Vacuums are a quick and effective way to remove pet and human hair from carpets. But so much of that hair doesn’t reach the vacuum chamber — it instead wraps tightly around the brush roller, which can lead to jams if you don’t clean it out regularly.
If you’ve ever flipped over your vacuum and tried to remove the wound-up strands of hair yourself, you know how tricky it can be to cut through it all without damaging the roller brush. Scissors are usually too big (and can accidentally cut the brush bristles), a knife is too dangerous, and pulling it out with your hands is too tedious. The best tool for removing hair from a vacuum brush is hidden in your sewing kit — or, if you don’t have one, is just $1 a pop on Amazon.
The Best Way To Remove Hair From a Vacuum Roller
The tool in question? A seam ripper. This small sewing notion, typically used for ripping out seams and fixing stitching mistakes, can also be used in other fiber art — it’s excellent for cutting out stitches in a needlepoint project, for example. But aside from that, the inexpensive tool has several home uses, including cutting out the pesky tangled hair wreaking havoc on your vacuum cleaner.
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All you have to do is place the seam ripper at one end of the brush and push it through the wound-up hair, slicing the strands like thread. Since it’s such a small tool, it gets the job done without causing damage to the brush, cleanly cutting through the hair buildup for easy removal.
Its compact size and needlelike tip are also ideal for removing other stuck debris from a vacuum roller, such as loose threads from rugs or hang tag ends.
