How to Clean With a Shop-Vac

By eHow Home & Garden Editor

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Here is the answer to all your cleaning nightmares: use a Shop-Vac. You, or maybe your kids, can clean an entire house using the Shop-Vac from your garage. With a flip of the switch, you can clean the whole house with this handy, multi-tool device. And just like Mary Poppins, you can also use the Shop-Vac to put thing away after you pick them up. Here's how.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Step1

Buy a Shop-Vac. Get one that fits the size of your job. Buy a 5.5 horsepower and 14 gallon tank with a 2.5 diameter hose for peak performance. Buy a Shop-Vac with a blower attachment to replicate Mary Poppins' magic fingers so you can blow items back into place after you have picked them up.

Step2

Pick up larger toys and blankets. There are a lot of things that you can suck up in a Shop-Vac, but a big blanket will cause problems. Pick up anything larger than 2.5 inches in diameter or the size of your particular Shop-Vac hose. Enlist the kids to help the magic.

Step3

Switch the Shop-Vac on and get used to the strength. A new Shop-Vac will have a brand new motor that operates a lot stronger than your vacuum cleaner. Get used to it so you don't suck up the living room drapes.

Step4

Walk around the room and suck up similar objects with your Shop-Vac. For example, if you are cleaning an 8-year-old boy's room, vacuum up all of his Legos first. Turn off the shop vac and then switch to blower. Open up the Star Wars toy box and blow the excessive amount of Legos into it. It is that easy. Walk around the room and finish the cleaning.

Step5

Go back over the floor and vacuum the floor regularly so you won't have the dust build-up when your 8-year-old dumps the same Legos all over the floor again tomorrow.

Step6

Enlist the whole family in all the fun. Demonstrate how the process works, video tape yourself, sell a few copies to friends and neighbors and then allow the kids to clean their own rooms.