I have been dying to tell you that we got a new robot vacuum over the winter break. Actually, we got it at the very tail end of the break.
As you know, I adore my zooper with all my heart. I use it, oh, two or three times a day, mainly in the kitchen. Over the break, in addition to regular kitchen crumb fest, there was also debris from my giant glorious poinsettia (still, against all odds, alive) and then we sanded the workout area before we painted it so there was paint dust everywhere, and there always seem to be bits of leaves and sticks and pebbles of dog food all over our house at any given moment. Plus, instead of the house being occupied by mainly me, all three of us were home for two consecutive weeks. This combination resulted in a TON of zooping, let me tell you.
Oh and also – NICOLE, BRACE YOURSELF – there was a mouse. Carla, despite lots of instruction on how to not attract mice and bugs, had been a little lax in keeping snacks under wraps in our pantry. Early on in the break, she found a meat stick with a bite taken out of it and a Jolly Rancher with a bite taken out of it, and that was enough for me to do a deep clean of the pantry during which time I found Definitive Mouse Evidence.
I also found a teeny little crack in the pantry by the bottom of the door frame, which I filled in (temporarily) with Loctite mounting putty, which was on hand because I was hanging up holiday cards at the time. Next time the exterminator is here (he is ON THE SCHEDULE, believe me), I will ask him to replace the Loctite with something more durable.
We subsequently caught a mouse (please let it be the only mouse) and Carla has been, under supervision, much better about snack foods. But as you can imagine, my zooping of crumbs has been all the more diligent since that revolting discovery.
Shockingly, I am the only one in my family who seems to appreciate the act of zooping. I feel as though I am always the one doing it. Even though it is literally a chore on Carla’s chore chart. If I dare remind her to do it, she will flop bonelessly over the nearest surface and groan and ask me if I can do it, pleeeeeeeeeeeease, just this once, she haaaaaaaates it and it’s soooo looooooouuuuddddd. And honestly, the whole ordeal would have been done by then so often I just roll my eyes and do it. (Is this teaching her that flopping and groaning will be rewarded or is it picking my battles? As with everything about parenting: impossible to know if I am doing the right thing.)
Brief aside: When you were a kid, were you ever watching TV and your mom suddenly turned on the garbage disposal or started vacuuming in your vicinity and you were overcome with indignance that she would so thoughtlessly interrupt your TV viewing with such noise?!? (We also had a trash compactor as our kitchen garbage, which would mechanically compress the trash in the bin when you pressed a button. That, of course, also made a loud, TV-interrupting noise.)
Well, that happened to me frequently and I could never understand how my mother seemed to pick the exact worst time to be so annoying and loud. And now I am that mom. Because there is never a good time to execute a noisy chore, especially when you are all three together in one house for two weeks.
My kid will loudly and huffily object to the noise of the zooper anytime I operate it within an our-house-sized radius of wherever she is.
My husband, though he never said it in so many words, seems to feel about my zooping the same as Kid Me did toward my mother running the garbage disposal during Family Matters.
He mentioned, once or twice, that I seemed to be zooping quite a lot. To which I replied, I zoop two or three times daily, it’s just usually when you aren’t home. And then the zooper ran out of juice while I was ridding the workout room of paint dust, which shocked my husband. That had never happened in our old house! Well, the zooper works very hard and lasts a very long time but our current house is quite a bit larger than the old one. (And the floors of the old house hid dirt much better.) Do not blame the zooper; the zooper is not at fault.
After nearly two weeks of enduring twice or thrice daily zoopings, my husband set to researching robot vacuums. The brand I am most familiar with is Roomba, but he said reviews of Roombas are less favorable than he expected. I am also aware of Eufy, thanks to Elisabeth, which he said gets great reviews. But in the end he went with the Roborock Q5, mainly because it has a cool name. (Looks like the Q5 is no longer available, but the Q10 is and it’s $200 cheaper!) Just kidding. He did extensive research and this was the one that he deemed best. I am 99% sure he told me in excruciating minute detail all the specific reasons it was better for us than the others were, but I seem to have a blank space in my head where Roborock statistics should be. The main factor I remember is that it was on a really good sale (and still is, as of this writing!).
As pretty much everyone who has ever purchased a robot vacuum says: I do not know why we waited so long to get one. It is THE BEST. We were so excited when it arrived. As a family, we all watched it trundle around the main floor, mapping every room, and charmingly bumping into obstacles as it got used to where things were. We set it to clean and it bustled around picking up tiny scraps of plastic and bits of wax leftover from the Hanukkah candles and artificial pine needles from our tree and the aforementioned leaves/poinsettia buds/dog food and all the crumbs that accumulate as if from nowhere in our kitchen.
It is AMAZING. My floors have never been so clean. Rocky (that’s his name, of course) has an app (everything has an app, which I generally think is stupid, but I quite like Rocky’s app) and I can access it from my phone and I can see where he is and where he’s been. I can name each room in the house and assign him to vacuum specific rooms, or even specific parts of rooms. I can schedule him to vacuum every day right after breakfast if I want. He goes from carpeted to non-carpeted surfaces easily. He returns to his little house when he’s done cleaning and empties his collection of trash into a storage container.
He is not quiet, but he’s not as loud as a regular vacuum; you can still talk at a normal volume while he’s cleaning. But you can hear him; he’s not meant to be silent; I don’t think I would program him to clean in the middle of the night because I think he would wake me up. He once got stuck on the edge of a rug when it folded over on him, but we simply put a footstool on that rug the next time we cleaned and that prevented any further issues. He can be programmed to avoid stairways, and if I have laundry piles all over the bathroom floor I can simply program him to skip that room.
Lodged deep in my brain is a video I once saw of a robot vacuum spreading dog excrement all over someone’s house. So I think I would not leave Rocky to his own devices. (Not that we have a pet. Although I am still dreaming of Craig.) Right now, he’s still so novel and charming, Carla and I like to check on him occasionally while he works. I wonder if the novelty will eventually wear off, or if we will always continue to personify him and watch him fondly?
The only mild negative I have to say about Rocky is that he requires a home base. We’ve set him up in the kitchen, which I’m not a huge fan of; I like appliances, for the most part, to be out of sight. But I know that I will probably get used to his presence after a while, and if not, my husband promises we can move him to a less central location.
If you have been dithering about getting a robot vacuum, I will add my voice to chorus of people who say I wish I hadn’t waited so long.
Sigh, Suzanne, what are you trying to do to me??? I’ve stuck to my guns about not getting a robovac for a good 20 years and now you’re telling me that I am going to regret my life choices. I mean I regret a lot of my life choices but if I’m wrong about the robovac that means I will have wasted a lot of my life energy vacuuming when I didn’t have to. Grrrrr….
I will stay tuned for Rocky updates and if he continues to be all that and a bag of chips I might consider changing my tune.
I will do a report once the novelty wears off, Birchie. Because I understand. (But also I loooooove him. I even brushed some crumbs off the counter onto the floor just to give him something to do! What have I become?!)
OH MY GOD A MOUSE. Let it be only that one! Please! I have to say I did feel a little faint reading that. *breathes deeply*
You know what I love about Roombas – I love that they go under the beds. It’s such a grunge factory under there. We have one on each level and I actually don’t love the app – we have an Eufy in the basement which I think works better. But that’s because I’m always updating things, etc. Rob likes the app which is why we have it, also they maybe only come with apps now? Idk. What I do know is that they are great BUT I also hate the home base. I feel like it’s a structural flaw. I think it would be better if it could just be plugged in and charged like any other piece of electronic equipment.
Also yes, like so much in parenting who KNOWS what they’re doing? None of us.
I love that they go under the beds too! No idea what he’s finding under there and don’t really want to know!
We had one for our basement carpet, but Beatrix was terrified and so was Minnie, so Ben took it to work, and I kind of miss the guy. I just sweep my main floor like 5 times a day– but my house is small (reframe: COZY).
Awww, yes I could see how it could create fear in those who don’t understand what it is. Uncanny in its life-likeness.
I read dog food and thought, did I miss Suzanne getting a dog, but then you said you have no pets. What’s up with the dog food?
What IS up with the dog food, Steph?! There is always dog food in our house! I think Carla must get it from our neighbors when she feeds the dogs? My best guess is that she shoves some in her pockets to… give the dogs later??? And then forgets about it or leaves it in her pockets and then it goes through the laundry.
The cleanest my house has ever been was when we had a robot vacuum upstairs and a robot vacuum downstairs and I would run the downstairs one when I came upstairs at night and the upstairs one when I came downstairs in the morning.
Now in this house, some people sleep upstairs and some sleep downstairs so I can no longer do that, but it was an amazing time. I still have the robot vacuums and I still adore them. They go UNDER things! And pick up so much dust! I’m going to go turn the one on in Ryan’s room right now because his under the bed was very dusty (I discovered when I cleaned his room this week when school started and found out that while he has been cleaning, he has not been cleaning to MY standards.)
I looooooove that they clean under things!!!! And now I am wondering if we need more Rockys, one for each floor…
This is making me decide to re-set up our robot vacuum that we haven’t used in a while. Especially after I vacuumed yesterday, and it was gross.
I had the same question about the dog food?
Oh yay!!!! Why did you stop using the robot, if I may ask?
The dog food is a MYSTERY. I am assuming it comes from my dog-loving child’s pockets. She plays with neighbor dogs quite a lot so has access to food and treats. At one point, she had a fanny pack FULL of dog treats that I had to insist needed to stay outdoors.
That was my guess on the dog food!
We bought a cheap version of a roomba (can’t even remember what brand it is) and it wasn’t great: didn’t pick up everything, got stuck all the time, made the dog go crazy, etc. Plus, I have the same worry about it spreading dog poop all over the house, so we never ran it at night (also because it gets stuck all the time!). However, we have gotten a ton of snow, which tracks in all kinds of dirt and other detritus, so I am going to charge it up and let it run this weekend! It has to be better than nothing!
Update: I charged up the vacuum (its a Debot), and I remembered another thing that drove me crazy about it: its pattern of cleaning is completely random. It will go in one direction until it senses or hits an object, and then pivot to another direction, over and over, and so it misses things, and if we are lucky, it will hit them on one of the passes it makes around the room. At one point, I wanted it to sweep by the door to the garage, so I stood in its way and directed it to that area by moving my foot in front of it until it turned the way I wanted it to. However, I am very happy that now I have a cleaner floor, and I have plans on running it every other day for the foreseeable future. Even though the dog still hates it.
We have a Roborock also, whatever the level below ” empties his collection of trash into a storage container” is and I also love him very much. As a replacement for a Roomba, somehow his name became Roombie at the beginning and it stuck, but Rocky makes much more sense…
Since we have cats and I need to pick up the multitude of cat toys strewn about before he goes, running him is not quite carefree and spontaneous, and I can’t use the programming feature but he still makes my life so much easier and I can’t believe how much dirt/dust/cat hair he picks up every.single.time!
Add me to the chorus, I love ours. Although it’s not quite as fancy as yours; I don’t think I can program specific rooms. Or, maybe I can and I just don’t spend enough time in the app…? Distinct possibility.
I’ve never owned one! May I ask how expensive Rocky was?
I still love mine, so so much. But i am BOGGLED you want me to think that picture of a poinsettia is messy. Like… full on boggled
“I seemed to be zooping quite a lot” lolol. I have a zooper that I don’t use enough, but I love having it when I do need it. We had mice in the basement storage area a few years ago, and I took out all the boxes and zooped out all the mice crap, and it was very satisfying and also horrifying.
I think robot vacuums are magical, but we have a cleaner every two weeks so that’s pretty much our big cleaning budget spend. The dog excrement thing was a marketing lie, as I recall, so don’t worry about that. I saw the ‘crumbs of dog food’ and was like WAIT, DO YOU HAVE A SECRET DOG, but I guess it’s Carla’s food for neighbour dogs?
So happy for you!
This post came at THE perfect time; our Roomba just died. I just checked out the price of the one you got and that is a steal; I may just have to order it.
I like the idea of this but can’t see my husband getting on board. Plus we are still in the stage of life where there are so many toys and such that I fear it would not work great. But someday we will be at the stage of life when this would be an option.
The loudest thing I do is grind coffee beans which is SO VERY VERY LOUD. Now I know to warm everyone and then I will often do a sort of spastic mom dance that involves a lot of jerky around to entertain the boys and offset how unpleasant the loud noise is! But yes my mom seemed to love vacuuming at the most inopportune times!
I ADORE our two Eufy’s. I also have two zoopers. And we just bought a battery-powered upright. And I love them all. Well, except the original zooper that we’ve had forever and the battery ix really on its last legs.
The upright vacuum my husband picked has an extremely bright light at the front and I never knew I needed a light that bright until I had one. It is astonishing how much dust it shows.
I add to the chorus of people who appreciate how Eufy can get under beds. YES!
I’m glad you clarified in comments about Carla’s dog food, because I was distracted by the fact that I didn’t know you had a dog. ALSO, that poinsettia is not messy, it is dying. Have some respect. 😉 I know, because I kill them every year.
I have never wanted a robot vacuum before, but now I kind of do, and I want to make it a little house to go into because I don’t want to see it sitting there like that. Like a cute little house with a shaker roof or something. But our house is 1188 square feet and there is no room for such a thing, so I guess we’re going to live with our dirty floors. (We do not vacuum every day or even every other day…it just goes until someone (usually my daughter) can’t take it anymore.)
LOL about watching TV as a kid. We couldn’t even pause what we were watching, so if mom was running the vacuum or whatever, we missed stuff. THE HUMANITY!
Well, I kind of feel like you do have a pet- Rocky! I don’t have a robovac and I’m sure if I ever do get one, I’ll be kicking myself for not doing it sooner. My question- which you can’t answer- is what the cats would think of it. I’m wondering if they would be afraid? I’m sure people could advise me on that.
When I was a child, we referred to your zooper as a “dust buster”. I mostly use mine to clean my car now. Happy vacuuming!
We got a robot vacuum awhile back, and partly it drives me crazy (I swear it actually follows me and vacuums wherever it will be MOST in the way), and partly I love it (the amount of stuff it picks up!! every day!!).
I like your holiday card display!!
I love that you named him! We name our things too. (Victor) 🤣
Dang it, Suzanne, now I want to try the robovac life again! I bought a (kinda cheap) robovac a few years ago and I was really annoyed with it because it didn’t seem to be very efficient in its vacuuming. Like, it would run for a FULL HOUR for my tiny 700-sq-ft apartment and still not get to certain areas. But it didn’t have that mapping functionality and I do wonder if I spend a little more money on a better vacuum, it would do its job better. I will wait for further reviews but for now, I added it to my Amazon wishlist.
We have a robot thing that cleans the hardwood floor in the kitchen. It works fine but I don’t know how to work it. Maybe I managed not to learn on purpose, so Coach could handle it? He adds water and formula stuff to it. It works OK, but if say a baby drops applesauce or something – I still have to get down on my hands and knees and unsticky the floor myself.
I’m glad your Rocky is working so well for you. I’ll be interested to see if the novelty wears off. But eek – has the mouse been, um, trapped?
We had a mouse at the end of the year and it involved A LOT of throwing out of food and kitchen things and I don’t want to ever experience it again. EVER.
I’m hesitant about a robot vacuum because of the dog and cat (who are responsible for 90% of why I need to vacuum), but also because I’m worried that we have a lot of TYPES of flooring. We have lots of rugs, we have old hardwood, we have laminate. How does the Eufy handle that?
I dream of renovating my kitchen. I will ask for a small alcove with a door for my robot home base to disguise it but also have a gap at the bottom for robot to come and go
I’ve been a Luddite about using a proper vacuum cleaner, not giving in to these newfangled robo ones. I don’t know why exactly other than it’s another computer-y thing to go wrong. Or get hacked. Or just irritate me. However…
My Axel (that is his name) is a godsend and I run it through the kitchen daily after lunch and on Thursdays it is vacuum all rooms and mobs them too. However it is loud and I am annoyed and when the husband is home I have to stop it because it makes him so annoyed and that stresses me. How stupid is that… Anyway I am glad Axel lives with us. Best decision ever.