Roomba?

[Maestro]

I was doing some house cleaning the other day during an NCIS marathon on USA. During my epic battle to retake our sun room from our felines, Agent DiNozzo was accosted by a Roomba on NCIS.

Looking at all the litter, hair, food, etc. that we clean up around here because of our cats, and judging how much work there still is to do to retake the sun room, as I was watching the NCIS gang laugh at DiNozzo, it dawned on me that a Roomba might be the way to go.

Anyone have one? Like it? Hate it? Indifferent towards it?

Help! We've lost one room, and I think we can take it back!

 

[Plecostomus]

Well the one I had was neat to watch but it had a hard time with cat-hair and cat-food.

Of course, they've improved them quite a bit since then... I think they may have a model for dealing with bulky waste now.

 

[B.J.]

A friend who is the father of 5 and has 3 large dogs has one. He said it was the best investment he ever made. At the time he told me this, he was also a single dad (has since gotten back together with wife).

 

[auntiehill]

My best friend has one; she's been seriously ill for the past few years and her husband works full time. She loves the little thing. It keeps her floors clean and generally free of dust, without her having to drag a vacuum around. The only problem is that she had to keep it out of one room: it has a nice Persian rug with fringe and the Roomba kept sucking up the fringe and getting stuck.

 

[JustKate]

One of my sisters has one, and she likes it, but as far as I can tell, this is because she has an irrational (IMO) hatred for vacuuming. I mean, she loathes it. They don't have pets and they don't have a very large or very cluttered house, so to me it seems really obvious that the best thing to do is just sweep the hardwood floors and vacuum the rugs once/week, which would take literally about 15 minutes.

But what I see when I visit their house is that although the Roomba does a good job with most of the dust on the floors, it leaves lots of lint on the rugs, lint that a decent vacuum cleaner would pick up in about 10 seconds and lint that would drive me personally nuts. But it's her house, so if she'd rather avoid vacuuming ever again, even at the cost of some lint on the rug, who am I to criticize? So I don't. (And besides, I may be her big sister and I may be naturally bossy, but I'm not that bossy.) But me, I'd just use a Swiffer on the hardwood floors and run the dang vacuum cleaner on the carpets and be done with it.

I also wonder how well it would work on a room with a fair amount of furniture. Because I have observed that one of the rooms that the Roomba doesn't do a very good job on is the dining room, and I think the reason might be all those chairs and table legs and stuff.

 

[Arrqh]

Gotta watch out for those Roombas...

 

[iguana_tonante]

it dawned on me that a Roomba might be the way to go.

Anyone have one? Like it? Hate it? Indifferent towards it?

My fiancee has one. She leaves it on when she's at work and it cleans a room in a couple of hours. It works pretty well with general stuff (dust, hairs, ash, etc), but nothing more. You still need to vacuum the room once in a few times, but it helps.