It’s no secret that I have a big house.  When most people our age are downsizing because the kids have grown and left, we went bigger!  That meant more floors to clean and with two dogs, it is a never ending battle.  The house is two-story and only has carpet in the bedrooms.  The rest is either tile or laminant. When I clean, I have to first vacuum, then mop, and it takes the better part of a day to do the whole house.  Needless to say, I don’t really enjoy investing that kind of time into cleaning my floors.

Over the summer, I put my unemployed twenty year old daughter to work as our housekeeper.  Unfortunately, she went back to school and I have to clean my house myself once again.  Yeah, I could hire a maid service, but I’m not sure I could afford for them to come out a vacuum once or twice a week.

That’s when I started looking into the Roomba.  It’s automated.  It’s been around for a while.  There are a lot of models to choose from.  Sure, I’d love to have a vacuum cleaner that emptied itself, but I’m not willing to shell out $1100 for it. So, I pondered and went with the 891 model.  It works on an app and you can schedule when it runs, so I bought it.  Ordered it from Amazon and had it a matter of hours later (I love Prime!).

I charged that baby up and started it up.  We have an open floor plan so Roomba was all over the place.  It easily transitioned from hard floor to carpet and rugs.  When it was done, it found its charging base, however, it took it 30 minutes to get there!  I guess Roomba was all about the scenic route.  When I decided to do the upstairs, I carried it up there, set it on the floor and hit the start button.  When it was finished, it stopped close to where I started it.  It did not fall down the stairs which was a plus!

One of the key things that a Roomba user has to be mindful is that the dust chamber is not that big.  The first few times you run the robot, be available to dump the bin.  This is especially important if you are vacuuming an area with newer carpet or rugs.  A lot of what gets collected will be carpet fiber, not dirt.  If you are cleaning a bedroom and dust bunnies live under the bed, the bin will fill up pretty fast.

Make sure everything is up off the floor.  My teenage son’s room is downstairs.  He’s a little messy and leaves stuff on the floor.  On Friday when Roomba was scheduled, he left his bedroom door open and Roomba took that as an invitation!  Partway into the cleaning cycle, I get a notification on my phone that Roomba is stuck, not that I can do anything about it.  Come to find out, dear son left a dryer sheet on the floor and Roomba is allergic to dryer sheets.

Large areas may require more than one cleaning session to get it completely clean in the beginning.  This is especially true if Roomba is run unsupervised and the dirt bin gets full.

If you have pets, check for “Easter eggs”!  Even potty trained pets have accidents.  If Roomba finds the unwanted gift first, you will have a huge mess to clean up later.  While this hasn’t happened to me (yet), I do have friends who have shared stories.

So, after one week, I’m pretty happy with my Roomba.  The husband has already asked, “Does it also mop?”  No, dear, but they do make a similar machine that does.  Christmas is only three short months away, you know.  Are you ready to Roomba?