Change The Way You Mop–iRobot Braava 380

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I got a great Christmas gift this year. I don’t usually ask for much, but this year I decided I needed the iRobot Braava 380 mop. My husband balked at the idea but my daughter ignored him and got it for me anyway.  🙂 Now he thinks it’s the greatest thing ever. (In his defense, he thought I wanted the $600 model, which I didn’t even know existed. I don’t think I’d spend $600 on a mop.) If you mop floors at your house, this thing will change the way you mop.Our first house was all carpet except for the kitchen. We even had carpet in the bathrooms. Who does that? It was so hard to keep carpet clean with a baby and a dog.

I told my husband my next dream house would be one with a concrete floor with a drain in the middle. That way I could just hose the whole thing down every night and it would all go down the drain.  🙂

We got a little closer to that in our second house. It only had carpet in the bedrooms, with tile in the main areas. That was much easier to keep clean, although we did have to get grippy socks for the baby. 🙂

Our house in Virginia had beautiful old hardwoods in the living, dining, and bedrooms, and we put tile in the kitchen and bathrooms. There was not one stitch of carpet in that house except for some flimsy stuff on the concrete floor of the basement. Cold winters there made me wish we had some carpet in the bedrooms.

Cleaning hardwoods and tile make you realize how much dirt and dust are on your floors and you delude yourself about how clean things are when you have carpet. 🙂 Hardwoods are especially prone to showing dust. I got in the habit of vacuuming every evening just to pick up all the dust of the day. And we don’t even wear shoes in the house!

When we moved back to Texas, the house we bought has hardwoods in the bedrooms, and marble tile everywhere else. The closets have carpet, inexplicably. But that’s the only carpet we have. So needless to say, I spend a lot of time vacuuming, sweeping, and mopping. Since I work from home I cannot justify a cleaning service, so it’s all on me.

So when I saw the commercial for the iRobot Braava 380, I knew what I wanted for Christmas! Finally, some help with cleaning the house!

This thing is SO FUN. It’s very small, and you plug it in to charge it. Some models come with a docking station, but the one I got does not. I just keep it plugged in in the corner until I need it. It comes with a little cube that you place in the room you are mopping. It uses “smart navigation” GPS to help the mop know where it has been and where it has yet to go.

The mop is only about 3 inches tall, so it can get under a LOT of stuff. I watched it mop under my china cabinet, the beds, the COUCH, and cabinets. I always run a dust mop under the beds but I don’t mop under there.

So having this little mop get under there is great. You can do a dry mop to pick up dust, or a wet mop. It comes with some microfiber cloths. I used those when I first got it, but I don’t like washing reusable cloths so I got disposable wet mopping clothsand just change it out after each room. It works on hardwoods, tile, vinyl, and laminate.

Like so many who have gone before us, we promptly named our Braava mop. I was cracking up reading Amazon reviews from so many folks who named theirs. We named our mop Limpia because “limpiar” means to clean in Spanish. But we went even a step further. We thought she (yes, we think our mop is a she) 🙂 needed some googly eyes, so we went to the craft store and bought the biggest ones we could find. We think Limpia is really cute.

If you want to do a dry sweep, just put a cleaning pad on and push the dry mop button. The Braava will move in straight lines back and forth. I don’t use the dry sweep feature much, as I prefer to vacuum. If you want to do a wet mop, put a cleaning pad on, fill the reservoir with water and/or a mild cleaning solution, and push the wet mop button.

The mop plays a little song, and off it goes in a back and forth motion. It plays a few notes when it runs out of cleaning solution, and when it’s done mopping the room it plays the four notes at the beginning of Beethoven’s 5th. 🙂 Since this model doesn’t have a docking station, it just returns to its starting position when it is done mopping.

This is helpful because if I leave the room and come back later, I can tell whether it’s out of cleaning solution or done mopping based on where the mop is. If it is under the bed but not moving, I know it is out of cleaning solution.

I have to say I don’t get the mopping pattern the mop uses, as it seems to not have a rhyme or reason. But it knows when it bumps into an obstacle or a rug, and it changes directions when that happens. There is a short video on the Amazon product page that shows you how it works. It does take the mop longer to mop a room than it would take me doing it by hand, but the beauty of it is that it mops while I move on to other rooms, so I don’t care how long it takes.

I usually go grab a bite out to eat in the evening after I clean my house, so I set the mop up to mop the kitchen while I’m gone. I block off the entrances to the kitchen from other rooms so the mop will stay in the kitchen and not wander off to remop the living or dining room. When I come back from getting a bite to eat, I love walking in the door seeing Limpia sitting right where I started her out, and my kitchen floor is clean.

So, is the mop fast? No. But it takes over in the room I just cleaned so that I can move on. So I don’t really care that it takes longer than it would take me to mop the room myself.

Does it do a good job mopping? Yes! I like that my floors are squeaky when it finishes mopping.

Is it noisy? Not at all. The only time you will hear anything is when it plays the little music to let you know it is out of cleaning liquid or when it has finished mopping a room.

How much does it cost? The model I have is $249 or less on Amazon. It is also available through other retailers, like Bed Bath and Beyond.

If you have hard surfaces in your home that require mopping, I would encourage you to give the iRobot Braava 380 a try. It will change the way you mop. I’d love to know what you think if you get one. Or if you already have one, let me know if you like it in the comment section!

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