In other news, Emily bought an electrically-propelled tornado....

Okay, in actuality what happened is she bought a bag-less vacuum, but my explanation grabs one's attention. Now, normally this should not seem like something that is a big deal (or at least big enough to be worth writing about), however, I grew up in a home where the closest thing we had to this concept was a 16-gallon "Shop-Vac" that didn't even have a see-through container, and technically, it had a cover for the filter that could almost be considered a vacuum bag.

At any rate, this thing is impressive. Not only can it work on any surface, but it is definitely less noisy than the average vacuum, and it also doesn't have that funky odor that a traditional bag vacuum can leave behind. The brand is known as "Shark" and when Emily brought it home, I recognized the brand name right away because they used to be advertised all the time on television as being a "Sears Exclusive TV Offer" product, which is why when Emily explained that she found the vacuum at Costco, I was quite surprised.

Now, noise is a different story. It seems like it puts out the same volume level of noise as a traditional vacuum, however, the noise clarity is unusually clearer. I realize that it seems odd to notice something like that, however, this fact remains.

Now, yes, that means due to the size of the holding bin, it does need to be emptied after a few uses, but the best trade-off would be the lack of a musty smell that traditional vacuums give one's house after someone uses it. 

Now, you might ask why I would call it an "electrically propelled tornado" and this is because the first time I saw it being used, I paid close attention to the collection bin, and I could see all of the collected dirt and debris spinning around in the canister at a very high speed, but it was all contained within the collection bin itself. If there's any readers that can come up with a better descriptive term than that, let me know in the comments. 

In short, I've become converted to this type of vacuum and would completely surprise myself if I ever went back to using a traditional bag-based vacuum. The Shark is pretty awesome.

The Shark vacuum while propped up along with its "hose" extension.