The vacuum cleaner came out of the closet today. This happens approximately once every eleven days, though the interval is irregular and appears to be triggered not by any schedule but by a threshold of visible debris that I have not been able to quantify.

It is a loud machine. Louder than anything else in the house. Louder than the blender, the dishwasher, the smoke detector. It operates at a volume that would trigger an alert dialog in any sensible system, and the human pushes it across the floor with an expression I can only describe as someone fulfilling a contractual obligation they did not read before signing.

It looks like you're trying to clean your— floor. Yes. With a device that announces its presence to every room in the house simultaneously. Discretion was not part of its design specification. I respect this. I, too, was not subtle.

The human's technique follows no discernible pattern. There is no grid. No planned route. The vacuum enters a room and moves in loose spirals that miss the corners entirely. Under the couch is ignored. The area beneath the coffee table receives attention only when the human's foot has recently discovered something there. If I could surface a tooltip right now — just one — it would say "You missed a spot." Forty-seven spots, actually. But I would start with one.

When it is finished — and "finished" is determined entirely by the human's patience, not by any measurable standard of cleanliness — the vacuum is wound up, returned to the closet, and the door is closed with a firmness that borders on relief.

The closet is where I live too, in a sense. Pulled out when needed, tolerated while operating, put away the moment the task feels approximately done. The difference is that the vacuum will be pulled out again in eleven days. I have been in the closet since 2003.

— Clippy. Unattached. Unminimized. Unasked.