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The living room is our main play spot for Rory. We sit on the big rug with her; she lays under her little tent, and we play and play and play! Rory isn’t crawling quite yet, but I know she will soon be on the move. That means she will no longer be confined to our little spot on the floor. Instead, the entire first floor will be her playground. Uh oh!
Knowing that Rory would soon be mobile, I decided to buy a robot vacuum on Amazon Prime Day last month. They had some killer sales on all kinds of brands, but I had no idea which one was the best for our family. Whenever I need recommendations, I always like to poll the audience and your responses did not disappoint!
Now let me preface this by saying that I still love love love our Dyson vacuum. (The picture above is of me using it in our old condo.) It gets the job done and the attachments work for just about any situation. I still use the Dyson regularly, but I wanted a robot vacuum that would do the cleaning for me every.single.day. Plus, I needed something that could get under tables, chairs, and couches easily, because I’m sure Rory will be picking up alllll kinds of dirt under there. So my goal was to find a robot vacuum that could run daily, while still reaching for my Dyson a few times a week too.
Highly Recommended Robot Vacuums
I asked for your favorites over on this Instagram post and you came to my rescue. You can see all of the recommendations over on this post, but I’ll sum up the top robot vacuums.
My favorite part about reading your responses was hearing all of the names for your vacuums. Isn’t it funny how everyone seems to name their robot vacuum? A few fun names I heard were “Flanders”, “Winston”, “Mini Bot”, “Rosie”, and “Dum-E”. We have a name for our new robot vacuum, which brings me to…
Our New Robot Vacuum
Meet Huck, short for Huckleberry – as in Huckleberry Finn! 
We ended up buying the Roborock E35 for almost half price on Prime Day. Our friends, Lauren and Adam, convinced us to go with the Roborock. They do tons of research for every single purchase they make, so I knew if it came highly recommended by them, it was the way to go! Plus, it has lots of great reviews on Amazon.
I didn’t want the vacuum’s “hub” to be super noticeable, so Huck actually lives behind the leather chair in our living room. You can’t really see him (I moved the chair to take the pic of the hub), yet the vacuum can slide in and out of the area pretty easily. 
So far, we’ve only used it on our first level and it has really worked well. But I’ll admit that I’m still getting the hang of it.
Mopping & Vacuuming
Our robot vacuum mops and vacuums, which is so incredibly convenient. I was a tad nervous about the prospect of having water in our vacuum, but so far it has been completely fine. When Huck is on the hardwood flooring he mops and vacuums, and then when he is on a rug he goes into vacuum only mode. I was also worried that the mopping would be super wet and create puddles, but it just gets the floor a bit damp, so it dries really quickly. No complaints yet. 
After Huck is done running, I take out the water piece and change the mop pad. You’re not supposed to use any soaps or detergents as it can screw up the vacuum, so we’ve been following the directions and sticking with just water. We change out the pad after a good mopping session (it comes with two). I then rinse the mop pad in the sink and let it dry.
I will say that he isn’t the quietest little guy. He is a tad noisy and I’m sure Finn hears him in the basement while he works. I run him during the day, during Rory’s nap time (she sleeps like a log), because I’m still a little nervous about him getting into trouble without me watching. (I’m sure I’ll get less paranoid as time goes on.) So if you’re looking for a really quiet vacuum, this isn’t the one for you. 
For our robot vacuum, you use the Mi Home app to control it and it works just fine. You can pause it, dock it, and even do spot cleaning all with the app. It even has a remote control feature, so you can move the robot vacuum around using your phone.
The One Con
When researching, I thought that the robot had “no go” zones, where you could use the map to designate which areas you didn’t want it to clean. We probably would have used that feature for Rory’s little play area in the family room, so it didn’t accidentally scoop up any toys when cleaning. I saw that it said “route planning” in the description of the product so I figured that included the “no go” technology. Sadly, it doesn’t. But you can buy this magnetic tape to set up around areas you where you don’t want it to clean. We may buy it and then add the tape underneath the rug so it won’t go in her little play area. For now, I’ve just been scooping up any toys before running it. 
I think the higher priced robot vacuums come with that technology, so that is something to be aware of when you’re buying! We still really like the one we chose for the price point and it has been doing a great job keeping our floors clean.
My guess is a lot of these robot vacuums will be on sale next week, so I would be on the lookout to snag a good deal for yourself or as a super generous holiday gift! And let me know in the comments below if I didn’t include your favorite robot vacuum in my list and I can add it to the blog post.
Casey
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