Matt Gurney: This year, I'm grateful for my army of dirt cheap robots
So long as they stay out of the damned fireplace.
Every year at Christmas time, The Line runs a series of articles about things we should be thankful for — just like we’re thankful for you. Happy holidays from your friends at The Line.
By: Matt Gurney
As I sit down to write this column, my own humble contribution to this year's gratitude series, there is a horrible, loud noise in my office. Something that combines the least-appealing parts of a buzz and a shriek. And I keep having my feet smacked. Repeatedly. Again and again.
And I'm so grateful. Because the noise and the feet smacking? It's my robot vacuum. It's zooming around my office as I type this. And I'm so grateful for it, and all the other little tools of modern life that are giving me back some of what I most desperately need: time and energy.
I really went back and forth on what to choose as my topic for this series. I really did. There were some big picture things in my life this year that, in any objective reckoning, should take the top of the podium. My family and I have health and prosperity and security and happiness and all those wonderful things. The most important things. But the “problem,” if I can call it that, is that those things make for boring columns. Honestly. They just do. If The Line specialized in telling you all every day that things were going great, you probably wouldn't be reading this. We get it.
So then I thought about other things I could write about. Both of my kids are in sports programs, of varying intensity, and I am constantly amazed by the enormous effort and work that the volunteers (mostly but not all parents) put into making these programs run. I really am humbled and so grateful. And I thought long and hard about writing about that ... but, eh, is that too cliched? Too schmaltzy? I know it's Christmas, but still.
The one I really thought long and hard about was writing about nurses. Nurses are the best. They really are. Particularly the scary, brassy ones. A few months ago, despite my having said above that my family has its health, we had a wee bit of a bumpy patch. I'm pleased to say it was happily resolved and that everyone is now fine, but there were a lousy few weeks, and an especially lousy few hours, when medical complications collided with the depressing reality of a health-care system that's been run ragged. I was in a hospital, waiting for info during a few hours that looked and felt pretty bleak, and it was a nurse there who saw me, somehow intuited what was going on, and made it her personal mission to cut through the layers of bullshit hospital bureaucracy and bizarrely siloed information and actually get me some answers. She let me listen in on speaker phone as she absolutely steamrolled a doctor who was in urgent need of just such a manhandling. I certainly felt better for the experience and I have a hunch that she did, too.
So that was the runner-up for my idea here. The only reason I didn't go with it is because, to be honest, that's about all I can say about it. She was incredible. She was wonderful. She made an awful day slightly better, and that alone was a miracle. And if I had thought to get her name amid the weirdness of that day, I'd make a point of thanking her directly. But I didn't, and the hospital won't share it, so I just have to hope it somehow finds its way from here to her.
It's a nice story and I'm glad to offer it, but it's not much to hold up a whole column, you know? So what could?
And that's when I gave up. I just kept coming back to the damned robots.
Time is the most precious thing. That that is a cliche does not make it unworthy of repetition. Because it really is, and my God, this year, I had so little of it. My wife and I have long-since divided up household responsibilities, and one of mine is keeping the house tidy. I'm not talking deep cleaning. We have someone take care of that. But just the day-to-day tidying that is necessary when you live with two kids and a dog who delights in throwing pillows onto the floor for no apparent reason.
Oh, and that dog? He sheds. A lot. And most of our floors are quite dark. So it shows.
One day, a few months ago, I was frantically sweeping the house, getting all the fur and various other household debris into little piles that I'd vacuum up. My phone was ringing with urgent work calls. I had an inbox full of unanswered emails, all of which needed urgent attention. The kids needed snacks. I was already running late for an event. And this was, alas, a pretty typical day.
So yeah. I was sweeping and considering going back in time to try and prevent my own birth when my eyes drifted over to the ancient robot vacuum cleaner we spent a fortune on a long time ago — maybe a decade? The battery in it had long since died and I should have thrown it out years ago. It was literally just a floor-based dust platform at this point, and it only survived because it was in an out-of-the-way corner that was basically out of sight and out of mind, and had been for years.
And as my gaze settled on it, I thought to myself ... I wonder if they sell replacement batteries? And how much they cost?
Well! Let me tell you, dear reader. They do indeed sell replacement batteries. And they cost practically nothing. I ordered one online. It has a much higher capacity than the original battery the vacuum had come with. Like double, at least, the charge. The kit also game with a few little tools that let me give my long neglected robot a bit of a tuneup. It cost me like $30? I figured it was worth it. So I gave the robot a wipe-down and some little fixes and popped in the new battery. I left it overnight to charge and in the morning, I figured, well, here goes nothing. And I turned it on.
And let me tell you, Line readers, that thing went to work like it hadn't missed a day. In doing so, it scared the absolute living shit out of the dog, who took refuge atop a couch and began howling at it. The robot didn't care. It just kept vacuuming and vacuuming and vacuuming. The house wasn't filthy, I want you all to know. It was being regularly swept and vacuumed. But that little robotic bugger got under furniture that's hard to move. It slid under chairs and tables. And it did it all with gusto. It was genuinely shocking for me to open up the little collection bin it sucks all the debris into and realize how much stuff it had found, even though the house was regularly swept and vacuumed and looked, to the eye, to be fairly clean.
I got into a routine of moving the bugger up and down the stairs with me, letting it loose on a different floor of the house every day. And it would just chirp a happy little tune at me and get to work. Sometimes it would get stuck and beep a distress call at me. Sometimes, especially when it was on a floor without its charging station, it would die and play a mournful tune before powering off. But my God, was it ever saving me time. And it was also saving me stress: it was one item I could drop from a to-do list that is, on any given day, basically insane and unmanageable.
And I have to confess to you all how much of a relief it was to just have one fewer thing to do. It was a relief to an extent that surprised me and would probably sound ridiculous if I tried to explain it. But I found myself thinking on some particularly hectic days, well, hey, at least I don't need to sweep and vacuum. And that weirdly ... worked? A lot? It became almost a little mantra. "I don't have to sweep and vacuum."
I'll make a confession now: I found the entire process so delightful that I decided to make it even easier. I went online and discovered that in the years since I bought the original robot vacuum, the prices these things sell for has absolutely cratered. I don't recall how much the first one cost, but I seem to remember it was about a thousand bucks. You can find comparable models today for a fifth of that, or a 10th, if you wait for a decent sale. And that's what I did. I kept my eye on my Amazon app until I saw a kickass special offer on a matching pair of newer, sleeker robots. The combined cost was like $200?
How could I resist? I now have a little army of robots that keeps my house tidy for me.
They aren't perfect. The older one, in particular, tends to get stuck in weird places. The newer ones are much "smarter" and better at escaping traps (and avoiding stairs!), but they're also smaller and require more frequent emptying. And one day in the fall, as a bunch of people who called me that day got to discover as I recounted the event with extreme profanity, one of the little guys forced its way through the mesh gate into my fireplace and spent an hour or so spreading ash around the living room. That was ... quite the day.
But overall, I love the little bastards. The older one has gone into the basement, where it's hard at work right now (fewer things for it to get stuck in down there). The two new ones hold dominion on our second floor and on the main floor, where one of my son's old hockey sticks, cut down to the appropriate length, now provides a barrier-of-last-resort to keep the robot out of the fireplace. Every day or two, I set them all to work and then just listen in to the sounds of them relentlessly seeing to their task and then, one by one, returning to their charging docks to plug themselves in and play their little triumphant tunes.
I could try and make this column bigger than it is. I could make it about AI, or automation, or the value of doing little jobs well. And the vacuums aren’t the only time saver, of course. There are all kinds of little tools, new and old, that make modern life manageable.
But I'll let the reader infer all of that into the above. Honestly, I'm just glad that this year, I got to knock one item off my daily to-do list by spending a tiny bit of money to obtain a little army of robots who unfailingly and uncomplainingly make my house a nicer place to live in. They're the hardest workers in the joint, and, after about a month, my dog finally stopped howling at them, in favour of just sighing heavily, jumping atop his favourite chair, and watching them warily as they do their wonderful, so desperately appreciated work.
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