The most annoying part of vacuuming is the prep work. If you want to avoid making thousands of little tiny passes with an awkward push vacuum, you have to invest a significant amount of time picking up and putting away toys, cleaning up clothes, and moving furniture. Unfortunately, many robot vacuums do not offer significant improvements in this regard. Their instruction manuals warn you to tidy up beforehand if you don’t want the botvac to get stuck.

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