It occurred to me this morning that I had been meaning to write this particular blog entry for a while. Since the holidays, there has been an amazing new presence in my life that deserves to be acknowledged. Especially since, as I write this, this wondrous new thing is cleaning my kitchen floor.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to speak to you today, about my Scooba. Personally, I don't have that much brand name awareness of it (the loml still calls it the scooby) so I've added a picture of it molesting my refrigerator below.
I bought this thing as a splurgy type gift to myself for Christmas. 50% of my house flooring is hardwood or tile, so I figured I'd have some opportunity to use this sucker, and boy have I.
Now, I'm not particularly a fan of its brother, the Roomba, because I have four cats and I fail to see how anything could do a better job than my Dyson. But, when it comes to my floors, I'm a whole 'nother animal.
Neither the loml nor myself 'do' floors. The only time we clean those suckers is when something bad (the cats, miscellaneous flying objects) happens. So I read an excellent review for this product that summed it up quite well: The scooba fits the 80/20 rule. It will clean up 80% of the junk on your floor (the easy stuff). If you want the rest of it (the not-so-easy), you'll have to do it yourself.
"Well," thinks I, "right now, we are doing 0% so 80% sounds great" and I bought it! And you know what, that little thing works great! But, I still read a lot of negative reviews for this little machine, and since I have foolishly grown emotionally attached to it (It cleans my floors!), I can tell what it won't do:
- It won't clean your floor well if you leave all your crap all over it. Even a paid maid won't do a good job there.
- It won't get that cruddy multi-week old stain of your floor either! its just a little machine, not a refugee from the DR!
- It won't pre-sweep anything larger than a piece of small animal kibble. So again, don't leave your crap on the floor.
- And I haven't tested this, but I'm not sure it works that well as a pet transport though I have seen the Roomba used for this purpose on the youtubes.
So really, if you have a moderately tidy home (aka a million light years away from anything you see on Clean Sweep) and you have floors, I recommend the scooba. Cause that little sucker will just clean while you do more important things.. like blog.. or practice your ukulele playing.. or something.
warning* when I first bought this thing, we spent at least the first twenty minutes of each cleaning session just watching it move. And by 'we', I mean me and the cats. The loml just thought we were nuts.
