Over Christmas, our family got a Roomba and Mint floor mopper. While the tandem is really awesome, this article is about the roomba. We have a 530 series model if you were wondering. While I am not anywhere close to declaring it the greatest thing of all time. I would like to mention some highlights that it provides and how this relates to my automated lifestyle goal.
1) The roomba is about 80-85% effective in terms of cleaning up a room. While many would be dissatisfied with the inability for a robot to complete that much, let's consider it on a cost basis. 80% of an hour of vacuuming is 48 minutes. If I had it clean what I could clean in an hour, than it has saved me 48 minutes of vacuuming. Considering that their is no cap on the amount of time that I can have it running, I run it all day, every day. Let's say over the course of a week I have reduced household vacuuming from 2 hours down to 24 minutes. That is considerable in terms of limited time I can enjoy with other family members who are busy.
2) Having the roomba cleaning builds a sense of needing work to be accomplished. When I have the vacuum running, I find that I am more effective performing a similar chore or activity during the same time. Sometimes we find that it is often easier for something to be accomplished when we are in a mode of working. Roomba helps provide this muse.
3) Roomba is an energy saving device. Despite being battery operated and having to charge often, Roomba allows us to use less electricity than conventional cleaning. The regular vacuum, a central vacuum system requires a large volume of air to be moved. Also, I can set up roomba in a dark room and it will be able to do all the cleaning without my guidance. Consolidating myself to a single area of the house save the family energy and money. This consolidation also makes workstations easier to clean.
4) Roomba promotes a directive of clean living. When we have Roomba going, our floors are clean. This causes us to examine and scrutinize the other aspects of our house. When the floors are clean, you can see issues with dusting, or dishes, or messes more clearly. Having roomba is like cleaning your upper teeth. It only shows you how unpolished your lower teeth are.
5) Roomba removes dust on the floor. While there will always be dust on the floor, I would prefer having it cleaned more often than we normally vacuum. Considering that we would normally vacuum the house once a week, Roomba allows for daily cleaning of our most commonly used areas.
6) Preping for Roomba is a form of cleaning. Picking up shoes or moving chairs and general cleaning of items off the ground allows roomba to clean the floor or carpet underneath. If I did not have Roomba illustrating this mechanical obstacle, I might not pick these things up otherwise. This refers back to the sense of clean living. Clean floors create clean counters and windows and laundry and bathrooms.
7) Setting up Roomba leads me to use all automation at once. Because Roomba wants to use an automated cycle, I am more inclined to take part in other automated cycles in the house. Setting the dishwasher which runs for 3 hours will allow me to run three loads of laundry. Setting time goals is part of Parkinson’s Law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law). If I establish competitive time goals, I always accomplish more than if I had not raised the stakes.
I hope you have enjoyed my brief analysis of the Roomba device and find simple yet meaningful ways to bring automation to your lives.
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