We got a roomba.

As someone who hates hoovering and as someone who has four cats, I don’t know why it took so long for us to get a little robot to do the dirty work for us! Actually, that’s not totally true. We’re very frugal with purchases like this, so it makes sense that it took us such a long time to finally see that the benefit outweighed the cost in this case.

Since it arrived this morning Roomie (because the app makes you name your little robot servant) has been put to the ultimate test. Seriously, we just plugged it in and told it to start cleaning and the damn thing was fighting for its life amongst cat toys, shoes, so many wires, and multiple kitchen mats. In hindsight, we probably should have picked stuff up off of the floor but I was mostly curious to see how it would maneuver around those sorts of obstacles. At one point it got stuck because it had sucked up a tassel for the kitchen mat and pulled it through to the dining room.

Right now I’ve got it doing the “deep clean” setting in the living room and so far it’s doing well! I haven’t had to empty the bin yet during this particular pass (I’ve emptied the bin nearly ten times today) so I’m curious to see how full it is. Speaking of which, it sounds like it’s returning to its dock in the entryway!

You know, I feel very spoiled but also I feel quite grown-up for having a roomba. Spoiled because, like… Isn’t it a bit much to spend almost seven hundred quid on a robot so you don’t have to vacuum?? Yep. But at the same time, I feel like I’m investing in the cleanliness of my floors and, eventually, my happiness will grow because I won’t have to hoover the floors all the time! See? It all checks out!

Oh a really neat feature of this model is that it takes pictures of potential obstacles as it cleans. There was a really great one of Dolores, so I’ll pop that in for posterity, too. Could be a cool way to do a photo journal some day!