Creating a Robot Vacuum Cleaning Schedule: A Complete Guide to Automated Cleanliness

Robot vacuums are pretty cool – they learn your home’s layout, clean your floors, park themselves at their charging station, and more.

One thing they can’t do (yet) is read our minds. Unfortunately, that means you’ll need to manually create a cleaning schedule for your robot vacuum that works best for your needs and schedule.

Below, we’ll explore how to make a cleaning schedule for a robot vacuum that works for your home.

Step 1: Understanding Your Cleaning Needs

Before you can set up a cleaning schedule, you first need to know exactly what your vacuuming needs are. Without this information, your cleaning schedule will be more of a hinderance than a help.

Size and Layout

The size and layout of your home is one of the key considerations you’ll need to factor in to your decision-making. Do you have multiple floors? What types of obstacles will the robot vacuum encounter on its journey? How much floor space is there? Answering these types of questions can help you figure out how long it will take your robot vacuum to clean your home.

Type of Flooring

Though often overlooked, the type of flooring that dominates your home will have a significant influence over your cleaning schedule. Carpets trap much more dirt and dust compared to hard floors, so they’ll need more regular maintenance to stay healthy.

On the flip side, hard floors like hardwood or tile might not require as much attention, so the schedule could be less frequent. This is especially true if you already sweep up messes like tracked-in dirt or spilled cheerios.

Foot Traffic and Occupancy

Though dust accumulates on surfaces regardless of human occupancy, the number of people that live in your home will certainly have an effect on the amount of dirt your robot vacuum will be battling.

The presence of kids and pets will drastically increase how often your floors need to be cleaned, especially during the warmer months when they’re in and out of the house (endlessly) throughout the day.

Allergies and Sensitivities

If anyone in the home has allergies to things like mold or dust, you may want to schedule your robot vacuum cleanings more often to limit the presence of allergens in your space as much as possible.

Step 2: Creating a Schedule

Once you’ve analyzed your home’s characteristics to determine what your optimal cleaning schedule looks like, it’s time to set it up the schedule with your robot vacuum. Here’s how:

• Download the app: The first step is to download the accompanying app for your brand of robot vacuum. Usually, you’ll need to make an account to log in and access its features.
• Navigate to the scheduling feature: Next, head over to the scheduling section of the app. When you open it, there will be a few different scheduling options to adjust.
• Set the frequency: First, you need to schedule how often you want your robot vacuum to clean. If you want, this could be every day, twice a week, once a week, or any other designation that you choose.
• Choose the time: Pick a time when the robot vacuum will cause the least disruption to your daily routine. As an example, if you’re at work during the day, set the robot vacuum to clean in the morning or late afternoon so it’s not a distraction or annoyance when you’re home. The schedule is only useful if it doesn’t interfere with the rest of your life – the robot is there to work with you, not against you.
• Save the schedule: Once you’ve input the desired frequency and time, hit save to schedule it in the app. The vacuum will now follow this timetable and clean your home as programmed.

Adjusting the Schedule

Over time, you may find that your original cleaning schedule for your robot vacuum just isn’t working anymore. For example, if you’ve added a puppy to the home, your schedule may be too lax to keep up with the new messes. If your teenager has moved out to college, you may not need cleanings as often. If your in-laws are coming for a surprise visit, you may need to schedule an emergency clean. If your work schedule changes, you may need to pick a time that’s more convenient.

No matter your situation, you’re able to easily adjust your schedule to match your evolving requirements by adjusting the settings in the scheduling tool in your robot vacuum app.

Step 3: Personalizing Cleaning Modes and Settings

Your cleaning needs are as unique as your home, so your robot vacuum should be personalized for your specific goals and challenges. Of course, every brand of robot vacuum is different, so you may only have access to one or some of these adjustable options. Here’s a quick look at how robot vacuums can be customized.

Suction Power: Most robot vacuums will have adjustable section levels that to your floor type and amount of dirt. For example, hardwood floors can be cleaned with a lower level of suction since the dirt is just resting on top. For carpets, you’ll probably need a higher level of suction since the dirt is trapped in the fibres of the carpet and will be a bit more stubborn to clean. Using higher suction power also reduces the time it takes to finish cleaning, which can be useful in emergency cleaning scenarios.

Edge Cleaning: Robot vacuums are intuitively designed to clean every part of your floors, and that includes edges. The bristles underneath the vacuum extend beyond the perimeter of the robot so it can reach every crevice. Some robot vacuums, like the Roomba, have an edge cleaning mode that you can use to target these hard-to-reach areas: corners, furniture legs, and the edges of walls can all be thoroughly cleaned with edge cleaning mode enabled.

Spot Cleaning: Most robot vacuums also come with a spot cleaning option. Usually, your robot vacuum will use a circular, spiral pattern to intensely focus on one spot of your floor. It will slowly widen the circles to cover as much area as you need it to, so it excels at spot cleaning big and small messes.

Carpet Boost: A carpet boost setting can be really helpful for floors that feature high-pile carpets. A carpet boost adds additional suction power so the vacuum can pull dirt from deep within the carpet fibres. You will notice a deeper clean in less time with this feature enabled.

Putting it All Together

Creating a cleaning schedule for a robot vacuum not only ensures that the house stays clean but reduces your mental load by giving you one less thing to remember. By following these steps and regularly adjusting the schedule as needed, you will enjoy a consistently clean home with minimal effort.