The hardest-working member of our household

She's tall, thin, and beautiful, and always willing to work.

Well, as long as she's charged, that is.



I really love our Electrolux stick vacuum. It's pretty enough to keep out--and I keep it right next to the kitchen table. (It's amazing to me that our kids gain any weight since they seem to drop more food on the floor than I put on their plates.) I am barefoot a lot of the time, and I really get tired of using my feet as dry mops, every spare crumb sticking to the bottom of them.

And when it comes down to it, I really could do a major vacuum/mop on the tile daily, and I won't confess how VERY far from that ideal I am. So our trusty stick vac does the job of picking up spare bits of this 'n' that, sometimes multiple times a day.

I love that a hand vac is incorporated into the unit--it pops right out when I push those little buttons on the side.

With the hand vac, I can pick up Cheerios and such, and sometimes I even use it on a particularly "crumb-y" tabletop.

We paid about $40 for this (a refurbished model) at Big Lots about a year and a half ago. To say it was worth it is an understatement. I'm not sure how we got through the first two years of Chickie's life without it.