Ok, not the most exciting blog post, but I just thought I'd share a few tips on looking after your Dyson to hopefully extend its lifespan, and also make cleaning a little less tedious.
When we first got our Dyson cordless V6 I absolutely loved it. But after a while, it really felt like the suction power had diminished, and it put me off using it because it 'dropped' a lot of the little bits I had just hoovered up back on to the floor once the motor had stopped turning the bristles. A quick google gave me to understand that hair (that is, LONG hair) was the problem. Three of us in this household have long hair, and over time a lot of it had wound itself round the bristles and got stuck, never making it up the shaft and into the collection chamber. You can use a pair of scissors to cut through the hair stuck on the bristles, but my friend suggested a stitch-unpicker, pictured below:
For those of you who don't know their way around a sewing box, it is a little blade in between a v-shape that can get into small spaces and cut away whatever is in its path. I find it better than scissors for dealing with the hair at each end of the rotator, where the hair gets seriously tightly wound! I keep it in the utility room draw near the Dyson.
The stitch-unpicker likes to hang out with chopstick. Chopstick is the best thing I have found for encouraging the contents of the collection cylinder to come out into the bin. I have tried a pencil, but the chopstick is longer and has better reach. I have tried a knife, but I don't want to damage the inside of the Dyson. I make sure this chopstick lives far away from the other, eating chopsticks, so there's no risk of getting them mixed up, which lets face it, would be gross.
Other than that, the best thing I have found for keeping my Dyson in good shape is to rinse the filter out once a month (leaving it to dry out in the airing cupboard before reinserting) and trying to completely run the battery down before putting it on charge again.