Home LivingAppliancesVacuum Cleaners3 mistakes everyone makes with robot vacuum cleanersDodge droid disasters with these handy robot vac tipsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Home LivingAppliancesVacuum Cleaners3 mistakes everyone makes with robot vacuum cleanersDodge droid disasters with these handy robot vac tipsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Dodge droid disasters with these handy robot vac tips
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Roborock)
(Image credit: Roborock)
Even so, the first mistake you could make with even thebest robot vacis to buy one and throw your oldvacuum cleaneraway. Probably your best bet would be to get a robot for maintaining your floors and something lightweight and compact from ourbest cordless vacuum cleanerlist to handle everything else.
Used properly, however, a modern robot vac can save you a lot of time and effort, and give you floors that remain fairly immaculate, forever. What you need to know are the mistakes to avoid with them, and these are the 3 most common errors…
1. Watching your robot vac work
Just leave your pets to keep an eye on things(Image credit: iRobot)
Just leave your pets to keep an eye on things
Just leave your pets to keep an eye on things
(Image credit: iRobot)
As a result, watching them do their thing can be maddening – why isn’t it just goingaroundthat chair leg and then completing the carpet, instead of bashing repeatedly into it, and then wondering off for a stroll to the skirting board? I find myself pointing out where my robot should go next, shouting at it, and sometimes even pushing it in the ‘correct’ direction with my foot.
Don’t do this. Just vacate the premises, let it get on with what it has to do, and be impressed when you return to clean carpets throughout. It’s results that matter, not the slightly haphazard way they’re sometimes achieved.
2. Not clearing your floors before it starts
(Image credit: Roborock)
(Image credit: Roborock)
Again, robots are much better at obstacle avoidance than they used to be. Even so, you should clear your floors as much as is humanly possible. There are two ways to do this. One is to take what’s on the floor and put it on your sofa, coffee table, bed or anything else that gets it off the floor and the hell out of your robot’s way.
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The other, better way, is to declutter your home so the floors arealwaysmore or less clear. I appreciate this is much harder if you have kids, pets or an untidy spouse but it is a necessary step to getting the most out of your helpful robot manservant.
3. Not using it all the time
When a robot can vacuumandmopandclean itself, why would you leave it idle?(Image credit: Roborock)
When a robot can vacuumandmopandclean itself, why would you leave it idle?
When a robot can vacuumandmopandclean itself, why would you leave it idle?
(Image credit: Roborock)
Some people adopt a curious attitude to robot vacs, which is to say they use them like they did their old Hoover – once per week, or after a spill. This is madness. It’s a robot; you’re not paying it for its labour and it doesn’t get tired, although it may need to recharge its battery now and then. Use the damn thing every day. Twice a day if you can.
Robot vacs are great at keeping dust levels down, carpets clean and – if you go for one that has a built in mop, such as theRoborock S7– hard floors shiny. Bots aren’t great at deep cleaning. Because they are so small, suction performance is never going to match a vac that you have to push around yourself. So put your robot to work as often as you can, ideally while the house is empty and the floors reasonably clear – see mistakes #1 and #2, above.
There are plenty more mistakes a person can make with their dirt droid, but if you can avoid these three, you will be oh-so-close to living the dream of having perfectly clean floors (apart from the tricky edges and corners that robots invariably miss) at all times, with zero effort. Welcome to the future.
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