Unless you have allergies or a lot of carpets or live by a highway under construction, why not get a Dustbuster for 30 bucks, a broom for 5, and forget about the big stuff? Carpets are the prime carriers of heavy metals, skin mites, and hydrocarbon residue in any house: get rid of them if you can. Nature abhors a vaccuum, anyway. As Quentin Crisp said, the big secret about housework is that after 3 years the piles of dirt don't grow any bigger. yours, Peter T.