Not something I say to myself (or anyone) very often. Friends, I “fixed” my Rooomba yesterday.

The last time I had run her, she errored out at the end of her run. There was a link to instructions about how to fix her (and I had actually followed them before) but I didn’t feel like doing it right then. I had GREAT TREPIDATION about embarking on that prodject, to tell you the truth. By the time I got back to it, the link to the instructions had evaporated. Bad user interface design (UX) although a lot of Rooomba app UX is actually pretty okay.

Anyway, what did I do? I procrastinated, of course. Like, nobody is coming over this weekend, etc. etc. Like, who cares? Actually *I* care but I let inertia take me over.

Yesterday, I opened the Rooomba app. The error had cleared and everything looked all right. So I ran Rooomba. She was okay but I could tell she was struggling because she emptied her bin umpteen bazillion times. Okay. I have done this once before. Maybe I can do it again even without the instructions. And so I did. Non-mechanical meeeee. I knew that there were parts to take off and clean and eventually I figgered out how to do it without breaking anything.

The deal is the more recent Roooombas empty their own bins but occasionally stuff builds up inside the works and they need help getting it out. My poor Rooomba has to deal with my long(ish) hair, which gets wound around the ends of the rollers (not a technical term and don’t ask). I pulled those wrapped coils of baggy old bag hair off the ends of the rollers, dumped out some other bits of detritus, and put her back on her charging station, hoping I hadn’t mucked something up.

Today? She started up without a problem. No error messages. She cleaned her entire “map” and only emptied her bin once.

So a bit of mechanical success (I have also fixed my garbage disposal via YouTube videos). I don’t think I will try to do car or warshing musheen repairs any time soon.

The pic is outhouses at Tahquamenon Falls State Park. Don’t you love their “hats”?

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 15th, 2026 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.