not before and after...

i know you are waiting for photos---and i am waiting for a room to be complete, so hold your horses.

this post is a product discussion. yes, brace yourself, there's a new gadget in the house and i think it warrants discussion. for weeks, every time we walked into a store with vacuum cleaners a noise erupted out of adam that reminded me distinctly of moo-ing. it would start low and the longer i ignored it, the greater the intensity with which it's name would be repeated.

Yes. Roomba: 
See, the problem here is that a roomba was not in the budget. that and i was pretty sure that Neah, herder extraordinaire might in fact try to eat it the way she tries to devour the other vacuum cleaners in the house---leaving us with iRobot-pieces.

Adam was determined, however, that the house would clean itself. His folks kindly gifted him the toy of his dreams as our housewarming. Now, by way of some background, let me tell you that if you believe that your animal might be a prolific shedder (read: can't figure out how it's not hairless already) just get all non-carpeted floors. Then you will be sure that a small animal or large winter coat could be made out of the leave-behinds.

Roomba had its work cut out. We finally got rid of all the boxes on Saturday so there was space for it to do its thing. We took our battle stations: adam next to his prize contraption and me as far away as i could get to avoid another injured thumb. He pressed clean and Roomba lept to life.

Neah watched it, and then true to her Aussieness tried to herd it. Thing is, Roomba reinforces herding behavior because if she nips at it, little-Bot changes direction! Finally she decided that she wasn't sure if she liked this thing that moved on its own all the time and started following it around, but hiding behind Adam to watch it. By day two, she just ignored it entirely. Phew.

Roomba's not bad. You definitely have to be in for the long haul---it doesn't clean efficiently, but in the end it gets it done. It has trouble with thick rugs and transition areas--tends to leave behind dirt/hair in the crevasse. Also, it is confused by the base of our bar stools and tends to run up the side of one and get stuck. It does a great job of not falling down the stairs. It does not like dark rugs--thinks they are some kind of void or something, nor does it like air vent grates. Adam loves it. I love anything that doesn't mean i have to vacuum 6 times a week to keep up with the shedding.