Being the domestic goddess (ha!) in a house of 7 humans and 2 dogs, doing a silly amount of hoovering comes with the territory. I find myself lugging the overworked sucker from the cupboard at least once a day for a quick whip round – then there’s the extra outings it gets treated to when someone explodes a packet of crisps, upturns their croissant plate at breakfast or the mother-in-law’s popping in! So when the team over at Oreck got in touch and asked me to give their Oreck Magnesium a whirl, whilst it might not have seemed like the most glam of opportunities, on my scale, it rated it pretty highly. After all, I was the gal who actually got excited when she received a hoover for Christmas (it wasn’t feigned excitement either) and anything that runs the risk of making my life a little easier (yes, contraception would’ve been easier) is a bonus in my book.
So when the new vacuum addition to the family arrived, I was literally buzzing and clapping like a demented seal. Out of its shiny box Oreck the hoover came – looking all clean and ready for action. It was at this point I noticed the following:
- No hose attachment for getting into the corners and sucking up all the grime that collects on the skirting boards.
- The hard-floor attachment clips on and off, which can be a little tricky, but also remains a separate entity when not in use; this can be a little annoying when switching between hard and carpeted floors.
Not wanting to be a Debbie-Downer about Oreck and after convincing Mr Only Girl that we really needed this third hoover in our lives, I put Oreck straight to work on our building-site of a home. The results…
Carpets: WOW, I was surprised it didn’t suck the old threads off their gripper rods. It was astounding! Considering the dust, sand and grime that’s coming in from the site of a garden, plus dog hairs and general filth that hangs off 5 boys – it genuinely made the carpets look like new. So much so, Mr Only Girl is now wondering if we even need new carpets once the extension’s finished!
Hard floors: This is something we have a lot of, and increasingly so once our extension is finished. I really wish I could report such great results, but with the fiddly attachment needing to be located first, then to chase a large custard-cream crumb around the floor as it wasn’t being sucked through the stiff bristles – I became disheartened.
So all in all, Oreck is the perfect hoover for those with a majority of carpeted floors. The super-turbo motor gives it a self-propelled feel – all I had to do was guide it in the direction of dirt and it did all the hard work; it’s only 4.2kg, so if you’re used to lugging a wriggling toddler around like me, this feels like a feather; and with a 9m cable there’s not too much faffing of changing plug sockets every 2 minutes.
Will I be keeping the Oreck? Yes I will – upstairs we’re still opting for carpets (I’ll be assessing my sanity at a later date!), so although it might sound decadent, Oreck will be living upstairs and making light of the boys bedrooms – he can suck up all the mess they leave on the floor and make their beds too, right?
This blog post was in collaboration with Oreck to promote their Oreck Magnesium SP LW100 Upright Vacuum Cleaner, Black / Blue – they kindly gifted me this hoover in exchange for sharing my thoughts and opinions – all of which are 100% my own. PS Oreck could be considered a boy or girl, I have named him a boy as I need to remain The Only Girl in the House!
