rosie the roomba • Mid Century Mom

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When our house was built in the mid/late fifties, it was really cutting edge. It has gorgeous bright blue/green St. Charles kitchen cabinets (which I will be featuring in a post soon!) with every little built-in convenience factor you could want. We hear stories all the time about how it had the first microwave and first light dimmers in our home town. It actually has this old master-control thing in the master bedroom that looks like it may have let the owner control the electrical to the whole house while sitting in bed?! (still unsure about that thing– but photo below!)

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It was trendy in a Mid-Century way that has actually proven to be timeless. And the fact that we have decked it out with a talking alarm system (“front.door.” “system. armed.” it reminds us), our Alexa who controls our lights on smart bulbs, and now our robot vacuum…all just seems to work.

Here are some articles from one of my favorite sites, Apartment Therapy, showcasing some mid century innovation. And yes, that does look like an old-school Roomba!

The Mad Men Era Roomba

Home Intercom System History

My grandparent’s house had one of those intercoms!

So, our Roomba (who we named Rosie to pay homage to the Mid-Century cartoon The Jetsons) fits right in and does an amazing job. I love having this thing!

My thoughts on Rosie:

Don’t get one if you don’t pick up often. She will eat phone chargers, shoe laces, leggos, you name it. Luckily I seem to become more and more of a neat freak with age which means I don’t usually have problems with this. We DID have an awful experience where our Roomba ran over a spider glue trap, but since then no issues.

Don’t get one if you think it will replace your vacuum (still completely obsessed with my Shark Navigator Liftaway vacuum cleaner). We run our Roomba M-F at 9am. This has allowed me to go down from vacuuming 2x a week (we have a lot of carpet, a dog, and two kids) to about every 10 days. This is a huge break for me, but it definitely still needs to happen.

Take care of your Roomba. My three year old will tell you our family is “Mommy and Daddy and Tom and Boo and Rosie.” He has reallllllly taken a liking to her. So, we treat her well! Empty often, try to eliminate places where she gets stuck, clean out brushes, remove my crazy amounts of hair from it, etc.

Now—any thoughts on what this baby was capable of in the 1960’s?!