I probably hate vacuuming as much as Toby hates the
vacuum. I vowed when I moved to the new
place that I would not be doing any more vacuuming. To that end, I ordered the townhouse with
laminate floors upstairs and down and no carpet. Apparently according to safety regulations I
have to have carpet on the stairs, so that’s the only place in the house that
has carpet.
How was I going to get away with not vacuuming you may
ask? Hire a maid? Certainly an option, but no, I decided
against that because it would get awful expensive, and with Toby running around
the house, it couldn’t last for several weeks without some type of
cleaning. Sweeping is an awful lot of
work too. So what is a guy to do?
I admit it, I’m a technology junkie and my solution was
provided by the iRobot company in the form of the Roomba vacuum. I did a lot of research on these and
discovered that even though they would vacuum the floor ok, it was a good idea
to have a backup and give it a good going over once every two weeks or so. So that left me with the idea of a Roomba and
a built-in central vacuum. Which put me
back in the position of still having to vacuum.
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| ROOMBA DOWNSTAIRS |
That is until iRobot came out with their newest model, the
980. These robots have better edge
sweepers and way more powerful suction, negating the need for additional
vacuuming. In addition, they have a
built in GPS which enables it to return to its base station if it uses up all
of its battery, charge up and then return to the exact spot that it
stopped. In addition, I can control the
Roomba with my smart phone.
So I bought two of them, one for upstairs and one for
downstairs. I have used them over twenty
times, but had never actually watched them work and do their thing. I always activated them from my phone while
we were out on the morning walk, so as not to disturb Toby and in turn disturb
the entire complex with his frantic barking.
This afternoon I took a chance while I was sitting here doing nothing,
prepared to grab Toby if he went nuts.
So I activated the upstairs unit. Other than the beeps of it starting out it’s
surprisingly quiet, although you can hear it running back and forth over the
floor upstairs. So, now came the moment
of truth. Toby was in the living room
and the Roomba base station is in the dining room. I hit the start button and was waiting for
the fireworks, expecting Toby to attack.
He didn’t. He saw this little
machine coming towards him and watched it indifferently for a few minutes and
then went downstairs into the entryway, where it’s cooler.
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| AND AWAY SHE GOES |
I was fascinated by this little machine, running back and
forth over the floor in an apparent haphazard pattern. But, there must be a method to its madness as
it was getting everything clean. It just
kept going back and forth and side to side, picking up dust and dirt. I couldn’t stop watching this little beast,
it was hilarious. It would go over and
over a particularly dusty spot until it was clean. It went right to the lip of the stairs and
stopped, only to turn around and go the other way.
My daughter Caitlin, told her boss that I have the Roomba
vacuum and his comment was “your Dad is a special kind of lazy, isn’t he?” I just giggled about that, because as I said,
I’m a technology junkie and anything that makes my life easier is A OK in my
books. Especially when it does my
housework for me and allows me to pursue my many other interests such as
photography.
I bought two of them so that I can clean upstairs and
downstairs at the same time and don’t have to move the unit up and down. They weren’t that much more expensive than
getting a central built in vacuum and besides, they are entertaining as heck,
at least now that I have actually watched it work. Right now the units are called Roomba
Upstairs and Roomba Downstairs, but I’m thinking, maybe I should come up with
names for them.
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