Re: Things purchased that were truly useful
You can have that "nary any housework" experience. Its called a "housecleaning service". I used to have them prior to ER until I realized that keeping them not only was an unnecessary luxury, it was points towards a lazy ass situation regarding myself...
Read "speed cleaning" or do what I do when I'm feeling especially miserly...pull it up on amazon and use their "look inside this book", read the index, do a search on the topics that you find interesting, and they let you read four pages from there on. Then search a unique "topic" from the last (fourth) allowed page and read four more.
The roomba comes with a "virtual wall'...an emitter that sends an infrared signal the roomba interprets as a "wall"... some roomba models come with more than one, you can buy more than one, or you can put a heavy box (like I do) blocking enough of a doorway or room division to make the roomba "skirt past". I do the kitchen, bathrooms, the entry way, and the "under-bed" domain in this manner. Sometimes it escapes and picks up some dog hair off the main carpet. Frequently it finds some stringy stuff to gobble up and get caught on. Once I left the sliding door open and it walked out onto the rear deck on my old McMansion and consumed about 30 leaves, sticks and other sundry "rear deck" items before my dad said "you know your vacuum toy is out on the deck eating stuff?".
I did fix the underbed "problem" when I took the reciprocating saw to the bed legs and shortened my over-high bed to what is basically a platform bed. My oldest dog was having some trouble jumping up that high. I no longer, therefore, have an "under-bed". This has resulted in several unintended consequences. My boy dog has discovered that he can "lick face" with little effort by walking over to my side at 6am. The cats are more likely to jump up onto the bed since they can preview the dog situation prior to committing themselves. Hilarity often ensues. The bed is now somewhat an extension of the floor for dog and cat chasing parties, in which I frequently participate, which is why I have a broken toe and a currently partially disabled knee. Oh yeah, and I dont have to send the roomba under there anymore, because there's no 'there' there.
But I digress. As usual.