I hate vacuuming. Everything about it: the monotony, having to get into nooks and crannies, remembering to empty the cleaner regularly. Over the years I've outsourced much of it to robot cleaners, with the likes of Roomba and Dyson offering genuine alternatives to full-size cleaners – unless you have stairs. The one thing they could never do? Empty themselves. Usually it's a task that you remember to do when the vacuum is leaving a crunchy breadcrumb trail behind it. But now Roomba's latest cleaner has solved that problem, with a self-cleaning base for its new Roomba i7+ that hoovers the dust and dirt out of the bin as the cleaner docks. It costs extra, but it's one less task to manage it, which makes it worth the cost, at least in my book.

roomba.com