I’m not sure about you, but I am not a fan of cleaning. And when I say I am not a fan, that’s a bit of an under-statement. I hate cleaning. I like a clean house but it’s just so boring! But unfortunately, not having the money for a maid, ignoring the cleaning is not a luxury that I have. I’ve also got a boyfriend who cooks a lot and likes to create mess, and two dogs who like to create mess more than the aforementioned boyfriend. Honestly, it baffles me how they make such a mess between them.
If it’s not mud from the garden, it’s bit of sticks that have been chewed up, bits of carrots that have been discarded and little blonde strands of fur everywhere. And don’t get me started on the mess Jim makes with those black bits that come out of his football boots and socks! And my hatred of cleaning means I really don’t want to be dragging the big out every vacuum time Melle decides to destroy a stick!
We’ve been talking about getting a smaller, lighter weight vacuum, mostly because Jim thinks they look cool, but I hoped that having one might make him pick it up a bit more than he does. So when we were offered the 360⁰ Reach Stick Vacuum Cleaner to try i thought that it might be the answer to my cleaning prayers!
And we’ve had it for over a month now, so I think we’ve had fair chance to test it out and let you know how it holds up to a 2 dog household.
So, first off – what you get. The 360 Reach is a small, compact vacuum body that then has a a couple of attachments. You get a long stick with a traditional vacuum end on it, a flat tool for upholstery and a small stick for corners. It comes on a 8.5m cord.
And we’ve been busting (forgive the pun) this little bad boy out far more than the big vacuum recently. For one, it appears that Flash isn’t terrified of this machine as he is the big vacuum. he’ll happily let me use it without trying to kill it – maybe it’s because it’s little, or maybe the noise is different.
But the main reason is that it’s so easy to just pull out, use and pop away. It’s never going to be big enough to use on our entire house but it’s great for those inbetween big clean moments.
It has 3 different strengths, although I’ve only really ever used the most powerful one as a floor vacuum (I’m usually trying to get something dog related out of the carpets so it seems necessary). I’ve gone with lower strength power (II) for the cobwebs that seem to appear over night in our old house.
The dust tank does from the outside seem quite small, but I’ve easily done a couple of rooms (full of rogue dog hairs and other crap that the dogs have left behind) without emptying it, and when I do, because it’s small it’s easier to cart to the bin, it’s simple to do.
One thing we noticed was that the body is quite heavy, which was a surprise for something so small. Not too heavy to use one handed but in my head because of the size, it was going to be uber light, although in fairness, I’ve not held any others of these types of vacuums so they might all be the same weight.
The other was the fact that when we’d been looking at handheld machines, we had initially been considering the cordless ones, because we thought that made them seem more mobile and portable, but the cord is 8ms long which is, if you’ve not ever considered how long 8m’s is, is long. I plugged it in and tried to see how far I could walk with it and I was pretty surprised with how far I got round the house, and our house is pretty roomy! One of the problems we’ve really found with the cord is that as we don’t have a driveway, and have to park on the street, we can’t just pop out with it to get rid of all the hair that the dog shed all over the car!
Over all, we’re really impressed with how easy the Dust Buster 360⁰ Reach Stick Vacuum Cleaner has made quickly cleaning up after the dogs (and Jim) and as I said, in a house our size, it’ll never replace the main vacuum but its perfect for whipping out when you just need to clean up a small mess!
*I was sent the Dust Buster for free, but all views are my own*
