Why you should buy a bagged vacuum over a bag-less

Remember your mother’s old paper bagged vacuum? She would haul it out of the closet, make a second trip for the heavy attachments, and lug all the weighty pieces down the hallway to connect the canister to the hose to the vacuum head. Then a cord would come out from the back side of the machine and plug into the wall. Mom would turn on her favorite album and vacuum away, thinking all the while she was “cleaning.”


She always told me growing up, “Clean from top to bottom, and vacuum last, that way all the dust and dirt is on the floor and vacuumed into the bag.” Unfortunately, the dust bags of mother’s day along with the filterless vacuums, were stirring up micro-particles and dust throughout the air while removing their larger counterparts. Little did she know, the exhaust on her vacuum cleaner was redistributing as much as it was picking up.


Then came the time to change the bag. What a disaster those old contraptions were. The bag would disconnect from the hose inside the canister, exposing an open dust bag full of allergens and debris. Occasionally as mom would pull the bag from the storage compartment, the paper would hang on a rough edge and tear as she tugged it loose, releasing the bag’s entirety into the open vacuum and onto the floor. Or just as bad, she tossed the bag in the garbage, only for other trash to puncture the bag. Looking back, there was little about those paper bags to be considered “hygienic.”