Roomba!

Over here at Cheapy Hollow, there’s one thing we love: Free Stuff and Vacuums. Okay, two things.

I’m not sure where my love of vacuums comes from, but probably it’s those visions of my mom, slightly sweaty, huddled over them when there was a vacuum catastrophe. The pulling out of rubber belts, dust bunnies flying. I loved the dissection of the rotating brush, the unscrewing of the mysterious cover. Often there was some ‘thing’ lodged in the recesses, a Lego, a sock. There were the intermittent, ”uh, oh’s, maybe even an under-the-breath, ”shit.” Best of all, when she was done, she’d always say, ‘now we’re cookin’ with gas!’ She always fixed the problem. It was always 100% success.

Vacuuming was our indoor sport when I was in high school. We even had a carpet rake back in the day. I was the messy raker, taking the Jackson Pollack approach. My brother, the perfectionist, would then jump in. When he was done, the rake lines were seamless. Eventually, my method was met with a ‘ya big edjit’ from my Irish mother, which I found hilarious. My brother, also incensed would rerake the living room on the spot. Before Netflix, this was one source of entertainment in our family and it must have stuck with me over the decades.

So, you can imagine my delight when I saw the Roomba—the Golden Unicorn of vacuum acquisitions on Facebook Curb Alert. Immediately I prompted my daughter to put her shoes on and run over with me—it was only two streets away.

On the way to this Beast of Free, we ran into my neighbor in her van. She’s also a freebie lover, so I gave her the scoop and she offered us a ride. One look at her van full of other curb-alert goods and in need of exercise, we declined. Secretly, I love the old-school travel-by-foot method when possible.

She was there when my daughter and I huffed to the top of the hill. She had put our precious new Roomba in the Safe Harbor of her front seat. It’s a score and I know if I hadn’t gotten it quickly, someone would have snagged it. Luckily we’re watching out for each other.

Now, the curb alert advertisement said the vacuum worked, but as soon as my neighbor opened the front door, she said, ”You’re going to have to clean a lot of hair out of it.” But, that’s the thing, remember? I love that work part of it.

More than that, that’s the thing about Cheap People—they don’t mind the labor, the tinkering, the questionable, will it work? I was worried that the Roomba would have some major flaw, but I was willing to clean it up and give it a go. The cleaning took a while—I’d never taken apart a Roomba before and I had to look up a few YouTube videos for instructions. Inevitably, vacuums are simple structurally and unless there is a major mechanical problem, getting them clean and running is not usually too difficult.

So, after an hour or two of cleaning, videos, and waiting for things to dry, we gave it a go. Wouldn’t you believe it, the thing worked perfectly!