October
04
How to Keep Your House Clean When You Have More Than One Pet
Two ginger cats, one dark blue carpet and an apparently endless supply of cat hair: I put ECOVACS and Dreame robot cleaners to the test, alongside Bona’s pet-specific floorcare range.
I adore my two ginger cats, but there is one thing about them that continues to mystify me: how can two relatively small animals produce quite so much hair?
I have a dark blue carpet, which in hindsight may not have been the most sensible interior design decision for someone with two ginger cats. Every single hair shows. And I mean every single one. I can vacuum the house, go to bed with everything looking immaculate and come downstairs the following morning to discover what appears to be another cat’s worth of orange fur across the floor. I genuinely don’t know where it all comes from. As a result, I literally clean every day.
Anyone with more than one pet will know that keeping your house clean isn’t really about doing one enormous clean at the weekend. Hair, litter, paw prints, food, dust and those unmistakable pet smells have an annoying habit of reappearing almost as quickly as you remove them.
So, in search of a little helping hand, I’ve been testing two serious robot cleaners – the ECOVACS DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone Bagless Robot Vacuum & Mop and the Dreame L50s Pro Ultra Robot Vacuum Cleaner and Mop, alongside the Bona Pet System™.
And with two cats providing a seemingly inexhaustible supply of material to test them on, they’ve certainly been put through their paces.
Battle of the Robots: ECOVACS vs Dreame
Robot cleaners have come an incredibly long way. They’re no longer novelty gadgets that randomly wander around the room before becoming trapped underneath a chair.
The latest generation can vacuum, mop, navigate around furniture and return to their stations to take care of much of the maintenance themselves.
For anyone with multiple pets, that can be a game changer. Rather than waiting until the carpet is visibly covered in hair, I can have a robot regularly cleaning it before the problem gets out of control.
ECOVACS DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone: My Overall Winner
My overall favourite was the ECOVACS DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone Bagless Robot Vacuum & Mop, available from ECOVACS for £799.
This is a serious piece of cleaning technology, with 22,000Pa Blast Suction, FocusJet technology and an OZMO Roller Mop. And in my house, it had one particularly formidable opponent: ginger cat hair on dark blue carpet. When your carpet is this dark, there really is nowhere for a robot vacuum to hide. If it has missed something, you can see it immediately.
The ECOVACS did a brilliant job of picking up the daily accumulation of hair. What I particularly liked was that it didn’t simply feel like a vacuum cleaner that happened to move around by itself. The level of control and functionality meant I could adapt it to the way I actually wanted my home cleaned.
You can decide how you would like it to clean, including whether you want it to vacuum and mop together or complete one job and then the other. You can even name your robot and choose its voice, which may not technically make the floor any cleaner but is strangely entertaining. The FocusJet technology helps tackle stubborn messes, while the OZMO Roller Mop takes care of the wet cleaning.
The X12 OmniCyclone is also bagless, which is particularly appealing in a home with pets. When you’re picking up this much hair regularly, not having to continually replace disposable dust bags is a genuine advantage.
At £799, it isn’t a budget appliance, but you’re getting an enormous amount of functionality.
For its combination of cleaning performance, functionality and how easy it was to incorporate into my everyday routine, the ECOVACS was my overall winner.
Dreame L50s Pro Ultra: Brilliant on Long-Pile Carpet
The Dreame L50s Pro Ultra Robot Vacuum Cleaner and Mop gave the ECOVACS some serious competition. Currently available from Dreame for £529 with a two-year warranty, it’s actually £270 cheaper than the £799 ECOVACS. And there was one area where Dreame beat my overall winner: long-pile carpet.
I have areas of longer-pile carpet where cat hair has an annoying ability to work its way down into the fibres. This is where the Dreame really impressed me. It seemed to get deeper into the pile and pull out more of that embedded ginger hair. If my entire home were covered in long-pile carpet, that performance alone might be enough to sway me towards the Dreame.
It’s also impressively hands-off, combining vacuuming and mopping with self-cleaning and auto-empty functionality, exactly the kind of automation that makes sense in a house where cleaning is a daily rather than weekly occurrence.
At £529, I think it represents excellent value for the amount of technology you’re getting.
So, the result was much closer than I expected:
My overall winner: ECOVACS DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone.
Best on my long-pile carpet: Dreame L50s Pro Ultra.
Best price: Dreame L50s Pro Ultra at £529.
For me, ECOVACS just edged ahead because I preferred the overall functionality and everyday cleaning experience. But if long-pile carpet or price is your biggest consideration, the Dreame is a very compelling alternative.
Bona Pet System™: For the Jobs the Robots Can’t Do
Of course, hair is only part of the battle when you have pets. There are paw prints, food spills, scattered litter and those inevitable pet smells, so I also tried three products from the Bona Pet System™.
The Bona Pet System™ Hard-Surface Floor Deep Cleaner was particularly impressive. Its oxy-powered formula is designed to penetrate tough, stuck-on pet messes and neutralise odours from pet accidents. I used it around my Petlibro Luma Smart Litter Box, and it was excellent at getting rid of lingering smells rather than simply covering them up. (£11.99 from Bona).
For my wooden floors, the Bona Pet System™ Wood Floor Deep Cleaner was equally easy and effective, particularly for dealing with everyday paw marks, hair and dirt. (£11.99 from Bona)
I also really liked the Bona Pet System™ Premium Pet Microfiber Mop. Lightweight and durable, it comes with two microfibre pads designed specifically for pet-mess clean-up and works alongside both Bona deep cleaners. It made those quick, everyday cleans much easier — something that’s essential when you’re living with two cats. (£25.99 from Bona),
All three were excellent and, combined with a robot taking care of the endless carpet hair, made keeping on top of the daily pet mess considerably easier.
My Biggest Tip? Clean Little and Often
Unfortunately, I’ve yet to discover a product capable of stopping two ginger cats from shedding.
Until somebody invents that, I’ve accepted that the secret to keeping my house clean is little and often rather than one enormous weekly clean.
Running a robot regularly keeps visible cat hair under control before it has the chance to become embedded in the carpet. I can then concentrate on the areas that need more attention, around the litter box, wooden and hard floors, furniture and those mysterious corners where cat hair seems to congregate overnight.
Regularly washing pet bedding and blankets makes a huge difference too. It’s easy to become obsessed with cleaning the floor while forgetting that soft furnishings are quietly collecting hair and odours. Most importantly, I’ve learnt to make cleaning as easy as possible. If something takes two minutes to grab and use, I’m far more likely to deal with a small mess immediately rather than leaving it to become tomorrow’s problem.
So, Which Would I Choose?
For everyday automated cleaning, the ECOVACS DEEBOT X12 OmniCyclone is my overall winner. It performed brilliantly on my cat hair, I loved its functionality, and the combination of powerful vacuuming and mopping makes it an impressive all-rounder.
The Dreame L50s Pro Ultra shouldn’t be overlooked, though. At £529, compared with £799 for the ECOVACS, it’s considerably cheaper and was actually the better performer on my particularly challenging long-pile carpet.
The Bona Pet System™ then takes care of those everyday jobs that still require a human, from cleaning wooden and hard floors to dealing with the area around the litter box.
Between the robots tackling the endless carpet hair and Bona dealing with my hard floors, pet mess and smells, I finally feel slightly less outnumbered by my two ginger cats.
Do I still come downstairs every morning wondering how two cats have managed to produce another carpet full of ginger hair overnight? Absolutely. But at least now I have some help dealing with it.
