After another couple months of use, I too am finding that the Scooba does best with a smaller defined area. I'm not very good at dimensions, but I'd say you could let it loose in a 12 x 12 room and it would give it a pretty good cleaning before running out of juice. So I would recommend running it a room at a time, or a smaller defined space at a time. The Roomba runs much longer than the Scooba before its power runs out, and it moves a lot faster, so it can cover a lot more space than the Scooba can. Scooba is great on hardwood and tile floors, but NOT on laminate floors like Pergo. (I'm thinking about running it on my saltillo tile in the back yard! I'll probably have to stay with it to make sure it doesn't fall off into the lawn.) There is no bleach in the solution. Here are the ingredients listed on the label: nonionic surfactant, chelating agent, fragrance. The solution label also has a note that says: Not recommended for use on visibly worn, unsealed, unfinished, waxed, or oiled wood floors. One more note after some hard use: I dropped the Scooba unit about two feet into my sink a few weeks ago. It fell pretty hard, as the unit is heavy. It wouldn't run after that, and I was devastated. Then I realized that the front wheel had fallen off into the sink when I dropped it. I just popped the wheel back on, and it has run pefectly ever since. Both my Roomba and Scooba units have had heavy use for several months now (Roomba going on six months), and though my Roomba is looking a little worse for the wear, they are both running just fine.

Dianalo, you could have been describing me when you were talking about your clean floors. Sometimes I feel like I should look into getting some therapy. I don't think we are normal. Anyway, I have been very happy with my Electrolux Eurorapido cordless rechargable broom. I keep it plugged and in my den closet for constant access. It's solid quality and picks up everything, including pet hair. I can even use it on the carpet on stairs. But I am anxious to hear about your experience with the roomba. My motto is that you can never have too many vacuums!

The most inexpensive, flexible, and sturdy way I have found to store my mops brooms and dustpans is this: Many brooms, mops and dustpans have some kind of hole going through the end of the handle. Take a thick loop of ribbon and tie it through the hole. Arrange command hooks on a wall at whatever height, distance, or layout you want, and hang the mops and brooms on one hook each. The sturdy command hooks can certainly hold the weight. It is inexpensive and a major plus for someone like me who cannot use a drill to save her life. I live for stick-on fixes. This also allows you to stash anywhere - at the top of a stairwell, behind a fridge, inside a closet with the most flexible configuration possible.

We've done both the mesh files (6 years?) and the cubbies (past 2 years). I vote cubbies. They're more versatile, more cleanable, more clean OUT - able, and they do look nicer, even behind doors. The mesh were never big enough - especially around Christmas. If you go with shallow ones, the taller papers may droop over, and if you go with deeper ones, little scraps of paper (babysitter's phone number, plumber's business card) get lost in the bottom. Any more than 1" thickness gets unmanageable, but there are times you can't get to the pile when it needs to be thinned out. Cubbies are awesome. You can build a stack of paper 4-5" high if you need to (say, if you're collecting tile samples, paint chips, multi-page quotes for major renos). You can keep non-mail items like the spare keys, chapstick, pens, or half-used seed packets (yes, that's what's in one of my cubbies right now), and they don't get lost in the bottom of the folder. My recommendation is unequivocally cubbies. Give serious thought to how many you need. We are a family of 3, and we have 5 cubbies: one for each person, one for household stuff, and one for "junk" (business cards, keys, pens, the aforementioned seed packets). One more may have been a good idea, but we bought an Ikea wine cubby, which only has 5 openings. You may want an extra cubby for longer-term storage of kids papers (until you can sort/save properly), or for catalogs you actually want to keep. Our recycling is just below our cubbies, so junk mail never even makes it to a counter. Also - if you have space, opt for 10-12" wide. Those large mailers are much bigger than a standard piece of paper, and the only thing I dislike about our tiny cubbies is that large items have to be curved to fit. I considered our mesh folders to be a great system, even though occasionally a counter pile would start growing. I am continually amazed at how much better the cubby system is working for us. I wish I had done cubbies in the last house.