Welcome, Rosie!

The mister and I have a new housemate. We call her Rosie, the name given by her former owner, a friend who recently moved to a new home and couldn’t justify bringing her along.  We’ve been getting to know her for two months now, but we kept it on the down low, in case things didn’t work out. It would be tricky enough to admit to her first human that we weren’t the right fit, let alone absorb sideways glances from family and friends. Tut-tut, people can be so foolish, we would never, and all that.

Well, the trial period is over. Rosie is a keeper, so it’s time we let the cat out of the bag. Not literally, of course, perish the thought. Though she spends most of her time in the living room, we gave her full run of the house on day one. That’s how we roll.

She mostly keeps to herself but obviously aims to please. She’s adorably unpredictable. The way she makes her way around is more pinball than bowling. Once in a while, she’ll come toward us in a straight shot, but more often than not, she’s bouncing off of things, circling the furniture, crisscrossing from one side of a room to the other, or zooming down the hall.

Photo by Ben Kim on Unsplash

It’s quirky and amusing. My hunch is she’s got more of a plan than might be immediately apparent. It’s not her fault we don’t know how to read her.

Not unlike Rosie, it seems I wandered off the mark a bit. In my excitement to introduce her to you, I left out a critical detail: Rosie is not an animal. She’s a robovac, formally robot vacuum.

Seriously. A vacuum cleaner. I trust you’re laughing right now. There’s a point to all this that probably isn’t what you’re expecting. Which, actually, is part of the point. For now, you only need to know that Rosie is more than meets the eye.

The idea of buying such a device had crossed our minds on multiple occasions, but it seemed unnecessary. Our existing canister-style appliance is functional, if worse for wear, the hose apt to twist itself into suck-suppressing loops, various components requiring extra support, a rubber band here, some duct tape there, like shapewear for vacuums. Still, not so far gone as to be put out to pasture, especially when pasture is a euphemism for the landfill. Anyway, Rosie needed a home. Who were we to say no?

Eight weeks later, and I’m here to affirm: We think she’s terrific. She’s quiet and reliable. Anything she does is that much less for us to do. And, she does a lot!

She’s also imperfect and requires getting used to. Corners are not her strong suit. She works best if she’s only given access to small areas, and she’s more efficient when obvious obstructions are removed. We still bring out the old guard tools, but not every time.

Some robovacs can do more tricks than Rosie, like mapping, mopping, self-emptying, and obstacle avoidance. The horror stories you’ve heard about these things running over pet poo are true. The makers have taken up the challenge, and with the help of AI, they’re introducing newer, smarter models.

In the interest of coming completely clean, I have to admit that in the amount of time we’ve spent monitoring Rosie’s work, we could have deep cleaned an entire room by hand. Sure, there’s been an element of new gizmo novelty in play—us getting to know her work style, her not giving a damn about ours. But, there has also been a compulsive level of second-guessing that we did not anticipate.

Photo by Maria Lysenko on Unsplash

Remember when you left your kids’ dirty socks under the kitchen table for a month, because you were trying to teach personal responsibility? I don’t. Not only was I unwilling to die on that hill, I never even climbed it. Socks on the floor for more than a day drove me nuts, and my kids couldn’t have cared less.

It’s like that with Rosie. The last time she was whirring around, I noticed a grain of desiccated rice she’d missed, a remnant from some bygone Chinese take-out. I plucked it up and tossed it directly in her path. Her little brushes flicked it away, so I tried a second time, and a third, willing her to scoop it up, wondering how this could be so hard. Realizing, at last, how cuckoo bananas this was, I tossed the rice out the back door.

Which brings me, as promised, to the deeper meaning of all this. Have you spotted it yourself yet? You hadn’t given up hope, I hope.

Rosie is a metaphor for life.

No, I’m not suggesting that everything sucks, though sometimes it absolutely does. There isn’t a single moment of any day that doesn’t bring someone to their knees with the bitterness of anger, the misery of shame, the agony of loss, the weariness of defeat. Even so, if it’s a mess we’re expecting, a mess is what we’re going to find. The more time we spend picking at what didn’t go to suit us, the greater chance we have of overlooking broad swaths of good and gratifying.

Life doesn’t travel in straight lines. She is capricious and often leaves debris behind as she proceeds. Sometimes, we need to make her process easier by dialing back on what we’re asking her to do in the moment, giving her more specific areas of focus, or moving known impediments aside. Other times, we just have to step away from the micromanagement, relinquish control, and trust that, despite all our uncertainty, she’ll do the job well.

Rosie is a keeper.

~Elizabeth