I am both a cleaning fan and hater all in one! While I hate the thought of having to clean the house and hate the actual process of doing it, I can’t bear dirt and mess and simply have to do a weekly deep clean or I feel funny! I don’t know why it is but I often go to other people’s houses and notice their dirt and I’d be mortified if anyone noticed it in my house so I just have to force myself to get off my bottom and go through the process! Saying that, the feeling of having just cleaned the house from top to bottom is one I love and when I’m sitting in a newly cleaned house I am so pleased with the work I’ve done that it all becomes worthwhile. I am such a perfectionist that it has to be done in a certain way, with a certain routine and even down to the finishing touches of lighting candles for a lovely fragrance throughout the rooms, it has to be done my way which takes a long time and with the children to entertain I often spend the whole day just cleaning in between tending to their needs. My husband will clean, in some ways he’s even more fanatical about it than me, but he never does it exactly how I do so usually it’s a job I choose to do on my own. It is very disheartening then when after a few hours, or even minutes sometimes of the house being immaculate, it suddenly looks like a tip again! I don’t mind toys and things, they are easy to put away but after every meal time there just seems to be a whole clean in the needing – again!

For the hours after my big once a weekly clean I follow the children (and Jonny) round with a cloth and the glass cleaner, wiping up finger prints and putting things away in their wake. In the kitchen the dustpan and brush stays out for a couple of days as I diligently sweep up every bread crumb that flies on the floor and then… two days later when I’m sinking in the rest of the house as crumbs pile up and bits (bits and fluff are my big bug bears – I remember once lying on the floor after cleaning and spending another hour picking up bits of fluff, I’m mad) explode everywhere, I lose the will and let it become unbearable before I have the time to do the next BIG clean… I think the main thing that creates mess is the meal times. We don’t have a dining room so we eat on our laps and the children sit up to the coffee table on an oil cloth mat. Yes the mat is there but somehow, bits of food go everywhere and two days after vacuuming the floor looks like it’s never before seen a vacuum cleaner in its life. It’s so irritating. I try to contain all the bits on the mat and shake them out the window but it just doesn’t work and the dustpan and brush just do not work on the carpet, instead they spread the bits around. Getting the big vacuum cleaner out was the only option but when you’ve only just done it the day before… Well, it’s just all really annoying!

What I really needed was a hand-held small cleaner that I could just get out to blast the crumbs after every meal. And pick up the stray flour from when I cook in the kitchen. And when Jonny’s shaved his head. And when Florence has walked round with a snack (I guess it is unreasonable of me to expect her to eat biscuits over the kitchen sink). And… Well for lots of things really; for everything we use a dust pan and brush for but with a quicker more effective result. One of my friend’s recently bought a hand-held and said it changed her life in the sense that cleaning up after meals became a breeze and the chore was completely removed. Well I didn’t need much more incentive than that so with my new love of all products Vax, (I love my vacuum cleaner, the steam mop is tremendous and the carpet cleaning products have been amazing) I thought I’d give the H88-12V-B-C Handheld a whirl. Just as my friend said, the meal time clean up is just a doddle! No more getting down on my hands and knees, having to find something else to get bits out of pesky little corners and no more worrying about the mess that’s being created after a big clean! The Vax Hand held is wicked and does it all for me at the touch of a button! I no longer have to follow them round picking up as they go as I know when everything is done I can just give it all a whizz over and blast everything away!

So, why do I like it? Well, firstly it’s a hand-held tiny little vacuum cleaner that can be kept under the sink and be quickly got to for any crummage! It absolutely does what it is supposed to do and with 15 minutes of power after charging for 15 hours (I just charge it over night) it gives you ample time to do the big post meal clean up! I am so impressed with how well it picks up, the suction feels very strong (12 volts) and even better is that it has a crevice tool (which sits inside a dusting brush tool) which clips onto the hand-held! This means I can get down the sofa creases, do along the bottom of the stair gates and most importantly do round the legs of our coffee table! I used to have to pick these bits up by hand or get the vacuum cleaner out and attach the crevice tool to that just for a 30 second job! Another plus is that it’s very light and weighs just 1.3kg. My Mum has arthritis in her hands and she managed to use it one-handed no problem. The handle makes it very easy to hold and use and I am thoroughly impressed with it! Totally saved me a big old chunk of my day and even better is that once I’ve done the big clean it affords me a few more days of keeping things spick and span meaning by the time I get to the next big clean there’s not as much to do as there might be! 

It has a really good suction and picks up even the stickiest of crumbs. The battery really does last quarter of an hour so I find it lasts for a couple of days worth of meal times and random blasts for other bits throughout the day!

What might I change? Well, I think it would be good if it came with a mount to hang it on the wall and it doesn’t but aside from that it’s pretty top-notch! It’s not massively expensive and it does come with a 2 year guarantee! Having used Vax products for a while now I am more and more assured of their quality and just because this is one of their cheaper products I can’t say I’ve noticed any difference in standard of quality at all! Great little number if you have little people like me and lots of crumbs to clean up and it’s particularly good at the places you just can’t get to usually – the tools it comes with are fab!

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