For my birthday, I bought myself a Roomba. A real Roomba.
Two years ago I had bought a knock-off. A DeeBot, for less than $200. I had read all the reviews, and it's still Amazon's top pick. When it was new it ran for about an hour and a half. It went all over the place in a random fashion, and the house always looked pretty good. I scheduled it to run once a day, and it did that without any problems.
Well. None of these devices like getting stuck, or running over cords, and then don't like level changes. There's a drop down between the studio and the rest of the house, and although the Deebot could get INTO the studio, it couldn't get OUT, or back to its charging station. I didn't want it sucking up stray bits of fabric on the floor, or blowing things off the design wall, so I blocked off the studio the best way I knew how - with a roll of wrapping paper jammed in front of the door. I knew it was there, but visitors often tripped over it.
And it pushed Millie's food bowls all over the place. I tried putting her bowls in a quarter sheet pan, but that didn't stop the Deebot from running up over the edge and getting stuck. Eventually I put the food dishes in the office and blocked that room with a roll of wrapping paper on the floor too.
Over time, the Deebot ran less and less, and this spring it dropped down to 45 minutes a run, which wasn't enough to get the whole house clean on one charge. By June it was running even less than that.
So I did some research. I could get a Roomba that would map the house as it vacuumed. It would only run for 45 minutes, but when the battery ran down, it would go charge itself and then finish the job. It would also show me a map of what it cleaned, which I thought was pretty neat. Of course, it was 3 times the cost of the DeeBot, but the Deebot wasn't getting the job done.
I was able to get a special price on the Roomba, so I ordered it, and when it came in I set it up and let it go. It's a bit taller and slightly noisier than the Deebot, and when it cleans, it is NOT random. It goes back and forth in straight lines, covering every place it can reach.
The Roomba came with one of these Virtual Wall Barriers. I put it near the entrance to the studio, and it emits an invisible barrier the Roomba won't cross. So no more wrapping paper. I've ordered another one to keep it away from the front of the litter box (long story, don't ask. It's a Millie thing.)
And about Millie's food bowls...
The Roomba can't get on top of this, so it just goes around it.
So how does it CLEAN?
I set the thing to start after I leave for work so I don't have to be around when it vacuums. I get an alert every day after the Roomba has finished a job - and it does indeed map my house. It takes 2-1/2 hours to do the whole thing, and WOW, does it clean. I can feel the difference when I walk around barefoot in the kitchen, and even on the carpets. The Deebot used to push onion skins around instead of picking them up (it has only one brush underneath), but the Roomba sucks them right up (it has two brushes that push things to the middle.)
I've set up the Deebot in the studio, and I'll run it when I need it, so it will all work very well.
Seriously, I tell folks I have these and they ask, "Do those things really work?" Heck yes, they work. And then they say, "Oh but they are so expensive." Well, not really. (How much is your time worth? $20 an hour? If it takes you an hour to vacuum your house every week, a Deebot will pay for itself in 10 weeks....) Think about it. I haven't had to vacuum my house in almost two years. The house always looks good and - I - don't have to do any work, and that, folks, is a WIN!
PS, if you've read this far, please read the comments too.
But when I looked more closely at this one, I realized the shelves were full of old music CD's.
So I cleared the bookshelf and everything on it, and piled the CD's in a big bin.
Then I dusted and washed the bookshelf, adjusted the shelves...
and moved the little bins over.
All the mugs that had stored things like pens, tools, notepads and other
stuff were dusty, so I put them all in the dishwasher and ran it. This is the stuff that was in the cups and on the shelves. 
Then I consolidated all my extra business cards and notebooks, and arranged things on the bottom shelf. Those things were mostly on the bottom shelf before I cleaned it off.
After the dishwasher had finished its cycle (btw, the best piece of cleaning advice I ever saw is this: If it fits, put it in the dishwasher) I put all the pins, pushpins, measuring tapes, lint cleaners, pencils, pens, tools and other doodads back in their places. It all looked great, until I looked over at the other bookshelf.
