The first week
Most long-term problems are created in the first seven days.
The machine arrives, you charge it, you press go, and it immediately eats a phone charger. That first run sets your expectations, and a bad one is hard to recover from.
Do these before the first run
- Choose the dock position carefully. It stays there for years. Needs a clear metre in front and half a metre either side, near a socket, out of a walkway
- Clip every visible cable. This is the single biggest cause of first-week disasters
- Do a mapping run with nothing else happening. Doors open, lights on, nobody walking around
- Be home and watching. You are learning where it struggles
The mapping run
The first full run is when the machine builds its floor plan, and a bad map causes months of odd behaviour. Open every door you want it to clean behind. Turn lights on for camera-based models. Do not move furniture midway. Let it finish and return to the dock without interruption.
Once the map is built, spend ten minutes in the app labelling rooms and drawing no-go zones. This is the step people skip, and it is what converts "clean the house" into "clean the kitchen" — which is how these machines are actually used day to day.
Check it physically fits
Clearance, thresholds and dock space, before you order.
Open the fit checker →Week one expectations
It will get stuck. It will miss corners. It will take longer than advertised. All of this is normal and mostly fixable through preparation rather than settings.
What is not normal: repeatedly failing to find the dock, refusing to cross ordinary flooring, or stopping with errors in open space. Those are worth raising with support inside the return window rather than living with.
The habit that decides everything
A robot vacuum works if a two-minute floor tidy becomes automatic — cables up, shoes away, chairs pushed in. Households that build this habit run their machine daily for years. Households that do not end up supervising it, then stop scheduling it, then stop using it.
The machine does not replace tidying. It replaces vacuuming.
Scheduling
Set it for a time when the house is empty. Daily beats weekly, because a light pass every day prevents build-up and each run is shorter. If you have pets that find it stressful, start with runs while you are home and present, then move to unattended once they ignore it.
Still choosing? Navigation quality decides whether you run it daily or leave it in a cupboard. See robot vacuums → Advertising — we may earn a commission.
Common questions
What should I do before the first robot vacuum run?
Choose the dock position carefully since it stays for years, clip every visible cable, run the initial mapping with doors open and nobody moving around, and stay home to watch where it struggles.
Why is the first mapping run important?
It builds the floor plan the machine uses from then on. A map made with doors closed or furniture moving causes months of odd routing. Label rooms and set no-go zones immediately afterwards.
How often should a robot vacuum run?
Daily usually works better than weekly. Each run is shorter because less has accumulated, and the machine handles maintenance cleaning rather than a heavy job.