After much hesitation, I picked up an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaning robot at Costco. The popular warehouse retailer was selling the iRobot Roomba 595 for $299.99.

I was a bit apprehensive about this purchase. Sure, I had already outsourced the dishwashing and laundry to robots, but I had been acclimated to those appliances all my life. A vacuum cleaning robot seemed different.

Turns out that the critical question isn’t whether the Roomba will clean as good or efficient as a human. The Roomba doesn’t follow a grid pattern when vacuuming, so it may cover the same part of the room multiple times. However, what it lacks in efficiency, it makes up in effort by tirelessly vacuuming every single day without complaint.

Now, most people probably do not vacuum their own house every day. I certainly did not. But, the Roomba will if you set up its schedule to vacuum daily. I thought that would be excessively and was prepared to adjust the schedule until I saw the Roomba pick-up a dryer’s worth of link every single day. And all this time I thought the floor was clean.

Once you have an Roomba cleaning your house each day, I don’t think you can go back because now you know how dirty the floor is.