How it all started…
It’s kind of comical how we ended up buying our iRobot Roomba 530. My husband told me that he was willing to start looking after cleaning the floors in our home. I was pumped as I find my weekends are generally filled with so many things to do after working all week, and not having to clean the floors would give me more time to get my other stuff done.
So, a few days later, I came home from work and discovered that my husband bought us a robot, and not just any robot, one that will clean our floors! At first I thought this was kind of weird. I mean, who would have thought of buying a robot? It makes me think of that movie with Will Smith when all the robots turn evil and start killing people.
It took a while to get over the strangeness of having a robot in my home.
Anyway, after getting over the weirdness of the whole thing, I began to really like this little robot. After all, it saves me at least two to three hours of time every week, freeing me up to do other things.
Where we got it…
My husband bought it on sale at Canadian Tire. We paid $299.99 for it brand new, and the regular price is $399.99. You can also buy it on amazon.com though, and there are some used ones that are cheaper. (Side note – it’s now 2015, we’ve had this robot now for about four years, and with the exception of having to change the battery once, it still works great.)
I think everyone who works full time and values their time should get one of these gadgets. Although it may take a while to wrap your head around the idea (it did for me), just think of all the other “robots” you probably already have in your house like your washer and dryer and dishwasher to name a few.
How does it work?
You can just set the little guy down and turn it on. It will move throughout your house and clean each room. It has sensors on it that allow it to navigate around and cover every inch of your floor. It moves around objects and goes under your bed to make sure it collects all the dust.
All you need to do is empty out the gunk after every cleaning. If it needs cleaning out before it is finished your house, then it will let you know by stopping and beeping.
Once its job is done, it knows to go back to its docking station on its own. If you want to manually send it to the docking station, you just push a button on the top and it does what it’s told. (We also learned that it it’s smart enough to know not to go down the stairs. It just hovers over the edge a little bit, and then backs away after sensing the drop off.)
Also, if you have a concentrated mess that you need to clean up, you can manually carry your robot over to the spot and hit the “spot” button. It will then know to remain in this one area and clean up your mess.
About the battery…
The iRobot is definitely a handy little gadget. Its battery will charge while its docked so you don’t have to worry about plug ins or that it might run out of batteries during its cleaning time. (The only time we found the robot dying out before it finished its job is when the battery needed replacing – for us, the first battery lasted about 4 years before we had to replace it.)
There are different varieties out there. We bought the iRobot Roomba 530. We haven’t had any trouble with it and it does a really good job of vacuuming our floors. One tip is to make sure you remove clutter off your floors so the robot doesn’t get caught up in anything. We had a friend visit and we forgot to tell her to pick up her clothes off the floor. Needless to say, our roomba started eating her pajama pants. But as long as you remove the clutter from the floor, you are good to go.
Even frugal folks will see the value in this handy little robot.
I am an extremely frugal person who normally doesn’t buy any kind of doodad since they are usually a waste of money. However, also due to my frugality, I am a person who values my time an awful lot. So, this particular doodad is worth its weight in gold in my opinion because it saves me precious time. I use it once a week and never have to babysit it. We often even leave the house while it’s running and come back to a clean floor. Definitely a gem, in my opinion.
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