The Pet Hair Eraser Learned to Quit

The Bissell Pet Hair Eraser showed up on a Tuesday in a box that said it was cordless and lightweight and ready for action. BW had ordered it without telling me, which is how I know she was serious about the dog hair situation. The car seats looked like the dog had molted directly onto the upholstery and then invited friends over to molt some more.

The vacuum was small. Compact. Engineered specifically for this moment in our lives where the golden retriever has decided that spring is a six-month commitment to redecorating our Toyota Sienna with his undercoat. The Eraser came with a handheld hose and a brush head and the kind of instruction manual that assumes you have never cleaned anything before in your life.

I charged it on Wednesday.

By Thursday morning, BW had used it on three car seats, the living room rug, and the dog bed (which seemed to her like the logical place to start, though the dog had already shed that bed into complete genetic irrelevance). She told me it was working great. She meant this factually. Not as a compliment to me, just as information I should have.

Friday the child found it in the hallway closet.

The Eraser had been sitting there on its charger for maybe six hours. Long enough to be forgotten. Long enough to seem like it belonged to nobody. The child did not ask permission. She did not announce her intentions. She simply took it into the guest bathroom, closed the door, and began vacuuming up every visible hair from the bathroom rug, the bath mat, the shower curtain, and—I learned this later—the toilet paper roll holder.

I found her mid-project. The Eraser was making a sound it was not designed to make. A whine underneath the whine. The dust compartment was so full that I could not actually see dust anymore, just the dark suggestion of it, compressed and possibly conscious and definitely ANGRY.

When I opened it up, hair came out like the vacuum had been breathing it in the whole time and finally couldn't hold it anymore. Clumps. Braids, almost. The child's hair. The dog's hair. Three or four hairs that I do not recognize and probably do not want to.

The Eraser sat on the counter while I cleaned it out. Its motor was still warm. It had given everything it had to a bathroom that was not visibly dirty when the child started. This is what the manufacturers do not tell you. They design these things to fail in the presence of a seven-year-old with an idea and no adult supervision.

BW walked past, looked at the vacuum, looked at me, and said nothing.

The Eraser is back on its charger now. It has not been used since Saturday.

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