Why does a recently vacuumed carpet look so damn clean? The obvious answer is that because it *is* clean, but that doesn’t make any sense if you think about it – it’s not like it was covered with a layer of visible filth that is now removed. So what is it then?
Surely you know what I’m talking about, right? Not a carpet like the one Aladdin flies around on (ie: rug), but the textile floor covering on the interior of homes that allow you to walk barefoot within a house without your feetsies getting uncomfortably cold.
Not filthy and covered with strewn debris and popped bags of corn chips like an infomercial disaster – just a regular old woven fabric floor. Imagine it. It doesn’t appear dirty, but you know it’s been awhile since it’s had micro crispies sucked out of the fibers so you vacuum it and BAM – what looked like a regular boring yarn-floor is now a landscape that beams with purity cleanliness.
This guy knows what’s up… (source)
Even if it’s mostly psychological, it can’t be entirely so because a third party can just as easily notice the visual that the cleaner see’s afterward. Everyone knows when they’re walking into a freshly vacumed carpeted room and feels a little better about life because of it.
So what is going on here? Is it because the lines from the vacuum cleaner remind us of the wind driven snow atop a virginal icy mountainscape and our monkey brains automatically go back to that familiar retreat?
Or is it possible that the collections of micro-filth actually do build up to create visible ground-smog that is too gradual for us to notice as it’s happening and the carpet is actually physically more radiant after the removal?
I think it’s a matter of fluffing. Carpets get beaten down by life and a vacuuming is a pick-me-up that makes it stand tall and enjoy being stepped on again. -Actually, nevermind that cuz it’s dumber than I thought before I typed it. I think it’s all of the previous things except that one that contribute to the unmistakable newness of the appearance of a gloriously freshly sucked fiborous floor and its a spectacle more should appreciate. After all – why spend the time and money to go traveling to some stupid scenic vista when you can just marvel at your own living room after making it less disgusting through domestic labor.
God bless recently vacuumed carpeted floors.
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