Reducing Time and Frustration of Vacuuming Home by 20%

My primary cleaning task at home is vacuuming once a week, usually on Sunday. After vacuuming for a few months, I started to get frustrated with my process.

I had a standup canister style vacuum that worked fine, but the cord was too short. This required me to unplug and re-plug in the cord into different parts of the house, as it wasn’t long enough to reach.

In addition, when I was nearing the end of the cord, the canister would often fall over, hitting the side of the walls, and increasing the chance of breakage or damage.

In the image above on the left, my first improvement was to test out a vacuum setup where I carry it on my back, so it’s not falling over as often. Similar to what you see in a commercial janitorial service. I found an old gym bag strap that seemed to work. Success!

To deal with the excessive plugging, I simply found an extension cord that I wasn’t using, and connected it to the vacuum. This worked, as I was able to reach the entire house with the extra length on the cord, which reduced a lot of struggle.

Carrying the vacuum on my back with the strap worked somewhat, but was not a long term solution, since it was designed for that. Sometimes the vacuum would still hit the wall, as it wasn’t centered on my back, and would slide around.

I decided to invest in a backpack-style option. This cost under $200 and is much more comfortable and didn’t move around as much (more secure). The image on the right side shows the new vacuum, and the extension cord I used.

I estimated that this reduced my vacuuming time by 20%, from 15 minutes to 12 minutes, saving 3 minutes each week, or over 2 hours per year (156 minutes).