How do I vacuum under furniture without moving it?

Question

I vacuum my carpet once a week, and I would like to vacuum under furniture (sofa, etc.) once a month instead of every six months. Is there a way to vacuum or clean under the furniture in some form or fashion?

Tried: I can't move the furniture, because of the configuration (a lot of stuff needs to be moved). My vacuum is an upright, and the hose isn't that long. A blower works, but I would rather not fill a room with dust. Lifting the furniture up and vacuuming is okay, but it's a little tedious.

Answer 1

If you're not dead-set against moving the furniture, you could use furniture sliders - on most carpets, they'll allow you to single-handed move even heavy pieces of furniture without undue effort, and can be left in place between vacuumings. That's not very hacky though, so...

Use a leaf blower - even inexpensive models can exceed 150MPH and 200CFM, creating a fast-moving air current suitable for moving dust bunnies out of hard-to-reach places.

If you don't have a leaf blower but your vacuum has a blower function, you can try that too - you probably won't get as much velocity, but for short carpets and small pieces of furniture it may suffice. Other options include air compressors and power-washers.

J. Musser notes that you should avoid gas-powered blowers, as the exhaust may prove dangerous in poorly-ventilated areas. Also, spilled gas can ruin your carpets.

Once you've blown out the dust, just vacuum it up as you clean the rest of the carpet.

Answer 2

You could use a "hoseless" vacuum cleaner, in other words, leaf blower, combined with vacuum cleaner. It could be quite useful to pull all the dust from under your furniture, if the hose of your usual vacuum cleaner can't "creep" under your furniture (because the furniture could have small legs).

Examples of such machines can be seen here (I suspect you don't want to use diesel ones inside your house, so I linked to electric ones :) ).