Roomba

 

Roomba

Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

We have a self-emptying electric floor vacuum. It is an iRobot Roomba. It has been set to follow a particular pattern in whichever room it’s put to work. I wouldn’t have bothered, as I quite like the random nature of things, but Inspector Gadget cannot resist programming everything in sight.

He’d programme me if he could.

I have mentioned before that we have a vast collection of remote controls. I long for the days of simple on/off switches on easy-to-understand devices.

The current Roomba (the first one was donated to Susannah and was called Veronica) is called Felicity. I don’t know why we gave the thing a name – it’s not our usual habit to name appliances – and we can never remember the correct name, anyway. It buzzes round, noisily, drawing attention to the fact that it’s doing a job that any human could do. Eventually, the bin is full, and the machine trawls off to its station to empty itself. This involves even more noise and a horrible smell, causing all around to waft their hands in front of their faces.

It does a decent job, thoroughly investigating every nook and cranny, spinning, and sweeping until it is satisfied that it has gathered every last mote of dust. The floors look spotless for all of five seconds, before one of the two or four-legged animals moves, and then the poor Roomba weeps on its charging station.

We have a standard vacuum cleaner, too – one that has to be operated by a human. It looks very smart, but has so many filters that it’s almost impossible to use. As soon as one filter is clogged, which happens ferociously fast in our household, it has to be gently teased into work again. This is done by cleaning it, usually with a handheld, battery-driven vacuum cleaner. DO NOT remove all the filters at the same time, as remembering which goes where is a fiendish test of memory and patience. Why would anyone be tempted to displace all filters, you ask? Well, simply looking does not always indicate which is the troublesome one.

In a nutshell, we have vacuum cleaners to clean our vacuum cleaners. Is it really necessary? All we’re really doing is shifting the dust from one place to another and it will all have to be done again tomorrow . . . or later today.

I keep saying we should employ a cleaner, much as I dislike having other people in the house, to which the stock response is, ‘We can do it ourselves,’ usually followed by, ‘I enjoy housework,’  and, ‘It’s good exercise.’

I think the pleasure and satisfaction of the job may be wearing off, though. Barry has had to do everything in recent weeks, and he has done it all remarkably well. I may just delay my return to certain tasks a little longer. Would that be cruel?

Back to the Roomba – is it a good thing? It certainly makes the house look spruce and it’s useful to have it working while another job can be undertaken. I think that for anyone living in a tidy house, with no pets, it would be wonderful. Having said that, it is nice, to paraphrase Genesis, to look upon one’s floors and find them good.

Living with Inspector Gadget rather skews my thinking on certain things, but, on balance, his instincts are correct. I have had to put my foot down on certain ideas, however. For example, I had no wish to have a mobile holiday home in a double-decker bus, even though he would have made a wonderful job of converting it, just as he did the builder’s van, in which we spent a few happy holidays. A hot air balloon was also a step too far. I didn’t fancy a garden railway, either.