Are Roombas etc any good? aka Help Iris clean her house

[TootsNYC]

Re: the self-cleaning bathroom. I think that wouldn't be that hard to invent, would it? A slightly slanted floor w/ a drain in the corner, steam jets, and a brush that comes down from the compartment in the ceiling. You'd have to take the towels and the toilet paper out before you pushed the on button, but....

[Iris]

Re: the self-cleaning bathroom. I think that wouldn't be that hard to invent, would it? A slightly slanted floor w/ a drain in the corner, steam jets, and a brush that comes down from the compartment in the ceiling. You'd have to take the towels and the toilet paper out before you pushed the on button, but....

Now that you mention it, I'm sure I saw something like that, but for a whole house, at one of those futuristic-y shows that they do every once in a while. I could see the silliness of it for a whole house (what about the couch?) but for a bathroom it would be fine. Now I feel robbed! Where's my self cleaning bathroom darn it!

[Slartibartfast]

Not sure what everyone's talking about with "preparing the room" first.  I do pick up the kitty toys, but that takes me all of 2 seconds to do.

Well, when I first got the Roomba, my oldest was a baby, I think.  So it was just picking up a few baby toys, making sure to put the baby toy bin on the couch, and tilting the baby swing so that the legs were off the floor as much as possible (otherwise it got stuck between them).  I also needed to move the dining room chairs if the Roomba was going to work in there, or it would get stuck between the legs.  However, now I have 4 kids, and on the floor at any given time are usually dolls, pencils, paper trash, dryer sheets, stray socks, etc.  The biggest issue in our household is keeping stuff off the floor, not how dirty the floor is.  So cleaning the stuff up off the floor so that it can be vacuumed is far and away the largest job, and then the vacuuming is a small final step. Now, if you could get a really large Roomba that would vacuum up all the stuff on the floor, then automatically sort it into categories (kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, toys, school stuff), that would be worth buying.

Does anybody have a Scooba?  Do they still make those?  The floor washing ones, I mean.  I wonder if they're any good.

But you'd have to pick that stuff up anyway in order to vacuum. Wouldn't you? I guess you could pick it up as you go along vacuuming, but that's at least the same amount of effort and maybe more.

Yes, you have to pick it up anyway - which is why I vacuum far less often than most of you who own Roombas do   

[Sophia]

Re: the self-cleaning bathroom. I think that wouldn't be that hard to invent, would it? A slightly slanted floor w/ a drain in the corner, steam jets, and a brush that comes down from the compartment in the ceiling. You'd have to take the towels and the toilet paper out before you pushed the on button, but....

Now that you mention it, I'm sure I saw something like that, but for a whole house, at one of those futuristic-y shows that they do every once in a while. I could see the silliness of it for a whole house (what about the couch?) but for a bathroom it would be fine. Now I feel robbed! Where's my self cleaning bathroom darn it!

We aren't going nutso.  But we are designing our master bath to be kind of like that.  Rimless shower stall and an extra drain or two in the middle of the floor in the other part of the bathroom.  Extra shower head/hose in the ceiling.  Tile almost everywhere.  Basically, we will be able to clean most things with a jet of water. 

[Shalamar]

So, am I the only one who has that problem with the side brush falling off?

[workerbee]

bumbles off onto the landing looking smug

Ok, you made me laugh!

What are the names of your robots?  I hear that you're supposed to name them.

We don't have a Roomba, but we do have an automatic pool vacuum. His name is Bob and we adore him!

[GreenHall]

Re: the self-cleaning bathroom. I think that wouldn't be that hard to invent, would it? A slightly slanted floor w/ a drain in the corner, steam jets, and a brush that comes down from the compartment in the ceiling. You'd have to take the towels and the toilet paper out before you pushed the on button, but....

I swear I remember reading something (I thought by/about Scott Adams of Dilbert) about engineers (and men in the particular case) designing a house. Bathroom could be cleaned like that.  Only other thing I remember is two dishwashers - clean and dirty (and thus no dish cabinets).  Quick google did not locate, but couple years ago (or I could be crazy, always possible).

[MOM21SON]

Re: the self-cleaning bathroom. I think that wouldn't be that hard to invent, would it? A slightly slanted floor w/ a drain in the corner, steam jets, and a brush that comes down from the compartment in the ceiling. You'd have to take the towels and the toilet paper out before you pushed the on button, but....

Now that you mention it, I'm sure I saw something like that, but for a whole house, at one of those futuristic-y shows that they do every once in a while. I could see the silliness of it for a whole house (what about the couch?) but for a bathroom it would be fine. Now I feel robbed! Where's my self cleaning bathroom darn it!

We aren't going nutso.  But we are designing our master bath to be kind of like that.  Rimless shower stall and an extra drain or two in the middle of the floor in the other part of the bathroom.  Extra shower head/hose in the ceiling.  Tile almost everywhere.  Basically, we will be able to clean most things with a jet of water.

Oh man, I would be so happy happy happy!  I have one bathroom and 2 men.  Nuff said.

[snowfire]

I've had a Roomba for about 4 years.  Love it, but it does some things better than others.  It works like a champ in our bedroom which has a short pile plush carpet.  I turn it loose a couple of times a week to keep the cat hair down since DH has issues with it.  Evict cats from room, turn on Roomba, close door & go do something else.  Relatively easy to clean the cat fur off the rollers & tank.  It gets under the bed & other furniture very well.  In fact, I occasionally take it over to my Mom's to get cat hair out from under her bed.

It does not, however, like the new thick pile carpet in the rest of the house.  Forgot about that when I was picking new carpet.  I've never had a problem with the brushes coming off & ours is still the same one that we got a few years ago. (Brush cleaner tool works really well for getting hair off the brushes).

I also have a Scooba which does our kitchen floor (walnut floor with Glitza finish).  Much noisier than Roomba, but works well except in the corners.  Luckily, due to the design of our kitchen, I have only two tight corners.  It does pretty well on the shallow corners.

[Octavia]

So, am I the only one who has that problem with the side brush falling off?

I haven't had that problem, but my Roomba was new when I bought it. I wonder if the previous owner of your Roomba bent or broke something so that the brush cannot attach correctly.

My Roomba works great on the tile floors and the floors that have short-pile carpeting. It even does a pretty good job with the plush bathroom rugs, although it tends to push them around a bit in the process.

I have friends who have tried and returned Roombas after finding out they do not work well on floors that are covered with thick-pile carpeting.

[Shalamar]

I bet you're right, Octavia.   Time to start saving for a new one!

[MommyPenguin]

Not sure what everyone's talking about with "preparing the room" first.  I do pick up the kitty toys, but that takes me all of 2 seconds to do.

Well, when I first got the Roomba, my oldest was a baby, I think.  So it was just picking up a few baby toys, making sure to put the baby toy bin on the couch, and tilting the baby swing so that the legs were off the floor as much as possible (otherwise it got stuck between them).  I also needed to move the dining room chairs if the Roomba was going to work in there, or it would get stuck between the legs.  However, now I have 4 kids, and on the floor at any given time are usually dolls, pencils, paper trash, dryer sheets, stray socks, etc.  The biggest issue in our household is keeping stuff off the floor, not how dirty the floor is.  So cleaning the stuff up off the floor so that it can be vacuumed is far and away the largest job, and then the vacuuming is a small final step. Now, if you could get a really large Roomba that would vacuum up all the stuff on the floor, then automatically sort it into categories (kitchen stuff, bathroom stuff, toys, school stuff), that would be worth buying.

Does anybody have a Scooba?  Do they still make those?  The floor washing ones, I mean.  I wonder if they're any good.

But you'd have to pick that stuff up anyway in order to vacuum. Wouldn't you? I guess you could pick it up as you go along vacuuming, but that's at least the same amount of effort and maybe more.

Yeah, sorry, my point was that if you have to spend 20 minutes or more picking up in order to use the Roomba, you're not as likely to bother doing it every night or every other night, because you don't always have time for pickup.  You're not vacuuming by hand, either, you're just not doing anything.

[Coralreef]

I don't have a Roomba (not enough $$$ at the moment) but I do have a Virobi.  Wonderful to pick up dust and to get the dog hair from corners and under furniture.  I still vacuum, just not as often. 

His name is Whhrrr, which describes the little noise he makes when he's changing direction or gets stuck.

[Iris]

Update: In the end we went with a Samsung brand one because it had an allergy filter and that is important for our family. We've been doing some minor renovations and so I hadn't set it up yet until tonight. Just ran it for the first time.

The dog was hilarious but managed to cope after a few minutes, although he kept going back to check up on what the new pet was doing now. It didn't save me any time because I was watching it to see how it went with cleaning all the floor but I'm sure that will wear off and all in all I was pretty happy with it. I plan to run it every night, to have the double effect of making everyone pick up all their stuff at least once a day.

Thanks again for all the advice - my shower cleaning vinegar thing is going great too!

[DottyG]

It didn't save me any time because I was watching it to see how it went with cleaning all the floor

LOL! I do that, too!  I like to watch my Roomba pick stuff up!

The Roomba has a hepafilter, by the way.  So you would have gotten that had you gone with it.