We like to keep our living space clean and tidy and we think this has become even more important since we moved into the relatively smaller space of our motorhome from our apartment. Letting things build up a little on a 2 week holiday might not be so bad, but making sure everything has a place and keeping on top of the cleaning makes life a lot more comfortable since we started full time living in a motorhome.
One thing we were particularly worried about before leaving the UK was how best to keep on top of the dust build up, especially as Esther has allergies that are easily aggravated.
Also, we had decided to leave in our fitted carpets (we've seen lots of motorhomes with hard floors that are much easier to sweep) so we wanted to get some sort of vacuum cleaner to help keep our living space nice and clean for our entire journey.
The obvious place to start looking, we thought, was small hand held battery powered vacuum cleaners which are in plentiful supply. Well known brands such as DustDevils compete with supermarket own brands in the entry level range (less than £50) whilst the premium models led by Dyson can set you back close to £200 in some stores. However, after several visits to our local supermarket and nearest Curry's to test out the hand held battery powered options we were not impressed. Even the very expensive Dyson models seemed low power and unlikely to make hoovering easy.
Fortunately for us, before making our minds up, we then discovered some friends had a hand held Dyson they said we could borrow for a trial run. The results were not bad, but they weren't great either. We had to go over the same patch of carpet lots of times to get even the visible fluff off and the battery was pretty much exhausted by the time we were finished. Although we didn't expect the same results as a full size mains powered vacuum, this didn't seem any better than a good sweep with a dustpan and brush.
In the end we decided that as the battery powered options were disapointing that we'd prefer a mains power vacuum that could give a much more powerful clean. Even though we didn't know how often we'd be connected to mains power we could then just use a dustpan and brush on a day today basis as well.
Obviously you transporting a full size household vacuum wasn't an option either, but there are mini models out there as well. The vacuum we chose in the end is a Home-tek HT807, also known as "The Hunter" according to the box. It is very petite since it is designed for hoovering stairs and relatively powerful at 730W with a beater bar. Plus it only cost us £40 brand new and it stows very easily in a space just behind our drivers seat.
We use it pretty much daily when we are staying on campsites and the dustpan and brush on days in between (obviously if you have 1000W inverter you needn't be on mains power at all). Occasionally, if we go for too long between mains power stops we take up the carpets and beat them outside. A bit more hassle overall but much cheaper and efficient compared to the battery powered hand held options in our opinion and its been working well for us so far.
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