t have a lot of dust, but ideally a bagged plug-in vacuum, that’s what’s going to clean your carpets.
ROSIE: Okay. So how about a partner who works in construction won’t take their shoes off when they come in the house? I also have wall-to-wall carpet.
COURTNEY: Yeah, this, you’re going to want a high quality plug-in powerful vacuum with sealed bags and with filters. You want to get all that dust sealed away.
CAIRA: And why aren’t they taking their shoes off?
ROSIE: That’s for a different program.
CAIRA: Okay. What if my house is super dusty, think the beginning of Interstellar, my blinds, my lampshades, my shelves are always collecting so much dust?
COURTNEY: If you have a pretty small house, you could get away with something like the Dyson V12, a good cordless stick vacuum. They can typically transform into a handheld vacuum, and that’s what’s going to help you clean things like lampshades or bookshelves or other surfaces.
ROSIE: Okay. Another scenario. I have children, and there’s always glitter and Cheerios and Legos everywhere. I’m not describing my house, but maybe I am.
COURTNEY: So I don’t know what’s going to help you with the Legos.
ROSIE: And I have been known to-
COURTNEY: You drop them.
CAIRA: I lose them.
ROSIE: That’s on you.
COURTNEY: Yeah. This is, again, whatever’s going to help you contain the chaos. Whether it’s a robot vacuum and a plug-in vacuum or a cordless stick vacuum, you just have to know what are you going to actually use.
CAIRA: Before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question. What’s the last thing you bought that you really loved?
COURTNEY: A Cuisinart toaster oven.
CAIRA: You had that [inaudible 00:32:15].
ROSIE: Whoa. Okay, say more.
COURTNEY: The way that I get my kids up on Monday mornings is Trader Joe’s frozen chocolate croissants.
CAIRA: Ooh.
ROSIE: Oh my God. That’s a hack.
CAIRA: They’re living good.
COURTNEY: You put them out frozen on a piece of parchment paper on a pan the night before. They rise overnight. In the morning, you pop them into your oven, or in my case, the toaster oven, maybe 10, 12 minutes, they’re brown and melty and crispy, and that is how I rouse my children out of bed on Mondays. I tell them their chocolate croissant’s downstairs.
CAIRA: Wow.
ROSIE: Absolutely amazing.
CAIRA: That would work on me now.
ROSIE: That’s awesome. Thank you so much for joining us, Courtney.
COURTNEY: Thank you.
ROSIE: Thank you for breaking down everything that we need to know about vacs. Appreciate it.
COURTNEY: My pleasure.
ROSIE: Gosh, Courtney Schley really knows her way around a vacuum.
CAIRA: Like wow. She has so many.
ROSIE: A lot of kids to be trying out all these vacuums too.
CHRISTINE: I feel like that’s my aspiration. If I had more than one floor, I would want a vacuum per floor. I think that’s the winning combo.
CAIRA: Per kid too.
CHRISTINE: Yeah, per kid.
ROSIE: Yeah. What are your takeaways from this, after everything we’ve kind of just learned about vacuums?
CHRISTINE: So I am very tempted now to go team robot. I love my Miele canister vac. I will not be giving that up. I do a lot of deep cleaning with it, but I really love this idea of having a machine go around and pick up the dust and the cat dander and the kid stuff during the week because I do end up vacuuming a couple of times a week, and if I could lower that frequency for myself, I think that would be pretty awesome.
ROSIE: Time is precious-
CHRISTINE: Yeah, that’s right.
ROSIE: … and time is money. I think my takeaway is when I’m ready to invest in a new vacuum, I’m going to look for something that is a really good quality upright or canister vac with a bag. I really am looking to something that is going to help seal in a lot of those dust mites, a lot of those particles, a lot of those allergens so that I’m not absorbing them or breathing them in.
CAIRA: Yeah. I like that. I think I’m going to piggyback off of your takeaway, Christine, because I also like the idea of a robot vacuum. I like that it can be your little sidekick helping you pick up stuff. I’m kind of tempted by a cordless stick to pair with it, but I know myself I’m not going to remember to charge it, so maybe I just stick with a broom and a robot vac and call it a day.
CHRISTINE: There’s nothing wrong with a broom. I use a broom every day.
CAIRA: Yeah.
ROSIE: Well, if you want to find out more about Wirecutter’s coverage or if you want to check out the products Courtney recommended today, check out our show notes or our website. This month we’ve got lots of tips about spring-cleaning coming your way, both on the podcast and on our website. Next week on the show, we’re going to be talking about cleaning up your digital life.
CHRISTINE: Uff. Yes.
ROSIE: Stay tuned. Thanks so much for listening. Peace.
CHRISTINE: Bye.
CAIRA: Bye. The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddy Masiello and Nick Pitman. Today’s episode was mixed by Catherine Anderson. Original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter’s deputy publisher and general manager is Cliff Levy. Ben Frumin is Wirecutter’s editor-in-chief. I’m Caira Blackwell.
CHRISTINE: I’m Christine Cyr Clisset.
ROSIE: And I’m Rosie Guerin.
CAIRA: Thanks for listening.
