Meet Jeeves, our fabulous new helper.

As far as we can tell, he gets along well with the other help, primarily the dishwasher and washing machine, who remain unnamed. Quite frankly they don’t have the personality that Jeeves does.

Much to my disappointment, we are unable to assign a male British voice to our squat little robot; all the voices are female. I settled on the Australian accent after deciding that the British lady sounded just a titch whiny.

To start out with, Jeeves took a little walking tour around our main floor, sauntering casually here and there, mapping all the details. This took less than 15 minutes. We did our own work on the map, naming rooms, setting boundaries, and then set Jeeves out on its maiden voyage.

It informed us cheerily of the work ahead: “Starting cleaning.” I followed it around for a while, completely fascinated and a little awestruck. When Jeeves encountered a few entry mats on a tiled floor, it switched from sweeping and mopping to vacuuming. Between jobs, it would say “returning to dock,” where it would settle in and do some housecleaning. Cleaning out its own dustbin creates a wonderful flourish of noise. If it’s been doing some mopping, it goes back to the base and tells us “Cleaning mop heads,” so we don’t have to worry that it’s just slacking off instead of working.

When I saw Jeeves industriously working on cleaning two of our dirtiest entry mats and then sweeping and mopping around them, I was so moved, I nearly wept.

We had it do the whole main floor that first afternoon. I reassured poor Jeeves that this was the hardest day of cleaning it would have, since normally we would not be cleaning every room at the same time or even daily. I wanted to get a feel for how it would clean each room, and the work involved in preparing each room. Yes, there’s still actual work involved in using a robot vacuum. Things have to be taken off the floor and put back after it’s done.

By the time Jeeves had done all the rooms, its battery was down to 17%. It went wearily back to its base and said, “Charging.” You take all the time you need to charge up, little guy.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

(Our old vacuum is upstairs sulking, by the way.)

This post will return to base and delete itself in the morning.