This week I invested in a vacuum cleaner. That’s right, “invested in”. The immature buy carelessly, while the mature invest carefully and, it’s official, I am an investor. My big venture? A dust-free future. As purchases go, few have been as perfect a symbol of my newfound adulthood.
Last year’s bed sheets came close. They replaced the collection I’d accumulated since I was 18. Some I’d swiped from my mum’s house en route to university, but most were bought from a supermarket chosen for having the lowest price tag. So when I went into the shop (a specialist linen shop might I add, because I made it, Ma!) and chose sheets based not on price but on comfort, decor and durability, it felt like a milestone.
But buying sheets was child’s play, it turns out. The only vacuum cleaners I’ve used in the past have been industrial devices supplied by a landlord in a flatshare. Or my mum’s, which has somehow survived since 1998 and still uses a bag stowed in an irritatingly secure chamber that can only be opened after 20 minutes of wrestling and loud expletive-shouting, before tearful begging and an offer of your firstborn child to the Gods known as Henry and Hetty.
So I had a clear idea of what I didn’t want when I went into the shop. But I was still woefully naive: it soon became clear that “not too cumbersome” and “does corners OK” is nowhere near the amount of prior decision-making I should have done.
“What do you want your vacuum cleaner to do?” the shop clerk asked. Clean floors? But no, apparently it depends on what kind of floor, and what kind of dirt, and what kind of stains, and did I know children make a lot of stains? “Just saying,” he said with a smile, which I know to read as “tick-tock.” Would I always be in a flat, or might I need somewhere bigger in the near future?
“This one is expensive,” he said, pointing at a vacuum cleaner, “but can cope with anything. But if it’s only you for a while, then this one could work.”
“Only me?! Will it only be me? I don’t know Shop Man, is this what I want in life? Is it?” I panicked internally. Shopping these days. I’d heard that stores were attracting customers with wacky marketing ploys but “free existential crisis with every purchase” is surely a step too far. Though as my bank balance will testify, it works.
