I love my little Roomba, and most people you talk to love theirs too.  However, as far vacuum cleaners go, they cannot really compete with a standard high power vacuum cleaner.  Nor are they supposed to.  However, here are 4 tips to get the most of your Roomba.

1. Maximize your battery life:  Depending on how often you use your Roomba, there are two techniques you would employ.  If you live in a small place and only run it once every two weeks, keep the battery out of the unit.  Immediately after you have ran the unit, recharge it.  Once its recharged, take the battery out. This will extend the battery’s life. If you have a large are or many rooms, leave it on the charger as soon as its done and let the charger trickle charge the unit.

2. Empty the dust catcher often:  If you live in a dusty place, or have pets, or both in my case, you will find you will get much better performance if you empty the Roomba at least twice per cleaning session.  Depending on the area and layout, the Roomba will normally do at least 1 circumnavigation around the area in around 20 min. After 20 min, stop the unit, clean out the catcher AND the filter and then let it run to exhaustion or till it finds it way to the home base unit.  In my case, since I let the Roomba clean 4 rooms at once, I clean it at around 20 min, then 20 min again. This lets it run a little better and longer since its pulling more air with less effort.

3. Create a Roomba friendly area:  One of the best things about the Roomba is that it loves to seek out corners.  But it also tends to get confused if there are too many obstacles around.  So try to keep your area as clear and open as possible BUT do not get into the habit of moving things to the corner or side.  The whole idea is the let the Roomba get to those little areas you normally cannot get to.  If you have lots of little things laying about, move group them together in the center of the room.  Also dont forget to pick up chords or house plant leaves or anything else that can get caught in the vacuum brushes.

4. COMPLETELY clean the unit every 4-8 uses:  The Roomba is great as a supplementation to vacuuming, so the big win is the ease of use.  However, having to do a deep clean of the brushes every time defeats the purpose of having the robot in the first place.  No problem. If you do a deep clean every now and again, say once a month if you use it twice a week, that should be fine.  And by deep clean I mean taking the brushes out and making sure there are not threads or dirt or anything else to keep the brushes from spinning well.

There you go. If you can think of any other tips, send them along and I will add them to this post.