Thanks for sharing your experience, J. I’m a barefooter too — know what you mean about stepping on little stuff!

I’ve had a roomba for about 2 yrs now. It doesn’t completely eliminate the need to sweep/vacuum with an actual broom/vacuum cleaner every once in awhile, but it has drastically reduced the amount of times that I need to do it. I have wood floors through most of the house, and then carpet here in my office. I also have 3 cats and a husband in here. I mostly just sweep the wood floors sometimes before I clean those with the wood floor cleaner so I don’t grind anything into the cleaning cloth and floor (or if roomba misses any cat food pieces that Senior Kitty decides to share with the floor). Yes, you will have to empty the bin/shake out the filter every night, and occasionally you will need to remove any hair that may have wrapped around the end of the rollers, but it’s really not that bad. My husband and I both have long hair and don’t seem to have a real problem with that. I like to walk around barefoot, and I CANNOT STAND stuff sticking to my feet. Roombas may not be as perfect as I would like them to be, but looking back overall, I would still buy it again. The positives are still outweighing the negatives (especially with 3 cats). We do need to pick up certain cat toys so they don’t get caught in the roomba, though (soft mice toys). You might need to think about the same with certain small kid toys if they will be in the same room. I can’t speak from experience there. Best of luck with your decisions. I’ve struggled with the thought of getting a house cleaner again, myself. I had one for about a year when I traveled all the time for work, and it was nice to come back to a place that wasn’t trashed every weekend. Like you, I have both qualitative and quantitative hang ups to going back to it again.

Glad to hear you have similar thoughts. I’ll be sure to do a follow-up post with experiences and stuff after we give it a try :)

This might sound weird, but I kind of like doing our own laundry… Monotonous tasks help me zone out sometimes — folding, sorting, and organizing helps me relax. Sometimes kitchen cleaning, too. So having someone do the rest of the house is perfect :)

When at least one if us retires we might scale back that service.

I don’t care how much it costs….it is so worth it to just not have to scrub toilets and clean bathrooms. You still have to clean the kitchen daily and do laundry.

Good to know!

Forget the roomba with pets, you’ll spend more time cleaning and removing hair from the roomba wheels than you gain time. Roombas are great if there’s only a little dust, not hair

Plus, I bet you have more FUN working on your side hustles vs. cleaning! That’s awesome you have the jerky businesses :)