There is no carpet in my house. All my floors are either hardwood or tile. I have a Great Pyrenees – a giant fluffy dog whose hair collects pine needles, leaves, and various other detritus from the yard, then deposits it all on the floor once he comes inside. And of course, there’s the hair itself – shedding. For these reasons, I make it a point to sweep the entire house (with a broom) once a week. Recently, I bought an electric leaf blower. It’s a low-end model, so it’s not very powerful. So…today I tried using the leaf blower for my weekly house sweeping!

The results were not as I had hoped. But they were also not as I had feared. I had been afraid I might end up blowing a bunch of papers off desks and tables, or that garbage might get blown out of the bins. None of that happened. What I had hoped for was to “push” a pile of leaves and dog hair to the front door and blow it out of the house. Instead, the dog hair and leaves AND a copious amount of dust went airborne. With the exception of a few larger objects (twigs and pine cones), the hair and detritus refused to be corralled. On the plus side, I was able to easily get dust/hair bunnies out of some normally-hard-to-reach places. And I made it through the whole house in much less time than it usually takes with a broom. But I’m going back to the broom next week.