My Wife Loves to Vacuum · 11 December 2010
Speaking of vacuums… (I have always wanted to say that even though I am not a stand-up comedian. And since I wrote about vacuums last week, I figured I could say it today.) My wife, The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi, loves to vacuum. It was not always that way, but with the new vacuum, she seems to always be vacuuming.
In the days before the new vacuum, The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi hated to vacuum. She was often injured from pushing it back and forth, back and forth. That and pushing the grocery cart made her hip hurt (an old injury from the days of carrying our kids on her hip when they were babies). Our old upright vacuum cleaner did not get replaced by one of those single ball vacuum cleaners that is supposed be easy to turn or one that is supposed to be light as a feather. Instead of a traditional vacuum cleaner, The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi got a robot.
The first thing I think of when I think of a robot vacuum cleaner is Rosie from The Jetsons. Rosie was that lovable robot pushing an upright vacuum cleaner and doing lots of other chores around the Jetson household when I was a kid watching cartoons with my siblings. The robot we have now is not so humanoid. It is a small short round cylinder that rolls around and sucks up dirt. We have an iRobot Roomba.
Since I am not a celebrity product endorser, I try not to mention too many products by name. But after the shock of actually having a robot subsided, I got a little excited. I did not get excited because I would not need to vacuum anymore. I got excited because The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi pointed out that the Roomba could actually be programmed by the consumer.
Being a self professed geek, I probably should have programmed the robot right away. But then again, my wife was vacuuming practically every day so I have had little chance. She would take the robot into a room, start the robot and shut the door. It was like one of those infomercials about some cooking equipment where the whole audience shouts, “Set it and forget it.” That was what she does with the Roomba.
I am not sure that whether the robot does better than the old vacuum cleaner, but I do know that since The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi loves to vacuum now, our rooms are cleaner simply because of the frequency of vacuuming. Sometimes when the little Roomba gets set and forgotten, it cleans and cleans until its battery runs out. Then we have a tired little robot that needs to get charged back up and ready to go. But it never complains. It just keeps vacuuming until it can vacuum no more. My wife loves that too.
I can see why my wife loves to vacuum now. She does not get reinjured by pushing a heavy piece of cleaning equipment around. She can put the robot into a room, give it some boundaries, and push a button. Then she can do something else and tell anybody who will listen, “I am vacuuming!” (The Mindboggling Mrs. Miyoshi loves to pad her statistics on what she did during the day, by saying that she vacuumed.)
There are many advantages to having a little robot vacuum cleaner. The first big advantage is, of course, that we have a little robot vacuum cleaner. We also get a clean house more often since my wife does not get injured moving the robot around. And every once in a while we get the kids to volunteer to vacuum too. But the biggest advantage to having a little robot vacuum cleaner is that my wife loves to vacuum.
© 2010 Michael T. Miyoshi
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