Good Idea #31: Clean and Freshen

Last time I vacuumed I made a few little mistakes.  First, I vacuumed over an area in the kitchen that was wet.  Then, I vacuumed up some dirty kitty litter that had spread out of the litter box.  Then I left the wet sticky mess sit in the vacuum canister for over a week.  Today I broke out the vacuum again, and as I really should have expected, the air filtering out of the vacuum reeked of week-old litter box.  Gross.  But, I've actually been meaning to clean our vacuum, so this was the perfect motivation. 

We leave our vacuum out most of the time, partially as a reminder to use it and partially because of limited storage.  So when the vacuum becomes covered in dust, it doesn't look so great in the middle of our living room.  I did the obvious, wiped down the whole outside of the vacuum and all the attachments, then I tackled the filter canister.  First of all there was cat litter and dust caked in the bottom... let that situation sink in... so I gave that all a good wash.  For the filter, I used another hand-held vacuum to suck out as much dust as I could from between the folds and then wiped it all down with a damp paper towel.  This is when I had a completely spontaneous but brilliant idea.  I pulled out my trusty bottle of Febreeze fabric freshener and doused the whole filter in the stuff.  I'll have to let the whole thing dry out before I give it a try, of course, but I'm anticipating that the next time I vacuum the whole apartment will have a very lovely smell of Febreeze rather than of stinky cat litter.