It’s a battle cry worthy of a Madison Square Garden Pugilistic face-off. The new Roomba arrived yesterday. I cut the packing tape from the box, but I didn’t unpack it. Today, I removed and assembled the m6 dry and wet mop robot. I set it to work in the living room and quickly discovered that it cannot negotiate the threshold discontinuities between the living room and its surrounding rooms. Merde!
Our house is a 60’s ranch style home that has undergone significant renovations. All the floors but the parquet in the living room have been updated. Linoleum was replaced by porcelain tile, terrazzo was covered with the same porcelain tiles, old carpet was torn up and replaced with engineered hardwood flooring. Call it Frankenflooring, if you like. We like the updated finishings, and they will be serviceable until we are gone, but there are discontinuities of floor height among the rooms. Those have been treated cosmetically with thresholds, but the Roomba mop’s 3mm hill-climbing limit is insufficient for the task.
What this means, in practical terms, is that after the mop is done with the living room, it has to be picked up and restarted in the dining-kitchen area. When it is done there, it needs to be carried into the hallway that connects the study, bathrooms and bedrooms. It’s a bit like carrying a cat from one room to another; the Roomba m6 mop weighs no more than the typical household feline.
The big deal, if there is one, is that one needs to pick up all the crap that has been piled up on the floor after years of cluttering so that the Roomba can do its job. I’m talking shoes, socks, empty Amazon boxes that the cats use for relaxing, shopping bags full of crap that we took on our last vacation trip but never really used and then never put away, DVD and CD cases that the cats have knocked off the TV stand/shelf, cat toys galore, wires for charging your phone, Kindle, laptop, and headphones – a veritable cornucopia of crap and clutter. What a pain in the butt!
I accomplished most of that with some assistance from Susan (the cats didn’t do squat) and set the m6 Roomba dry and then wet mop into action. The dry mop probably found and delivered a half-pound of cat hair and dirt. The wet mop did a great job on the hardwood and porcelain tile floors. I can’t complain. All the floors could probably stand a second cleaning since many stains were really ground in. It’s been months since I wet mopped the place. Alas, I’m getting to be a decrepit old fart.
I plan to assemble the Roomba vacuum tomorrow and run it in the bedroom if Susan can manage to declutter that room. We’ll see; I know it’s a challenge. For the time being, the cats have observed the m6 Roomba mop and done a proper threat assessment. I think that they’ve decided that it represents a minimum threat, and if need be, they can probably kick its electronic ass. They are ready to Roomba, if need be.