I had been dragging out our regular vacuum at least twice a day, so I thought it was time to look into getting one of those 'little restaurant sweeper things'. The nice people at HOKY sent me one for review, so here it is!
I told them that I mostly wanted it for under the table, on carpet, and they sent me the PR 2400. You can see more details on their website to see how it works.
It works really well, even for 'moist' foods that my regular vacuum had trouble with. Cooked carrots, bits of scrambled egg, ground beef, chopped almond, little shreds of paper from the preschooler who loves to cut, potting soil that had been tracked around, and more. I love that it fits between the chair legs (I think my chairs are pretty standard) - with my regular vacuum I had to move the chairs to clean. The kids love using it, it's nice and lightweight and easy for them to handle.
The rug above is what's in front of our sliding glass door (that we use the most) and the dark red shows *everything* but I like the color, so we keep it. The sweeper cleans this off really well too.
Some things I didn't expect:
- I love how lightweight it is to bring up and clean our second floor! We won't talk about how often I vacuum upstairs normally ~grin~. But this is easy to bring up and back down with me, and I don't have to undo an outlet cover to use it. Easier vacuuming means more vacuuming gets done in this house!
- My husband loves it. He normally is *not* into my cleaning apparatuses and instead claims that he doesn't think the floor really needs to be vacuumed. But he really likes this sweeper and voluntarily gets it to use while we're doing our after-dinner clean up quite often. Usually he's a more power kind of guy, but he's used this non-powered sweeper more in the month or so we've had it than he's used the powered vacuum in the 6-1/2 years we've been married.
- It does stairs! It does the middles of the stairs really well, which is good for maintenance. I still use the hose attachment on my regular vacuum to get around the edges since they're such a small surface, the picker-upper part can't get to the entire thing, but it can get the middle well, where it needs to be cleaned most often anyway.
- It picks up little things like epsom salt. We had spilled some in our upstairs bathroom and tracked it into the bedroom, and the sweeper picked it up really well, even with no power suction.
- It does the edge. The edges of the sweeper have bristle brushes, which pull crumbs out from next to the baseboard.
Troubleshooting:
- If it starts to 'burp up' what you've already picked up- it's full. I empty mine every time after I use it because I don't really want food sticking around in there, and I'm usually picking up some kind of food with it. It's easy to empty, you just flip these two little doors open and dump into the trash. It's kind of instant gratification to see how much you just picked up too :)
- On hard floors it works best to do short quick strokes and push down a little harder. I still use a broom before I mop, but I like this for in between sweeping/mopping.
- It doesn't entirely replace a vacuum, at least for people with kids. But it's way easier to use for everyday messes. I've gone from vacuuming twice a day to once or twice a week with the powered vacuum.
- You'll want to check the different types of sweepers on their website to see which one is best for you with regard to what you're picking up, what surfaces you're using it on, etc.
- Some things you have to run over a couple times, but it's super quick. I'm sure you've seen people in restaurants doing the same thing. Zoom zoom zoom.
Where To Buy:
The HOKY website (here) is a great place to start! They have free UPS Ground shipping too!
How about you? What do you do to keep under your table clean with little children?
