Weird Portland Wednesday: Keeping it Clean

A clean house is a delightful house.  It is organized and walking into this house, you are immediately...immediately...you notice immediately...yeah that's it.  Walking into this house you immediately notice it is a clean organized house! 

By the way, my house isn't a neat organized house.  Better than when my sons were young, but still.

So for me, a vacuum is just a vacuum, right?   As a kid, it was an annoyance.  As a teen it was a chore.  As an adult it is an annoying chore.  Dogs hate it.  Cats run from it. 

I never understood how Mrs. Cleaver could smile so much, all dressed up--with her pearls even--while she vacuumed away her troubles with the Beav and his gang.  Certainly my mother never wore her pearls while she vacuumed.  But alas, my mom was never June Cleaver.

Well lately I have come to understand just how interesting are vacuum cleaners!  First, vacuums have always been kinda cool, having those two "u's" together.  Not many words in the English language have two u's side-by-side.  But I have found out, thanks to Portland, they are much more than that in coolness.

Portland has a vacuum museum.  Yes, a vacuum museum (notice I have spelled "vacuum" many times because of the cool u-thing).  Downtown at the Stark's Vacuum Cleaner Sales and Service, over in the corner of the store, is the Stark's Vacuum Museum.  It used to have over 300 machines, but this number was reduced to 25 this year.  Plus it has three timelines of the progression of the vacuum.  

I thought this was pretty spiffy, if not strange, to have a museum dedicated to vacuums and then I found there are actually vacuum enthusiasts!  They had their annual convention--annual convention!--last June in Spokane, Washington. 

Imagine toting this around in your house. 
But I do like the handy clock :)

The Vacuum Cleaner Collection Club says on their website: "Most collectors have a fascination with vacuum cleaners from a very early age. We enjoy the mechanical workings and appreciate the design of many vintage vacuum cleaners."  So okay.

 No way have I become a vacuum cleaner
enthusiast, but love that Portland has one of the few museums around.  Simply to keep Portland weird.

peace~~~