It’s not often that I get really excited about a Secret Santa present. In the past they’ve been a bit naff, normally as a result of a workplace gift exchange resulting in a tub of random body lotion and a couple of tealights. This year however I was invited to take part in a gift swap with AO.com, and asked to pick a gift for Lyndsay who is one of my favourite people, and she got to pick for me in return. So although it’s still only November I got a gift early, and what a gift it was! Not one but TWO Dyson vacuum cleaners arrived on my doorstep! I thought seeing as I’d had my first present I should crack open the mince pies and tinsel to celebrate!
If you’d have asked me ten years ago if getting a vacuum cleaner as a gift would get me excited I’d have laughed in your face. But now I own my house, spent a small fortune on fluffy light grey carpets and have two small and very messy children, getting a Dyson is like all my Christmases have come at once! The Dyson Bundle from AO consists of the Lightball Multifloor upright vacuum and the V6 cordless- basically everything you need to de-dust and de-crumb your house!
We’ve had these two beauties in the house for about two weeks now, and the cordless has been used daily, often two or more times and the Lightball every other day or so for a proper clean where I move the rugs and pick up big things to get underneath them. Both work amazingly well, and I am almost secretly willing one of the kids to drop something on the floor so I can swoop in and clean it up in a jiffy! Our carpets were new at the start of the year, and up till now we’ve still been getting fluff come up. However with the arrival of these two all the fluff has been sucked up and didn’t I know it from looking at the dust-collectors! It’s weirdly addictive to see how much fluff and dust you can see in the container, it’s weird to think that mere seconds ago all that was in the carpet/on the floor/between the sofa cushions!
Dyson Light Ball Multi Floor
An upright vacuum cleaner, with the ability to easily switch between floor types with a switch, mess free dust-emptying , Ball technology means it is easy to manoeuvre into surprisingly tight spaces. It has a washable filter that never needs replacing, a long cable so you don’t need to keep unplugging between rooms, and a few different attachments and a hose for hard to reach corners and high up areas. It took about 5 minutes to put together, comes with a 5 year guarantee and is incredibly powerful, perfect on thick carpet or vinyl flooring, and if we had wooden flooring then it would cope with that too with the dusting brush. Now personally I wouldn’t class this as a lightweight machine but it IS easily manoeuvrable on the ball and wheels, and I can use the cordless one on the stairs so it’s not an issue but might be for someone frail or elderly.
Dyson V6 Cordless
A cordless handheld vacuum cleaner that can be used with the long stick attachment or as a smaller hand held vac for hoovering up things from table tops/inside cupboards, the crevices of your sofa and so on! It comes with a charger point that you can mount on the wall, and this stores the spare attachments when not in use. A full charge lasts for 20 minutes, which doesn’t sound that long but actually is ample! There is a ‘boost’ button on the back of the V6 for extra power, and to operate the suction it’s a trigger style, so you don’t waste any power by leaving it turned on like you might with an upright. Perfect for cleaning under radiators, anything slatted like blinds or cupboard doors and also the tops of picture rails, or even picture frames with the soft brush attachment. I use this for our stairs, and even took it out to the car to get rid of all the crumbs in and under the kids car seats.
We’re fans of AO anyway, after a nasty experience with another big retailer (rhymes with ‘worries’!) who tried to deliver us a dented dishwasher, took two weeks to bring a new one and then plumbed it in wrong! I love that you can get next day delivery, get a call with your delivery slot on the day so it’s not too intrusive and everything is amazingly priced! In our first week of living in our house we’d bought a washer-drier, fridge and new TV and they all arrived the next day! I would suggest signing up to their emails to get news of the best deals (hey, it’s Black Friday on the 24th so a great time to get some Christmas shopping done!) so you never miss a bargain!
If you want to see what Lyndsay got as her Secret Santa gift from me then she’s shared all about it here!
Huge thanks to Lyndsay, who had clearly heard me moan about the fluffy new carpets and child-related crumbs one too many times, and of course to AO, you’ve made my a Christmas and it’s only just November!
