General Chat

We inherited two vacuum cleaners and given one by someone who has migrated to another country, I asked my friend if she wanted if she wanted one of them, well what she wanted to know, lots of things about it over the phone, I know nothing about any of them only the make, I told her not to look a gift horse in the mouth and she hung up. Ok rant over thank you for reading this.

My son has a robot cleaner ... it does quite a good job but his cat hates it.
We have an ancient Dyson but it still works.
I had to find out how it works during the lockdown.

Given the space they take up and potential for disaster I don't think many people would give a homeless vacuum cleaner an always home.

You would if funds were tight, we are not all well off

RTR. She doesn’t have one, we are giving this one to her she so unless I’m missing a point I don’t see what the problem is.

LG she most certainly is not well off and shouldn’t be so fussy, it works and is not ancient.

I would of thought she would be grateful for your offer, I relied on gifts when we first moved into this house as we had nothing at all except our clothes

She definitely looked a gift horse in the mouth, ZZzzz.

Why didn't she just say she'd borrow it until she bought one?

I wonder how people manage not to have a vaccum cleaner ... a basic one in Argos is around £ 30 while eBay has a choice for buttons if you dont mind picking them up.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/dyson-vacuum-cleaner/284020780212?hash=item4220f52cb4:g:fVAAAOSwmQNfalBn

Surely people don't try and clean floors with a bucket and mop or hand sweeper ?

Sometimes people turn stuff down when broke 'cos they dislike charity. Maybe if you had said "nearly new cleaner for a fiver" there would have been more interest.

Oh how the other half live, I know people that struggle to buy their food and pay their rent let alone buying other things,

RTR, that is exactly what she has been doing because she can’t afford to buy one.

As a member of a charitable trust in London which provides rental housing at a reasonable cost I am well aware that some of the tenants were skint before corvid struck and are even more up against it now. The non-payment of rent is going to cause endless problems - it is no good Boris treating landlords as if they were the bank of mum and dad.

We keep a beady on on those who are short and in any case all houses and flats have the basics if needed - washing machine, fridge, microwave (if wanted) and, yep, a vacuum cleaner. Older ones use too much electricity.

She is retired and widowed, on a very tight budget and looking a gift horse in the mouth, I’ve almost had enough of her being ungrateful. I won’t try to help her again.

19:03 - " I wonder how people manage not to have a vaccum cleaner"

19:52 - "As a member of a charitable trust in London...... I am well aware that some of the tenants were skint before corvid struck........

Bit of a contradiction there.

Well I still use a mop and bucket and I have 2 inside brooms that get used. I do also have a vacuum and a steam cleaner . Each to there own I say. If I hadn't got a vacuum I would definitely be grateful for a free one. :-D :-D

Hmmm Mop, Bucket , and carpets don't gel very well....

ZZzzz, please don't give up completely with your friend.

Why not speak to her again, or send a note, and just say you wonder If she's had a rethink? Say she can borrow it to try out till she can get one she really wants and then she can give it back to you when you can then offer it to someone else or put on gumtree. If she still says no then just say ok and leave it.

She might be nervous of trying new machinery. My Mum refused an automatic washing machine but continued to struggle with her twintub because she was scared of new technology, similarly she refused a microwave.

Lizx

That sounds like my mum. When they couldn’t fix her twin tub anymore she washed everything by hand!
When she became frail I used to travel up every week and take her sheets away to wash.

I too have a mop and bucket. I find that vacuum cleaners don’t work too well on kitchen floors.

I remember when we bought our twin tub we thought it was great until we got an automatic.

We have a GTech, light as a feather, that we use on all floor surfaces.

After we've vacced the kitchen floor we use a Vileda 'mop' which is refillable. If I use it, I usually put in some antibac liquid but OH simply uses the Vileda refills. I'd recommend it.

Her daughter is coming to pick it up so that will be the end of that but not the friendship. We’ve known each other for over 50 years, I just won’t want to help her so much anymore.

What's a 'gift horse'?

Batteries included, no doubt.

For Dermot:

"Don't question the value of a gift. The proverb refers to the practice of evaluating the age of a horse by looking at its teeth. This practice is also the source of the expression “long in the tooth,” meaning old."

"The saying "don't look a gift horse in the mouth" means that you shouldn't criticize a gift, even if you don't like it very much. A gift horse, in other words, is a gift. The term gift horse is pretty easy to remember if you imagine the horse as a present."