My New Toy

Have you heard of woot!? Yes, woot! (with an exclamation point) is the name. It's a web-based company that offers one amazing deal a day. When the deal is sold out, that's it for the day. Every morning I check woot! and kids.woot! to see if there are any deals I want. Shipping is always a flat $5, no matter what you order.

When my father was here last weekend I checked woot! one morning and discovered a Roomba 350 offered for $129.99 plus $5 shipping. It was truly an amazing deal because at Amazon, it's being sold for $254.99.Yeah--it's a big difference, especially from the retail price of $299.99.

Anyway, I didn't buy it because we just bought a perfectly good vacuum cleaner. I thought it would have been nice to have something on each floor (our vacuum weighs a ton and it's a pain to drag it up and down the stairs), but it still seemed like too much of a luxury. In my excitement I showed by father the amazing deal and then forgot about it.

The day before Dad left he told me to expect my Christmas present in the mail in a few days--he had bought a Roomba for us!

It arrived via FedEx yesterday and I was amazed by how easy it was to use--I was able to use it straight out of the box with no problem--it took longer to put the vacuum cleaner together than it did to start up the Roomba. And boy, is it awesome!

It's very smart--it never falls down stairs or gets tangled in cords. It senses walls and other objects and moves around them carefully. Best of all, it comes with a Virtual Wall, which you can position on the floor in a room with a big entryway that will keep the Roomba from crossing the invisible line from one room to another. That's helpful for us when I want to keep it in the living room and not in the kitchen.

The Roomba cleans the entire room--it doesn't miss anything, and even gets into corners. I can just press a button and it will start itself, clean the room, and then go back to home base for re-charging. There are no bags--I just empty out a little compartment at the end of the day--and I'm amazed by how well it cleans. I may never vacuum a room again!

I've been converted...I'm now saving up my pennies for a Scooba. :)