I'm not sure whether this will turn out to be a rave review for a Robot Vacuum, or a seriously bad review of my cleaning service. But here goes:
In the past year, I've come perilously close to turning into the Crazy Cat Lady. Luckily, I'm told that one needs FIVE cats to qualify. By June, I'll have four cats. Right now, I have two cats and two adolescent kitten/cats. That means that I have a lot of fur in the house.
I also have a home - based business for which clients come to my home. Some of these clients are allergic to cats. I do my best to keep the plethora of purring pals from causing problems for my guests and clients. To that end, I have a serious electrostatic filter on my furnace, and employ a team of folks to come vacuum everything vacuum-able in the house, and sweep, and wash the floors (and clean the bathrooms). Yes, this means that they vacuum all upholstered furniture and the stairs. (And yes, this means I love them).
Lately, I've noticed that the awesome team doesn't seem to be actually moving furniture to get the collected fur, dust, etc from behind it. I'd totally understand it if the furniture was heavy, but even when I'm on "do not lift anything more than 10 pounds" restrictions post surgery, I can nudge the couch out of the way with my knee... And I really do not understand the concept of NOT moving easily movable furniture to clean a floor. Usually, all it takes is a reminder, and they get it all done, and then mop the wood floors with Murphy's Oil Soap and my house feels and smells clean and fresh....
The kittens are almost big enough to shed. So, I acquired a new Robot Vacuum. I figure that every other week is just not going to be often enough to keep up with the fur. These things are awesome, but they don't quite replace real humans with eyes and the ability to move things out of the way, or get into tight corners. And though they've gotten to be low enough profile to go under a lot of furniture... they still can't do it all.
Just for a lark, I decided to run the new Robot the evening after it arrived. This was the day that my wonder-team had been in vacuuming and sweeping etc., so I didn't really expect it to get a lot of dirt, but I hoped that it would demonstrate that I could reduce the number of times I sweep the laundry room of errant cat litter granules.
Much to my alarm and amazement, this is what the robot gathered on its first outing:
That's the pile of dirt and fur - it almost fills one "sheet" of the paper towels that come in not quite whole sheet sizes.
Here's a view from about level with the counter -- that's a pretty thick pile.
So - is this a demonstration that this wee Robot is super powerful and amazing? After all, it did get to play on a couple of carpets, and those things can be sneaky about holding in dirt. Or is this a sad indication that my Wonder-Team is not as wonderful as it used to be?
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I decided to run the Robot again the next day.
Day Two's collection:
A slightly smaller collection. But still, that's a lot of fur/dust etc for a floor that was vacuumed twice yesterday. For completion's sake, here's the side on view:
Guess what I'll be doing tomorrow? Yep, siccing the Robot on the floor again. I may pause to run it in the living room well, or the second floor first. But this baby is getting a work out this week!
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