Roomba

Many of you have asked about the Roomba, so I thought I would answer your questions. The Roomba, in its self is a good idea. I like the thought of being able to push a button and then let it vacuum by its self. However, it is not exactly that simple.

The Roomba can not see (obviously) so it cleans your rooms basically by running in a pattern and bumping into things as it goes. We tried running it in our dining room with the chairs still in there and it took 45 minutes to vacuum the dining room. It would have taken us 10. So, we moved it to the kitchen and moved the kitchen chairs out and it did a much more efficient job.

It does motivate you to keep things picked up, because it is a lot like a regular vacuum in that it will get clogged if it runs over the cords to the blinds or anything else that is small. We are unsure how well it runs on carpet, as all we have is hardwood downstairs, (Don't ask why we haven't taken it upstairs. See the above comment about having everything OFF the floor) but it went over some of our area rugs nicely.

On top of the Roomba is a blue light. If it goes over a particularly dirty spot, say where someone with mud on their shoes has tracked in (I know no one like that!!), the light comes on and it will spin in circles until it has picked up all of the dirt.

Sylvester and Lex are less than excited about the Roomba. It is somewhat noisy (Imagine running your carpet vacuum on your hardwood floor) so it would probably be better if we ran it when we weren't home. The first night we ran it every time it would head towards them they would jump onto the couch or the kitty tree for protection. Then they would jump down when it turned the other way. At one point Sylvester wanted to see how tough this thing was so he started to bat at it. The Roomba continued in his direction, so he gave up and went back to the couch.

While the fact that it cleans without much effort from me is very nice, I would have to say that the BEST part about the Roomba is the fact that it is a robot, and for that reason, and that reason only, Jake thinks it's a toy. In the three years we have lived in our house I think he has run our vacuum five times, and always under protest. In the week since we have taken the Roomba out of the box he has run it twice. I think this is looking VERY promising!!

We were even discussing it this morning as we were getting ready to leave.

"Hey honey, did you know that you can drive the Roomba like a remote control car."

"Yes."

"That is SOO cool."

Hey, whatever gets him to clean!!