Short review: If you have a dog that sheds, or you live in the Northeast and track in dirt and salt from the winter, or just love your floors super clean, get this — it’s worth it. Easy to use, low maintenance, and it works! Consider buying it used from ebay for an even better deal.
Roomba plugged in!
I have a few things in life that really get to me…like messy kitchens and messy floors. Luckily we have our kitchen robot (the dishwasher) to help us with the messy kitchen, but the messy floors was a different story. It was fine when we had one non-shedding dog: Tyler and I would sweep once or twice and week, and we’d be fine. But now, with a large, shedding dog, it was just too much. She’d track in dust, dirt, and not to mention her hair! So recently as I turned my eye towards residency, Tyler decided to buy a used Roomba from ebay for ~$220.
I must say, I was skeptical. Like many people out there, my only interaction with Roombas was from late night infomercials (which I love watching, as anyone in my family can tell you). I thought it was a waste of money, and wouldn’t do that good of a job or save me so much time that it really mattered.
In short, I was wrong. It showed up on our doorstep a few weeks after we ordered it, and I haven’t swept since. Seriously. Like…even once. It was easy to set up: I just plugged the “docking unit” into the wall, put the brushes/bristles in the Roomba, and put it on the unit to charge. After 6 hours, it was ready to go (there’s a little green glowing light that will tell you when it’s charged up) and I hit the “Clean” button in the middle.
It moves around, sweeping, in an erratic pattern, going over any spots it missed a few times so it makes sure to clean things. It can make it from room to room going over the lip to our bedroom and bathroom almost effortlessly. When it bumps into furniture, it works it’s way around whatever is blocking it’s path. It goes under furniture that it’s small enough for (i.e. couches, dressers). After it’s done doing it’s cleaning (around 25-35 minutes), it will go and re-dock itself to charge. Before you use it again, all you have to do is empty the receptacle of dirt (super easy). Every few uses, you want to take out the brushes and clean them too — which takes around five minutes and will optimize your cleaning. Check out this GIANT video below with to see my Roomba at work, and see my dogs confused about both the Roomba and me taping.
We have had it for about a month now and still love it. We run this once a day, and it’s been great. The floors no longer feel gritty in between sweeping, I haven’t even had to pull out the broom, and it’s very low effort. Amortized cost across number of uses or even added value is huge.
Downsides:
- It’s not silent, you will hear it.
- If you have wires on the ground, it can get caught. We had to move the wires to our blinds off the ground. Larger wires like charges it will usually be fine with (there is a mechanism by which it can untangle itself) but we still tend to keep them off the ground now.
- It works wonders on wood floors, but I can’t say anything about carpet, though other reviewers online have said it works well for carpet
- If you have dogs, as another reviewer mentioned, I would NOT leave this running with them loose and you not in the home…if your dog has an “accident” it will smear that “accident” everywhere. No good.
- Speaking of dogs, our dog is scared of everything. She’s scared of the Roomba too. She doesn’t attack it or anything, but she does stare at it and move into a different room when it’s on — so just take into consideration what kind of dog/pet you have when getting this
Overall: I love this product. I would buy it again in a heartbeat, it really works. The upsides way outweigh the downsides for us. I recommend purchasing it used to save on cost. If you have a “robot vacuum cleaner” helping you out please leave a comment below with what your experiences have been!
The Clumsy Cook 