any thoughts on the robotic mops? Trying to decide how well of a job one would do in the kitchen. Have pets that can leave a mess. The reviews though don't seem to be all that spectacular, but not exactly horrible either. This site gives them a range between 9.7 and 7.9 ratings
http://www.consumercharts.com/robot-mop/ but I'm looking for firsthand experience. TIA!
Mixed feelings.
I like the robot vacuums a lot (mentioning the vacs first because you have to sweep or vacuum hard floors first anyway before mopping). They are basically dustbusters on wheels. I currently have an iLife A4, which is a great Roomba knockoff for less money ($199 with dual side brushes & a central suction-beater brush, self-docking for automatic recharging, and a scheduling remote control). I use it on the hardwood floors & carpeted floors:
https://www.amazon.com/ILIFE-A4s-Robot-Vacuum-Cleaner/dp/B01N9P4NH5/
I got my mom a Braava mopping bot a year or two ago for Christmas. It does an okay job. I'll elaborate a bit on both the mopping bot & vacuum bot because they both have a lot of minor details that really affect how you use them. So like with the vacuum bot, it's not very powerful. It's basically equivalent to a handheld dustbuster...it's not going to replace a full vacuum, but it will pick up the crap sitting on the top of your carpet & it will beat the carpet so that it looks nice. To be honest, if you have carpeting, it feels like a maid was in your house cleaning because it makes the carpets look nice. For my family, it incentivizes us to clean up the main rooms & bedrooms because the robot vac will eat wires & socks & anything else you leave in front of it to suck up & then choke on. Plus it's just plain fun hitting a button on the robot & having it go around & vacuum for you (or pressing a button on the remote control, or scheduling it to come out at a certain time).
The mop bot is a little bit different. When I was learning how to properly clean my house, I got a Swiffer WetJet, which is kind of the same concept...it has a bottle of cleaner that you stick on, you press a button on the handle & it sprays the juice out, and then there's a diaper on the end of the mop to scrub it up. Way less work than a mop & easy enough to pick up & use every couple of days without hassle. However, it made my floors feel kinda tacky. The Braava bot wasn't as bad, but it was kind of the same concept, except it took a long time to do it, the floors sometimes stayed a bit wet, and it didn't seem to do as good of a job with coverage as the robot vacuum did. The one I got my mom had different types of disposable cleaning pads; one had the solution baked into the pad, so you would fill it with water, it would squirt out the water, and then run the pad over the water & put the solution on the floor & then scrub it. A quick look at Amazon is showing me some reusable pads, so maybe they can use a cleaning solution instead of water in the tank now, I dunno.
What I ultimately switched to, at least at my house, was this puppy:
https://www.amazon.com/Cedar-EasyWring-Microfiber-Bucket-Cleaning/dp/B00WSWGVZQ
It has a re-usable micro-fiber cloth mop in a triangle shape, so it's easy to get into corners & under counters (vs. the big dreadlock monster mops). The bucket has a foot pedal for spinning the cloth clean, similar to a salad spinner. I ended up learning how to make my own mopping solution (water, vinegar, lemon juice, dish soap) & it works great...makes the floors feel nice, instead of tacky. It does make your house stink like vinegar for a couple hours, and it does take a little while to dry if you don't run a towel over your floors to manually dry it, but it's cheap & works better than anything else I've used.
So I don't want to completely talk you out of a robot mop, but just in my experience, I've had better & faster results using that slick microfiber bucket cleaning system off Amazon. I still use the robot vac to do the vacuuming because it does a really good job, but I like the way my floors felt using the homemade cleaning solution & liked how fast & easy it was with the manual method vs. having the mop bot go around, because it never seemed to do as good of a job as I wanted when I was first testing it out or when I would go & visit my mom's house and play with the bot. Plus you have to remove the battery & charge it on the wall, and also manually refill the water tank, whereas with the vac bot, it self-charges on a dock & there's just a little removable bin to empty the trash out from.
I still think they are pretty cool, but my current combo is an iLife A4 vac bot & the microfiber mop system. Plus a regular vacuum for doing a deep cleaning on the carpet like once a month.
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