Here's dd's Roomba review:
Here's my Roomba essay! Mostly I was fascinated to examine if it was saving me time. Luckily I tried the bedroom level before declaring it a huge failure.
Do not pay full price for one as they go on sale way cheaper frequently.
The kind of space you’re sweeping with it can make or break if the time calculation of “tidying for the roomba” pays off. In my bedrooms I just have to do regular tidying and maybe a tiny amount of furniture shoving and then close the door. Move the roombas between the bedrooms and then do the hallway, and each were easy. Even better, start it in the easiest-to-tidy room first, then tidy the rest in prep while it's running.
Meanwhile, the main floor is really making a case against the robot. The living room/dining room have every pitfall. The robot can’t climb back up onto the rug and it’s DEFINITELY not worth the effort to corral it up there. The dining room chairs have to be put away. The thing loves to get lost under the couch and I liked storing stuff under there anyway. The kitchen needs the barstools and high chair removed. The front hall is pretty quick to close at two entrances.
All these main floor rooms probably lose the calculation of “time spent prepping for the robot” ?> “time it would take me to hand vacuum around these things”. I will still use the roomba in them because I don’t like vacuuming when home alone with M, but I’ll happily prep a space and then start the roomba as we head out the door somewhere or head up to do bath.
(When it comes to prepping a space I do have the advantage of baby gates doing some of the work for me.)
A certain amount of what I prefer with the roomba is a silly factor that I hate digging out, carrying, and plugging in my canister vacuum. So maybe I could have saved a lot of money by buying and wall-mounting a battery operated stick vacuum. Oops. Luckily the bedrooms really are much much easier than vacuuming by hand, and probably get done 5 times as often. And the ease of getting the vacuum up the stairs is unparalleled.
Then again, maybe the fact that I have several 5 minute blocks of time and no blocks of more than 10 minutes is a good match. 5 minutes to tidy and then 5 to return instead of 10 minutes to do the vacuuming might make the difference of being able to do it or not.
Does the detail work and stairs get neglected? Probably not any worse than before. I had basically stopped vacuuming before. It’s hard to imagine I’m doing anything less. Remember, a crap job is better than no job at all.
My cheap model really does prefer one room at a time, as rectangular as possible, much better than sending it out to roam across a whole level of the house. Even in my totally cleared living room dining room space when the rug was out for potty training, it missed the area under the bay-style window because it assumed the wall was straight across there instead of having an alcove.
Random tip: be sure to move the dock into a space when you are using a door to close off a space. Otherwise the robot might decide it’s finished and stop right where it's blocking the door! Plus if it can find the dock it can start recharging by itself.
Dumping it every time has the benefit / horror of knowing just how bad one space really was. Then again, I wrote that after the first time I did the bedrooms, and then the second time wasn’t really a lot less. Now I wonder how much of that first run was just it *eating my carpet*.
Don’t let it trick you by taking so long. You did not save as much time as it took to do it. Probably by a LARGE factor.
Features: I opted for the barebones model the only thing I miss is being able to hit “go” from anywhere in the house in case I set it up to run and then forget and tie my boots up. The software on the bigger models is getting better and better. Rumor has it that you will be able to ask it to start up, go to a specific space, clean just that room, and then return to the dock. That sounds pretty intriguing; I could say “just do the front hall” and it would be way easier than vacuuming myself (no prep at all required and it can reach that space from where I usually keep the dock). In general I’m not missing scheduling since I couldn’t imagine letting it run without me checking a space over so that it doesn’t suck up a toy or go over something icky in the kitchen like a glob of pasta sauce or something. Definitely not with a pet.
I’ve heard the maintenance is pretty intense if you have pet hair around. I set out thinking “at least I can clean it after bedtime, which I can’t use for actual vacuuming”, but instead I haven’t really been doing anything more than dumping it.
She was running it today and it does make noise but far less than a vacuum. The noise didn't affect my playing with dgs (remember noise is one of my concussion brain-scramble triggers.)
For the record, her floors were noticeably cleaner since getting the Roomba. So that had me considering one.
Based on her review, I doubt it will be able to 'mount' my area rugs nor the stress mats in the kitchen so that's a big disadvantage. Things are stored under things (for instance my kneeling chair is tucked completely in the desk knee spot when not being used and the desk chair is in front) so I can envision a Roomba getting trapped in multiple places.
I may ask to borrow it when she goes away next summer, but I'll try and suppress the 'want' before then. My Instant Pot desire has waned, so perhaps this will too.