It's no secret that upholstered furniture commonly harbors musty odors. Those same soft, cushioned features that make pieces comfortable are exactly what trap and hold onto dust, dirt, spills, and stains.

Regular deep-cleaning is essential, but, in between, a spritz of upholstery spray, such as the MRS. MEYER'S CLEAN DAY Fabric Freshener, available at Amazon, works to combat odors without simply covering them.

It's a quick and easy way to eliminate odors from upholstery ahead of fall, and the all-natural formula means there's no worry of bleaching and damage.

There are many ways to remove odors from upholstery, but none are as simple as using a spray. Both quick and effortless, it banishes bad odors and leaves your favorite fabrics fresh.

While you can make your own fabric spray, the MRS. MEYER'S CLEAN DAY Fabric Freshener, which harnesses the all-natural power of essential oils, is an even more low-effort solution. And, with a long-lasting, garden-inspired scent, it's also the perfect way to add a personalized scent to your upholstery.

'The best fabric freshener,' enthuses one five-star reviewer. 'I will always order this in multiples. The scent lasts, and it’s so refreshing. I use this on clothes right out of the dryer, or when I put clothes away, I keep a second on a shelf to refresh the closet. I also use this on the insides of shoes, sheets, [and] upholstery. This makes everything smell so good.'

Lexi also loves the 'fresh linen scent,' which features notes of sandalwood, morning air, nectarine, and tonka, and the lasting power of this particular spray. 'Such a clean, fresh scent,' they say. 'I spray this on my living room set and curtains, and it definitely lasts without being overwhelming. I use it roughly once a week on Sundays, and I swear the scent lasts and my home smells like fresh linen.'

As the spray is made solely with thoughtfully chosen ingredients, it's also free of any harmful bleach, cyclodextrin, dyes, parabens, and formaldehyde. Meanwhile, the FreshBloom Scent Technology works to slowly release the fragrance over time, lingering for up to a week and keeping your fabrics fresher for longer.

Upholstered pieces are notoriously some of the hardest home decor to clean, but this spray won't stick, stain, or ruin.

More to Shop

You don't have to fake a clean living room. These cleaning essentials banish bad odors and fragrance the space ahead of fall.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Don't forget to keep in mind the cleaning methods you should never use on a fabric couch.

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After a sunny season spent hosting al fresco, patios are often left looking more than a little worse for wear come fall. It's no surprise; months of sustained use with little rain can lead to stains, while warm weather only encourages pollen build-up and rapid weed growth.

Many solutions for cleaning your patio, however, are brimming with chemicals and harmful to wildlife.

Alternatively, natural solutions like HARRIS 30% Vinegar, available at Walmart, are just as effective. It's six times stronger than regular household vinegar, provides multi-surface versatility, and is safe for use around both people and pets.

Doing a thorough, deep clean of this outdoor area is something people with clean patios always do. It sets the space for the new season, but no matter how many times you've done it before, there are still plenty of patio cleaning mistakes to avoid. With the HARRIS 30% Vinegar, it's easy.

Not only does it leave your paving sparkling; vinegar can be used to kill weeds, as it works to disrupt plant cells, and it's an ingredient in DIY weed killer, too.

It's probably best to remove weeds from pavers beforehand, as best as you can, and take extra precautions to kill weeds but not grass.

Using vinegar is also a proven way to prevent and get rid of mildew and 82% of mold varieties, and an easy, all-natural solution to avoiding your patio going green.

With an overall rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon, the HARRIS 30% Vinegar comes highly recommended by shoppers.

'Very effective,' says Sognare, alongside a five-star review. 'Had basically a garden of weeds growing through the cracks in the sidewalk, sprayed them with this, and by the next day they were dead, and I could easily pull them out. Very effective, non-toxic way to kill weeds!'

Another, from Aaron, assures that it's 'great for cleaning.' 'Got this for overall cleaning around the house − counters, floors, laundry, shower − all the above,' they say. 'Make sure to dilute heavily, though! This can be powerful stuff.'

As versatile as it is affordable, this cleaning vinegar will have your patio perfected for fall in next to no time. Then, once the colder weather sets in, it can be used all around your home until spring (and time spent outdoors) rolls back around.

More to Shop

Below, I've curated a selection of patio-washing essentials to perfect the space ahead of fall. If you're opting to pressure wash your patio, make sure you proceed with caution to avoid damage.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Once the season starts, these are the outdoor fall cleaning tasks to tick off.

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The Deebot T50 Pro Omni is Ecovacs' latest attempt to out-slim the competition with a 3.9inch body designed to reach further under furniture than most rivals can manage.

And it's not just ultra-slim. On coverage, mapping and pet hair, it's one of the best robot vacuums I've ever tested. Even with its circular mops, which have always let me down in the past when testing other models, the Deebot T50 Pro Omni surprised me with its power, and at $399, it's a fraction of flagship pricing.

After four weeks of testing, the T50 Pro Omni lived up to nearly everything Ecovacs promised. Read on for where it excelled, and where it just missed the mark.

Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni: Specifications

Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni: Setup

Even if you've never owned a robot vacuum before, unboxing and putting the T50 Pro Omni together is simple and quick: clip the brush into its holder on the underside of the robot, clip the ramp onto the station, plug the station in, and slot the robot onto the dock to charge. The mopping pads helpfully come pre-installed.

The clean water tank lifts out of the front panel and fills from the tap, the dust bag slots into its own compartment behind a separate cover on the front, and the cleaning solution unit sits alongside it, ready to be topped up with Ecovacs' own Deebot Cleaning Solution, sold separately.

A 1L bottle of cleaning solution costs $24.99, so you'll need to factor that into the overall cost. You can, in theory, use any non-foaming solution, but just bear in mind that it could invalidate your warranty if something goes wrong after using a non-Ecovacs version.

None of this setup needs tools, and the whole process took less than 10 minutes.

The process was slightly slowed down when organizing the smart home setup. Downloading the Ecovacs Home app and pairing the robot is straightforward enough – there's a QR code on the box, robot, and user manual, giving you multiple options. The app then guides you through.

However, my robot needed a firmware update before it would let me start a clean, and that update took considerably longer – a little over 20 minutes – than the unboxing itself. It also drained the battery, so I had to wait for the robot to charge again afterward. If you're setting this up ahead of a specific cleaning session, I'd build in extra time for that step rather than assume you'll be up and running in minutes.

Once the update and charging were finished, the robot ran its initial mapping pass without any input from me, working room to room and building out a floor plan I could see forming in real time on the app. You can easily rename the rooms to make them easy to identify, as well as change where thresholds or furniture are. I didn't need to do the latter because the first map was so accurate.

Once saved, the robot was then ready to begin deep cleaning my home.

Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni: Design and Features

The Deebot T50 Pro Omni is one of the better-looking robot vacuums I've tested, and the slimmest too.

At just 3.19 in (81mm) tall, it's noticeably slimmer than most of the competition, including my go-to Dreame Aqua 10 Roller, without any of the compromises that usually come with shrinking a robot down. It doesn't veer too far away from most other robot vacuums in terms of looks, but some small touches make a big difference.

There's a single power button on the top which lets you switch the vacuum on, restart it if it gets stuck, and send it back to the dock. LEDs around these controls show you when it's on and charging at a glance.

The Wi-Fi status light and the reset button are tucked away under a panel on the top of the robot, rather than on the casing. This panel also hides the robot's dust bin and washable F9-rated filter, rated to trap fine dust and allergens. The station's dust bag adds a second layer of filtration, which is great if you're using this as a vacuum for pet hair or you have allergies.

The dToF LiDAR module sits flush into the body rather than in a raised turret, which is the main reason the robot sits so low. This module handles mapping at up to 10m. The 3D structured light sensor and AI camera on the front edge can then see obstacles at super close range with a 77° vertical, 97° horizontal field of view. These numbers and specifications may mean little on their own, but in real-world terms, it means the robot can easily spot and avoid obstacles, and all of this gives the T50 Pro Omni a sleek and streamlined finish.

Flip the robot over, and there are large driving wheels on either side and a universal wheel at the front. The brush sits to one side, opposite the carpet detection sensor, and the main roller brush, which releases with a single button, sits in the center. At the rear of the robot are the two fabric mopping pads.

Two of these features do the heavy lifting on design: the ZeroTangle 2.0 uses a triple V-shaped brush structure, angled bristles, and a comb to stop hair wrapping around the roller, which is a bugbear I've experienced on cheaper robot vacuums for pet hair.

TruEdge 2.0 then pairs an extendable side brush with a mop plate that holds a 1mm gap from skirting boards and furniture legs. Together, they lead to fewer missed edges than fixed mop plates I've used and are great for finding and clearing hidden dust and debris in corners.

Anti-drop sensors on the underside stop the robot from tipping down stairs or crashing over thresholds, while the carpet sensor detects over 50 carpet types and triggers the mop to lift automatically so you don't smear wet stains on dry floors.

The station is the bulkiest part of the setup, but even then it only measures 13.8 x 11.6 x 21in (35 x 29.4 x 53.3cm), and weighs 16.8lb (7.6kg) empty. It's not small, but it's also not intrusive. For reference, the Dyson's Spot+Scrub AI dock measures 19.3 x 18.5 x 17.3in (49 x 47 x 44cm) and weighs closer to 20lb.

It's also a clean, minimalist white tower. I'd happily leave it out in a kitchen or hallway rather than tuck it away, which isn't something I say about every robot dock I test. On the top of the dock sit the clean and dirty water tanks, and behind a separate cover on the front you'll find the dust bag compartment and cleaning solution unit.

The mop washing tray sits at the base, directly under where the robot docks. Dual-directional scrapers and 70°C hot water handle the mop-washing, while 45°C hot air dries the pads afterwards so you're not left with a station that smells of stale water, a common complaint with older robot vacuum docks.

All of this runs through the Ecovacs Home app, which, again, is one of the best smart home apps I've used.

Everything is laid out simply. You can move between the robot and station settings in a single swipe, and everything sits under clearly labelled menus rather than buried in submenus.

Cleaning modes and the map live on the same page. You can easily set cleaning tasks per room rather than applying one setting across the whole home, or you can adjust suction and water flow by floor, room or target area. This offers a similar level of control to the Dreame Aqua 10 Roller, and the water flow levels option is one of the best parts of the Deebot T50 Pro Omni in my opinion.

Auto-Empty and Do Not Disturb toggle from the advanced cleaning settings screen, and Auto Resume is a setting worth turning on if you have a larger home because it stops the robot ending a clean early to recharge.

Voice control then runs through YIKO-GPT, Ecovacs' own assistant, and this works either as typed or spoken commands through the app, or via Alexa and Google Assistant. There's additionally a live video call feature, using the robot's 960P camera, which lets you check in on pets while you're out. This isn't enabled by default; you need to opt in, but that's a positive thing when it comes to privacy. If you want to check in on your home remotely, you'll enjoy this extra.

Maintenance features are built into the app too. You can check the condition of brushes, filters, and bags, see when parts need replacing, and order spares. Plus, it's a good place to start if your robot vacuum keeps getting stuck or isn't working as it should.

What Is the Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni Like to Use?

The feature that really stood out for me while living with the Deebot T50 Pro Omni, though, was how methodical it is. It covered every inch of every room, getting into corners and edges with an ease that rivals which cost three times as much struggle with. Even on Quick Clean – which is one of three cleaning speed options alongside Standard and Deep Cleaning and where you might assume it would reduce its precision – the Deebot still cleared areas meticulously.

Being a LiDAR-equipped robot, the T50 Omni Pro's mapping accuracy backs this up. Rooms, as well as obstacles like messy cables or shoes left on the floor, were identified correctly and consistently. I never had the trial-and-error moments I've had with other robots like the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai that would confuse large debris with obstacles, or which made it difficult to work out which numbered room matched with which spaces in my home.

I have a high threshold between the Karndean flooring in my kitchen and the solid hardwood floors of my hallway, and the Deebot T50 Pro Omni handled it with ease. Notably, it did this without causing the loud crashing sound as it lands on the wooden floor that most other robot vacuums create. Size matters here too, and the robot easily cleaned under my sofa, under tables and chairs, and even under a dining room unit without getting stuck.

And all of this combines for excellent cleaning performance, one that carries through whether the Deebot is vacuuming or mopping. In fact, having been let down before by circular mopping pads that smear more than they clean, I was taken aback by the T50 Pro Omni. Not only did its mopping pads make a great first pass each time, but its back-and-forth motion meant it kept going over a patch until it was actually clean. This is a feature Dyson promised on its Spot+Scrub Ai but ultimately failed to deliver. Ecovacs manages it easily.

Noise is a mixed picture, but not necessarily a problem one. During a normal clean, the T50 Pro Omni is quiet enough to run while I'm working nearby. The one moment it gets loud is when the dock empties the dustbin, but that's over quickly enough that it never felt intrusive.

It also makes a low hum when it cleans the mop, and that hum lasts for a few hours as the dock dries the mop too, but neither is a problem, and you soon get used to it.

Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni: Vacuuming Tests

To see how the Deebot handles different types of mess, I ran the same tests on a hard floor and carpet, scattering a quarter cup each of sugar, lentils, and cereal, with some pushed into corners and edges.

Sugar stands in for fine debris like dust, lentils cover medium debris, and cereal represents larger crumbs or kibble.

Across the board, the T50 Pro Omni impressed me. Cereal was swept up almost straight away without hesitation or repeat passes. Lentils came up as easily, cleared from both the laminate and carpet without anything left wedged into the pile.

Sugar took a bit more work on carpet and had a tendency to require multiple passes, but on both carpet and laminate I would watch the robot going back and forth until every trace was gone. No manual sweeping required on my part at all.

Pet hair testing went well too. The Deebot T50 Pro Omni cleared it thoroughly from both the hard floor and the carpet, with nothing left wrapped around the roller afterwards. This noticeably cut down on the pet dander that usually ends up on my hands after sitting on the floor too.

For everyday use, the Deebot T50 Pro Omni took over most of the vacuuming I'd normally do myself. I still used my cordless vacuum on carpets and stairs every weekend, but for daily maintenance, the robot handled all of the work. I could even trust it to get into the nooks where debris tends to build up between cleans.

What struck me most was how little of any mess it left behind, even outside the standardized tests. I never once needed to go back over an area it had already covered, and on carpet especially, family and friends commented on how clean it looked and felt.

Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni: Mopping Tests

I tested mopping with the usual two-stains method: a quarter cup of ketchup for the first test, a quarter cup of mustard for the second, both poured onto my laminate floor.

Ketchup cleared brilliantly, lifted almost entirely on the first pass with barely any residue left behind, no stickiness underfoot once the floor had dried, and no tangy, tomato odor.

Mustard posed much more of a challenge and was the only real test where the Ecovacs didn't live up to the expectations it had set for itself. Being thicker, the mustard was smeared across the test area at first rather than lifted straight away. It gathered in the mop pads, and you could see the outline of the circular pads left behind in the stain on the floor.

The Deebot redeemed itself slightly, going back over the area again and again until the mustard was cleared. It even paused its stain removal halfway through, returned to the dock to rinse the mop pads, then came back out to finish the job.

I did still have to manually mop the area afterwards, though, because mustard has a tendency to stain light-colored flooring, and that discoloration was one thing the T50 Pro Omni couldn't lift.

After both tests, there was very little sticky debris left behind in either the main roller or the mopping pads, and the mop washing tray came out clean rather than caked in leftover mess. Even with the best-performing vacuum-mops I've tested, I've usually found clumps of dried ketchup or mustard I've had to rinse off myself with warm water. Not with the T50 Pro Omni.

Mopping is where I was the most skeptical, given how often circular mops have let me down before, but it's where the Deebot surprised me most. It's not flawless; the initial smearing of the mustard is worth knowing about, but the result each time was a floor that was clean, not just damp with mess pushed around.

Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni: Maintenance

Most of the routine maintenance with the Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni is handled by the dock. After each run, it empties the dustbin, washes the wet roller to stop odor, and dries it with warm air automatically. During my tests, the roller always came out clean and dry and never damp or musty.

Hair management is also good, helped by the V-shaped, anti-tangle design. With a dog in the house and my long hair, I still needed to check the brush bar every couple of weeks and pull out the odd wrapped strand by hand, rather than never touching it at all, but this was minimal.

Day-to-day, the clean and dirty water tanks are easy to lift out and refill, and the bin and filter assembly pops up from the panel on top of the robot with a gentle press.

Both the robot's filter and the docking station's filter can be rinsed under a tap and left to dry for 24 hours before refitting. The mopping pads unclip, and the roller can be removed via the release button on the underside of the machine.

Beyond the day-to-day, maintaining the T50 Pro Omni is mostly a case of following the app's prompts rather than remembering a schedule yourself. If something goes wrong, the app will send a notification where the built-in YIKO-GPT assistant chat gives step-by-step troubleshooting help, showing you how to solve maintenance problems.

The app will also tell you when the dust bag needs replacing and let you order replacement parts – because knowing how to clean a robot vacuum is key to extending its lifespan, this is a welcome touch.

Based on Ecovacs' timelines, the washable mopping pads need replacing every one to two months, and the filter and side brush every three to six months, depending on how much use they get. The clean water tank, dirty water tank, and dust collection cabin are all listed as a monthly clean, along with the body and base of the station itself, though in practice I found a quick wipe every few weeks kept things looking fresh without needing to follow the schedule to the letter.

None of this felt like a chore during testing. Compared to the upkeep some robot vacuums demand, particularly ones without a self-cleaning dock, the T50 Pro Omni asks very little of you beyond the occasional rinse and the odd bag swap.

How Does the Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni Compare?

Against the eufy Omni S1 Pro, a longtime favorite of mine in this category, the Deebot's biggest advantage is raw suction, at 15,000 Pa against the eufy's 8,000 Pa, and its slimmer profile gets under furniture the eufy's boxier body can't.

The Roborock Saros Z70 takes a completely different approach to obstacle handling, using a mechanical arm to physically pick up socks, cables, and other small objects rather than avoiding them. It's a clever solution to the problem, especially when it comes to larger debris, and its 22,000 Pa suction outmuscles the Deebot on paper. Although its real-world carpet performance pales in comparison.

For a more direct mopping comparison, the Dreame Aqua 10 Roller offers stronger suction at 30,000 Pa, along with a continuous-clean roller mop. It's been my go-to robot vacuum at home, which says a lot about how highly I rate it, but the T50 Pro Omni may have just pipped it.

How I Tested the Ecovacs Deebot T50 Pro Omni

I used the T50 Pro Omni as my main robot vacuum for four weeks, running it across hard flooring and carpet, with a dog, children, and the usual day-to-day mess that comes with both.

Alongside daily cleans, I ran our standardized vacuum tests, scattering a quarter cup each of sugar, lentils, and cereal on both hard floor and carpet to assess fine, medium, and large debris pickup, and setting two stains: ketchup and mustard, on hard flooring to test the mopping function.

I tracked how the robot navigated my home, how it handled the OMNI Station's self-cleaning and self-emptying cycles, and how the Ecovacs Home app held up across day-to-day scheduling, room management, and cleaning history.

Next, learn how to choose the best vacuum for every home and budget.

There's nothing more frustrating than opening the dryer to find your bed sheets twisted into a giant ball, trapping every towel, pillowcase, and T-shirt inside. It's a common laundry annoyance, but according to experts, it's also one of the easiest problems to prevent.

The solution comes down to a few simple tweaks, from shaking out your sheets before they go in the dryer to adding dryer balls and using a lower heat setting to reduce tangling as the fabric tumbles.

Here, they share the seven simple steps that make washing and drying bed linen easier than ever.

1. Always Shake Your Sheets Out Before They Go into the Dryer

'If there’s one laundry complaint I hear all the time, it’s, “Why do my sheets always come out of the dryer in one giant ball?”' says Rechelle Balanzat, Laundry Expert and Founder and CEO of Juliette, an NYC-based premium laundry service. 'It happens more often than people think, and it doesn’t just make your laundry frustrating; it also keeps parts of your sheets damp, creates more wrinkles, and can even make your dryer work harder than it needs to.'

The easiest fix? Giving your sheets a quick shake before putting them in your dryer.

'This is my number one recommendation because it’s so simple and it really works,' she explains. 'Giving your sheets a good shake helps release any twists that formed during the wash cycle, so they have a better chance of tumbling freely instead of wrapping around themselves.'

And, as Alicia Sokolowski, Cleaning and Laundry Expert and President and Co-CEO of AspenClean, adds, 'By having separated sheets, this provides more airflow throughout the dryer, making it less likely that the sheets will wrap around one another.'

That added airflow also means your sheets dry quicker, helping, in turn, to cut energy bills at the same time.

2. Use Dryer Balls to Separate Fabrics

Next, advises Rechelle, you should be using dryer balls. 'I recommend dryer balls to just about everyone,' she says. 'They help separate the fabric as the dryer turns, which keeps sheets from clumping together. As a bonus, they can shorten drying time, soften fabrics naturally, and help reduce wrinkles without using dryer sheets.'

In terms of how many you'll need, Alicia shares that you should use three dryer balls, such as the Evriholder 100% Wool Dryer Balls, available at Walmart, for a small or medium load, and up to six for a larger load, assuming the drum isn't overloaded.

And, if you're interested in the tennis ball vs dryer ball debate, it's always worth investing in the real thing rather than risk introducing potential toxins into your laundry routine.

3. Choose a Lower Heat Setting

'Many people think higher heat means faster drying, but that’s not always the case,' warns Rechelle. 'I recommend using a medium or low heat setting because it gives the sheets more time to tumble freely instead of tightening up and sticking together. It’s also much gentler on your bedding and helps it last longer.'

Therefore, if you've invested in some of the best luxury bed sheets (our favorites are from Matouk, available at Nordstrom), you can rest assured that they won't end up pilling and damaged.

4. Stop the Dryer Halfway Through the Cycle

To avoid any tumble dryer mistakes when drying bed sheets, Alicia recommends starting the dryer, waiting about 15 to 20 minutes, and then pausing the cycle.

'Take out the sheets and unravel any tangling that might have started,' she says. 'Shake each piece out and then return all the bedding loosely to the dryer and continue the cycle. This method helps break up a ball before the inner layers remain trapped and damp for the remainder of the cycle.'

As Rechelle adds, 'It's a small step that can save you from finding damp sheets at the end of the cycle.'

5. Dry Sheets Separately from Towels and Heavier Items

'This is one mistake I see all the time,' shares Rechelle. 'Towels and heavier fabrics tend to wrap around lightweight sheets, making them ball up. I always recommend drying sheets on their own or with other lightweight bedding whenever possible.'

Additionally, says Alicia, make sure you're not overloading your dryer, either, which is another probable reason why your sheets are balling up, your dryer is getting too hot, and your laundry smells damp.

'In order for sheets to completely dry, they need to have space to lift and unfold, and dry as the dryer drum spins,' she explains.

6. Take Bed Sheets Out the Dryer as Soon as They’re Dry

Always promptly remove your bed sheets from the dryer as soon as they're dry to prevent them from balling up, which is a simple way to make laundry smell better, too.

'Once the dryer stops, don’t let your sheets sit inside for an hour,' advises Rechelle. 'Removing them promptly helps prevent wrinkles from setting in and keeps them looking much fresher.'

7. Keep a Wrinkle-Release Spray on Hand

Finally, adds Rechelle, 'If your sheets still have a few wrinkles, I recommend a quick mist of wrinkle-release spray,' such as the Downy Wrinkle Releaser, available at Walmart.

'Smooth the fabric with your hands, or toss the sheets back into the dryer on low heat for a few minutes. It’s an easy trick when you want your bed to look crisp without ironing.'

What to Shop

Shop from a selection of laundry and tumble drying essentials below, all of which are top-rated by customers or have been tested by us here at Homes & Gardens firsthand.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Experts

'My biggest piece of advice is to focus on airflow,' concludes Rechelle. 'When your sheets have enough room to move and aren’t wrapped around themselves, they’ll dry more evenly, wrinkle less, and come out of the dryer the way they’re supposed to: Soft, fresh, and ready to go right on the bed.'

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If your laundry room always feels short on space, ALDI's latest middle aisle find could be the solution. The retailer has launched the Easy Home Extendable Air Dryer, a foldable clothes drying rack designed to maximize drying space without permanently taking over your home. Priced at $34.99, it's a practical alternative to running the dryer for every load and folds flat when not in use.

As more homeowners look for ways to make laundry rooms work harder, versatile products like this are becoming increasingly popular. Whether you live in an apartment, have a compact utility room, or simply want to cut back on energy use during warmer weather, an air dryer is one of the easiest ways to create extra drying space without a permanent footprint.

I currently use and love the top-rated Clothes Drying Rack from Amazon, which has been a game-changer for air-drying everything from knitwear to towels, so I can definitely see the appeal of ALDI's more compact, foldaway alternative for smaller homes and laundry rooms.

If you're searching for small laundry room ideas, this is one of those hardworking buys that ticks every box. The extendable design provides plenty of drying space for everything from T-shirts and towels to larger items, before collapsing flat for easy storage once your washing has dried.

Why This ALDI Laundry Find Stands Out

Unlike bulky drying racks that permanently occupy valuable floor space, the Easy Home Extendable Air Dryer has an adjustable frame that expands while you're drying clothes indoors and folds neatly away afterward. That makes it particularly useful for apartments, smaller homes, and laundry rooms where every inch counts.

'The best laundry room products are the ones that disappear when you're not using them,' says Ottilie Blackhall, Sleep and Laundry Writer, at Homes & Gardens. 'Foldable drying racks are a smart investment because they give you flexibility without permanently sacrificing valuable floor space.'

Another advantage is that air-drying clothes can help reduce energy consumption while being much gentler on delicate fabrics than frequent tumble drying. During the warmer months, it's an easy way to lower household energy use while helping garments last longer.

Perfect for Apartments, Utility Rooms, and Small Spaces

One of the biggest selling points of this drying rack is its versatility. It can be used in a laundry room, bathroom, spare bedroom, or even outside on a patio when the weather is dry.

Because it folds flat, it's easy to slide behind a washing machine, tuck inside a closet, or store beside a cabinet when not in use. That makes it an especially practical choice if you're trying to keep a compact laundry room clutter-free.

If you regularly air-dry knitwear, activewear, delicates, or linens, having an extendable rack like this means you won't need to drape clothes over doors, radiators, or furniture.

Shop More Laundry Room Essentials

If the ALDI Easy Home Extendable Air Dryer sells out – as many Special Buys do – these alternatives are also worth considering.

Whether you're looking to save energy, protect delicate clothes, or free up floor space, ALDI's Easy Home Extendable Air Dryer is a practical buy. It offers full-size drying space when needed, then folds away neatly to keep your laundry area tidy. If your budget stretches further, though, I highly recommend the Joseph Joseph Eclipse 3-Tier Adjustable Laundry Drying Rack – our in-house sleep and laundry expert swears by it.

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For a brand with such a strong reputation for market-leading products, the R10 Pro feels like a chink in Dreame's armor.

When it comes to design, maneuverability, and dust, it's a capable machine with glimpses of greatness as one of the best vacuums. It's one of the lightest and easiest-to-use stick vacuums I've tested, effortlessly gliding across floors. And for such an affordable device, smart features, such as LED lights and a handy lock button that keeps the vacuum running without you having to press the trigger, elevate it closer to more expensive models.

However, when it comes to providing a thorough deep clean, I was disappointed with this cordless vacuum's battery life and ability to tackle large messes. To find out if the Dreame R10 Pro could be the right vacuum model for your home, read on to explore my in-depth review.

My One Minute Verdict

Dreame products so often punch above their weight in terms of price and value, but with the R10 Pro you sadly get what you pay for.

If you have a smaller home or are looking for one of the best vacuums for pet hair that's light and easy to manage day to day, it's not a bad price to pay. Even on the super-quiet, less-powerful Eco mode, it clears fine debris in a single pass, and its Turbo mode is great for getting pet hair out of carpet fibers.

Beyond those everyday tasks, however, its limitations become difficult to ignore. Although Dreame claims up to 65 minutes of runtime, I managed just 25 minutes during mixed-mode testing, and even the brief use of Turbo mode drains the battery quickly. Large debris pickup is inconsistent, often requiring multiple passes and further extending cleaning time.

The vacuum won't stand securely without its wall mount, the modest 0.6L dust cup fills quickly, and debris repeatedly became trapped between the tube and dust cup, occasionally blocking suction. During one test, the dust cup even released unexpectedly, emptying its contents back onto the floor.

For those looking for a cordless vacuum for a larger home and to be able to tackle big cleans, I would recommend exploring options like the Dreame R20, which pairs a 90-minute runtime with a touchscreen display that takes the guesswork out of battery and suction mode, or the Shark Stratos cordless, which handles mixed debris smarter and more consistently.

Dreame R10 Pro: Specifications

Dreame R10 Pro: Design and Features

The Dreame R10 Pro doesn't veer too far from what you'd expect from a standard cordless stick vacuum. Its main unit sits on the top of a metal tube that connects to one of the vacuum's floorheads and attachments, and a transparent dust cup runs down the body of the handheld unit, so you can see how full it is.

You power the vacuum on and off using the trigger button on the underside of the main unit, and switch between the Eco, Med and Turbo modes using a slider switch on the top. A lock button keeps the vacuum running continuously without having to press the trigger, which makes a real difference during longer cleaning sessions, and there's a small LED dot alongside this button that lets you see how much battery life you have at a glance. It's lacking a more detailed display, but at this price point, that's not a surprise.

What was a pleasant surprise, however, was how much the R10 Pro's matte black design with gold accents elevates it well above its price, making it look more expensive than it is. At 3.64 lbs (1.65 kg) for the main unit, it's also on the lighter side for a cordless vacuum without sacrificing too much power.

Rather than a single multi-surface head, the R10 Pro comes with two interchangeable floorheads. The multi-surface brush uses V-shaped bristles and a comb design to grab hair and direct it up the tube rather than letting it tangle around the roller. The soft roller floorhead is added as a dedicated hard floor option, with a roller that picks up fine dust without scattering it across the room. Both floorheads have built-in LED lights at the front to help you see dust and debris, especially under furniture and in darker corners.

Beyond the floorheads, the kit includes a motorized mini-brush for upholstery and furnishings, a wide combination tool that acts as both a dusting brush and a crevice tool, a bendable crevice nozzle for tight and hard-to-reach spaces, and a short extension tube – all of which click on and off at the center of the tube with a button press.

Filtration is then managed by a five-layer washable filter system that Dreame claims captures 99.9% of particles down to 0.3 microns. It's not officially certified as HEPA-grade, but it comes close.

Inside the box is a wall-mounted bracket that stores the vacuum in an upright position. This is a necessity because the vacuum can't free-stand on its own; the floorhead doesn't lock into position and has a tendency to roll away or fall over. You'll also need to install this bracket near a plug as the charging cable doesn't stretch very far. Once plugged in, it takes around 3.5 hours to charge, but you only get up to 65 minutes of battery life on Eco mode (and less than 15 minutes on Turbo).

What Is the Dreame R10 Pro Like to Use?

The R10 Pro is easy to pick up and get going – there's no complicated setup and swapping between attachments is quick enough. The lack of dedicated storage for these attachments is disappointing but expected at this price.

In general cleaning terms, the R10 Pro handled day-to-day messes well, picking up pet hair from hard floors and low-pile carpet without fuss. The soft roller floorhead is quiet and smooth on hard floors, with no sense that it's going to scratch or drag across anything delicate, and it handles everyday debris – crumbs, dust, the odd bit of dried mud – without much effort.

On carpet, the vacuum works harder, and you feel a bit more resistance in the push, but it picks up well, and the suction is good. The anti-tangle design of the multi-surface floorhead largely holds up in everyday use too.

I liked having the option of the two floorheads, but storing the spare is a pain, and I almost exclusively ended up using the multi-surface head because it did the job well enough to not have to switch.

In use, the vacuum is light enough to carry upstairs or use for long periods. It can feel a little unbalanced when you're pushing it round the home because it's quite top-heavy, but this isn't a dealbreaker, and you soon get used to it.

The lock button is also a benefit for long cleans. Taking away the need to keep your finger on the trigger makes it maneuverable enough to get into corners and along baseboards without constantly repositioning yourself, plus the low-profile floorhead gets under most furniture without having to tilt the vacuum at an awkward angle.

What's not a benefit for long cleans is the poor battery life. For a vacuum this affordable, I didn't expect industry-leading runtimes, but I do think being able to do a full pass of my house in one run shouldn't be too much to ask. Dreame claims Eco mode lasts 65 minutes, and that holds true; however, in reality, Eco mode isn't strong enough to make a dent in pet hair or deeply clean. This means you have to ramp the vacuum up to Turbo periodically, and in my tests, I got (at most) 25 minutes switching between the two. For most everyday tasks and quick cleans, this will be ample, but for anything deeper or longer, you'll need to revert to a wired vacuum alternative or wait for the R10 Pro to charge.

The LED lights in the floorheads turned out to be more useful than I thought. They pick out dust along baseboards and under the sofa that I would have otherwise missed, and I found myself cleaning more thoroughly because of them – going over areas I would have assumed were fine and finding they weren't.

On noise, the R10 Pro is quiet enough on Eco, at 62dB, for someone to work comfortably in the next room. Turbo steps up the noise to 71dB on average, but the pitch is low, which makes it more gentle on the ears than I'd expected.

Compared to other cordless sticks I've tested at this price, the R10 Pro is impressive on pet hair in Turbo mode; the quality of the LED lighting stands out.

Where it falls is the lack of a freestanding dock, disappointing runtime, and mixed results between Eco and Turbo modes. Also, during one clean, the dust cup just opened by itself, pouring 10 minutes of dust and dirt back onto my floor.

Test 1: Flour and Sugar

To test how the R10 Pro handles fine debris, I scattered half a cup of flour and sugar in roughly a 50/50 split across carpet, hardwood, and laminate, spreading it over a wide enough area to clearly see the vacuum's path with each pass.

Flour and sugar work well because they mimic the kind of fine debris that builds up on floors between cleans and is often harder to shift than larger pieces.

On carpet, the R10 Pro performed well, pulling the flour and sugar out of the pile without spreading it around. Most of the debris was gone in a single pass, with only a very light dusting of flour remaining in the deeper parts of the pile on the first run. A second pass cleared it completely.

Flour did tend to gather at the edges of the brushroll, but this can be easily cleared away, and it doesn't transfer back onto the floor as you move the vacuum around.

On hardwood, the flour, at times, had a tendency to get pushed slightly ahead of the floorhead on the first pass, but it was quickly cleared on a second pass.

The sugar cleared more cleanly, but getting into the cracks between floorboards took an extra pass with the floorhead angled slightly, and some flour settled into the joins and needed the crevice nozzle to finish the job properly.

On laminate, the results were similar to hardwood, though the smoother surface meant slightly less scattering on contact and the flour cleared more easily across open areas. The edges of the room and the join between the floor and baseboard needed a second pass, but the overall result was clean without needing to change suction mode or switch attachments for the bulk of the test.

Test 2: Pantry

For the pantry test, I scattered half a cup of cereal and red lentils across carpet, hardwood, and laminate. Cereal and lentils represent the kind of debris that ends up on floors every day. For the cereal, we use off-brand Cheerios – which stand in for larger pieces of debris like crumbs and dry food, while the lentils are smaller and have a slightly tacky texture.

On carpet, the R10 Pro picked up the lentils confidently and without flinging pieces around, clearing most of it in a single pass. The cereal took a lot more work. The floorhead largely pushed them or sent them flying around rather than sucking them up. I had to physically lift the floorhead and make multiple passes over each one to remove them, or I had to resort to an attachment.

On hardwood, there was some scattering of the lentils on the first pass, but a second pass over the same area dealt with them, and on laminate, performance was similar to hardwood. The lentils again needed two passes in places, and there was a little scattering on contact, but nothing that required lifting and dropping the vacuum to dislodge pieces or any heavy-handed maneuvering.

The cereal performance proved even worse on hard floors. I was left with just piles of cereal in corners or along the edges, and those that did get sucked in ended up clogging the unit. I had to use water to soften the blockage and then clear it with the end of a spoon, which is less than ideal.

Test 3: Pet Hair

To test the R10 Pro on pet (and human) hair, I ran it across both carpet and hard floors after a typical day with my dog Maisie, without pre-cleaning either surface first.

On hard floors, the R10 Pro handled Maisie's hair well, pulling it in cleanly without spreading it around or leaving trails at the edges of the floorhead. The comb teeth design came into its own here – hair moved through the roller and into the dust cup without bunching. After a full pass, there was little left behind, and what remained was easy enough to catch on a second run. On carpet, the vacuum lifted most of the surface hair well, but the deeper the pile, the more effort was needed.

I did notice on one of Maisie's heavy shedding days, which are common when the weather is hot, that some of her hairs caught at the edges of the roller and had to be removed by hand, so you'll want to check it periodically rather than assuming it's clear.

My hair told a similar story. Longer strands cleared well on hard floors and low-pile carpet, though on thicker carpet strands occasionally needed a second pass to come up fully. The dust cup filled noticeably faster on heavy hair days, which is worth bearing in mind if you have multiple pets or a large home – the 0.6L capacity is on the smaller side, and you may find yourself emptying it mid-clean.

Test 4: Attachments

Swapping between attachments is easy on the R10 Pro. The button release at the collar joint is easy to find and operate with one hand, and nothing feels flimsy or loose once clicked into place.

The motorized mini-brush got the most use outside of the main floorheads. On the sofa, it lifted Maisie's hair from the fabric better than the main floorhead, and on cushions and upholstered chairs it did a thorough job without being rough on the material. The wide combination tool – which flips between a dusting brush and a crevice mode – is versatile enough for lots of different tasks and I used it regularly on baseboards, shelves and around the edges of radiators. It isn't as precise as a dedicated crevice tool, but it covers a lot of ground without needing to swap again.

For the crevice attachment, I sprinkled flour and sugar along the base of a wall, pressing some of it into the join between the floor and the skirting board. The nozzle cleared both the flour and the sugar cleanly in a single pass without spreading the debris outward.

The extension tube adds useful reach for high shelves and ceiling corners but feels unnecessary. The existing tube length covers most situations without it. Of all the attachments, it was the one I put back in the box most quickly and didn't miss.

Dreame R10 Pro Name: Setup and Maintenance

The R10 Pro arrives in a large, fairly hefty box, but unboxing it is straightforward.

The packaging is mostly cardboard with some paper wrapping around the individual components, and little unnecessary plastic. Everything is organized into separate cardboard compartments inside, so nothing is loose or rattling around, and the user manual sits on top so it's the first thing you see when you open it.

The box contains:

• Main handheld unit
• Metal wand
• Multi-surface floorhead
• Soft roller floorhead
• Motorized mini-brush
• Wide combination tool
• Bendable crevice nozzle
• Extension tube
• Wall-mounted storage bracket
• Charging cable and adapter
• User manual

That's a generous kit for this price.

Before you can use the R10 Pro, you'll need to charge it fully, but to do so you'll likely have to install the wall bracket first. This isn't 100% necessary, but the vacuum won't stand by itself, and you'll have to do it eventually anyway. Slotting it into the wall bracket and plugging in the cable takes seconds, and from flat it took around 3 hours to reach full charge – roughly in line with the 3.5 hours quoted by Dreame. There's no assembly required beyond attaching your chosen floorhead, which clicks into place with a single push.

Day-to-day vacuum maintenance is simple too (as long as you don't vacuum up lots of large debris that can block the unit). The dust cup empties with a single button press and the bin itself is easy to rinse out when needed. I didn't think having such an easy release system would impress me so much, but seeing as I always struggle with the systems on Dyson vacuums, this mattered more than I thought. The filter is removable and fully washable – Dreame recommends cleaning it every month or so depending on use – and it's a simple process of rinsing it under cold water, leaving it to dry for 24 hours, and clicking it back in.

The brushroll on the multi-surface floorhead can be removed for cleaning too, and the soft roller floorhead pulls apart easily enough to clear any debris that's worked its way inside. None of it requires tools or any particular effort, and keeping on top of it takes only a few minutes.

How Does the Dreame R10 Compare?

The R10 Pro sits in the middle of Dreame's R-series lineup, above the Dreame R10 and the Dreame R20. If you mainly clean hard floors and don't need the soft roller, the R10 undercuts the Pro on price and covers the basics, but given that the battery life complaints that dog the R10 Pro apply here too, and you lose the soft roller in the bargain, the Pro is the better buy if the price gap is small.

Dreame R20 is $50 / £50 more, but for that extra money you get 190 AW of suction, intelligent dirt detection that automatically adjusts power based on the floor type and debris, a touch screen display, and 90 minutes of runtime.

Against the competition, the Shark Stratos cordless ($499.99 / £399.99) is a significant step up in price but brings Clean Sense IQ technology that senses dirt and adjusts suction automatically, more reliable large debris pickup, and a MultiFLEX wand that folds flat for freestanding storage. It also often sells for much less than its RRP, and if you can get it on sale, it's a much stronger investment. At the other end, the Bissell CleanView XR Pet ($119.99 / £99.99) is cheaper than the R10 Pro and covers the essentials for pet owners and smaller homes, even if it lacks the LED lighting and the soft roller floorhead.

How We Test Vacuums

At Homes & Gardens, we take a detailed and standardized approach to how we test vacuums.

This includes vacuuming set amounts of fine and large debris on carpet, linoleum and hardwood floors to check cleaning performance across different types and surfaces. We test the anti-tangle performance and pet hair pickup as well as using each vacuum around the home to check weight, maneuverability, battery life, dustbin emptying, noise levels, and anything else you might need to consider before buying. Every factor is then weighed against the price when we give it our final mark.

I tested the Dreame R10 Pro for four weeks in my home, where I have two children and a dog. I ran it across carpet, laminate and hardwood floors, tested its noise levels using the DecibelX app and checked how easy it was to use and how well it fit into my life.

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The laundry room is oftentimes the hardest-working space in any home. All of that usage − from sorting to washing and drying − can just as often leave it disorganized and difficult to manage.

As with any space around a house, the first and easiest step towards streamlining a small laundry room starts with storage, particularly versatile solutions that solve two problems at once: Just like this 2-in-1 Trash Bag Holder & Laundry Pods Container, available at Amazon.

With space for trash bags and over 100 dishwasher pods, and a space-saving design to fit perfectly under standard sinks, it's undoubtedly one of the best things organized people should have in their laundry rooms − and for good reason.

While any laundry room can, and often does, end up in disarray, small spaces suffer this fate more than most. With a compact footprint also tends to come a distinct lack of storage space, which is why using vertical storage is a clever way to maximize space in a small laundry room.

And, when it comes to organizing a laundry room, the 2-in-1 Trash Bag Holder & Laundry Pods Container, available at Amazon, provides ample storage while taking up virtually no precious countertop space.

With two sections, one for holding washing pods and one for trash bags, and a hidden tray between for sponges or other cleaning accessories, the holder can be used either split or combined. Units can then be stacked upwards or placed side-by-side for flexible storage to perfectly suit your space, whether used under a sink, in a cabinet, or out on a countertop.

There's no need to worry about the effects of humidity, either − the holder is built to withstand humid environments without any wear or warping, and is capable of holding over 100 laundry pods (or dishwasher pods if you choose to use it in your kitchen instead) and a roll of 13, 20, 30, or 33-gallon trash bags.

What Shoppers Say

Boasting an overall rating of 4.7 out of five stars, the 2-in-1 Trash Bag Holder & Laundry Pods Container, available at Amazon, is a popular purchase among shoppers.

For example, Ronald calls it a 'Convenient, great space saver,' while another verified review praises that it 'Makes access to trash bags and detergent easier.'

'I like the simplicity of these storage containers,' they add. 'Easy access to trash bags and dishwasher detergent. Works perfectly.'

So, hile there are a number of things to get rid of in a messy laundry room, this is undoubtedly a worthy addition, and an easy way to avoid any laundry room organizing mistakes once and for all.

What to Shop

Interested in shopping for more laundry accessories? Browse a selection of our favorites below, each of which will elevate your routine and make laundry day more of a breeze than a chore.

All prices were correct at the time of publication

These handy laundry hacks are guaranteed to save you time and effort when it comes to laundry day.

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I have been on a steady mission to make my home more sustainable for the last few years, and how I clean has been a large part of that. One of the easiest things to replace? My dish sponge.

When creating a non-toxic home, our cleaning chemicals are usually first on the list. However, according to studies, our plastic cleaning products could be releasing microplastics with every use, coating your dishes and utensils if not correctly rinsed. Beyond that, they are washed down the drain, where they have a lasting impact on the environment.

That is why I love these coconut bristle cleaning brushes from Crate & Barrel. With replaceable heads and zero plastic, they are the most sustainable, non-toxic way to clean.

I do not have a dishwasher, so hand-washing dishes is my only option. It is not as quick, but it gives me far greater control over cleaning and caring for cookware, and the products I use to do so.

Avoiding plastic sponges has several benefits, from reducing microplastic release into water and onto utensils to limiting the spread of bacteria. Traditional kitchen sponges are hotbeds for bacteria, even if you clean your kitchen sponges regularly. Coconut bristle brushes, on the other hand, are easier to sanitize. Plus, with the removable, replaceable heads of the Clean by Crate Natural Palm Brushes, you can swap them out for a fresh clean without wasting the handle. Replaceable heads are sold in packs of two, also at Crate & Barrel, and screw securely into place.

Speaking of which, the main body of the brush is made with FSC®-certified bamboo from responsibly managed forests, reducing your environmental impact further.

It is one of those rare kitchen swaps that has no disadvantages. They're more hygienic, less wasteful, and more durable. It certainly helps that they look far nicer than a tired plastic sponge on your counter. At a fraction of the price of the best non-toxic coffee makers and best non-toxic air fryers, it is a small, manageable starter swap that can make a knock-on difference over time.

What Else to Shop

To help you detoxify your kitchen and simplify your cleaning routine, I’ve rounded up a selection of my favourite sustainable, non-toxic essentials to help you create a healthier home.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Next, consider some non-toxic cleaning products to help clean a kitchen with fewer risky chemicals.

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With the back-to-college period just around the corner, it's likely that you're making preparations for moving and putting together a shopping list for all the essentials you'll need to pick up before you go.

But, while you've probably considered your bedding, books, and bathroom items, it's just as important to think about how you're going to do your laundry, too.

As shared dryers are often busy, and you won't want wet clothes hanging on show all over your dorm room, the Joseph Joseph Eclipse 3-Tier Adjustable Laundry Drying Rack, available at Amazon, is the one indoor laundry accessory I'd buy for college if I had my time again. After all, who says a laundry rack can't be chic?

Hopefully, you're clued up on how to do laundry with all the laundry tips you'll need as you head off to college. But, without the outdoor space to harness the benefits of air-drying laundry in your dorm, you'll need to dry your clothes indoors.

For this, my best recommendation is the Joseph Joseph Eclipse indoor clothes airer, which is perfect for tiny spaces. It conveniently folds fully flat for storage behind your dorm room door or under the bed, so it's effortlessly easy to pack up and put away when it's not needed, even if your dorm room is on the small side.

And, while compact to store, there's plenty of space for all your drying needs− 14 meters, to be exact − with three adaptable and individually foldable wire shelves suitable for drying a wide variety of clothing, from small tops and skirts to longer dresses, trousers, and towels.

It's also equipped with wheels for easy and convenient portability, and features a heavy-gauge steel construction with a stylish fabric exterior, so you can enjoy your dorm room space without the eyesore of drying laundry, while the screen still allows adequate ventilation for garments to dry well.

In fact, it's so well-loved by shoppers that alongside a five-star rating, Srikanth dubs it the 'Best clothes rack ever' − and I completely agree. Since I initially tested it almost two years ago, I've reached for it each and every time I've had to abandon my outdoor washing line due to bad weather and dry my clothes indoors.

'Was not sure I could justify the cost but after having it for a while, I'm super glad I did,' adds Srikanth.

Another review from verified buyer Magdalena on the Joseph Joseph site praises its 'fantastic design,' and continues, 'Even though it looks quite big, it actually doesn’t take up much space. It’s very practical, especially if you have to dry clothes in the living room − everything is nicely covered, so you don’t have to look at it, and you can simply turn the airer around. Solid, useful, and does the job well.'

Finally, a third review from Larissa describes it as the 'Perfect clothes airer for hiding your washing' − an essential quality for any small dorm room space, particularly when shared with a roommate.

'I absolutely love these,' they say, 'I bought one and then got another one because of the amount of washing we do in a week. It makes such a difference in the living room, which is unfortunately where we have to dry our laundry.

'It's super easy to put together, great quality, and looks amazing. Would recommend to anyone who needs to air-dry clothes at home.'

So, if you've been on the hunt for a product that's made for drying clothes in a small space, look no further.

More to Shop

For more laundry essentials, shop my handpicked selection of options I'd purchase if I was heading back to college tomorrow. And, if you've recently graduated or your college days are more of a distant memory, these will be just as useful at home, too.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

If you're off to college, do you know which things people who are good at laundry always do? Perfect your weekly routine with our six tips from laundry experts.

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If you're looking to cut your energy bills, reduce wear on your favorite clothes, or avoid using the dryer during warmer weather, air drying is one of the easiest ways to do it. And with much of the US experiencing another spell of extreme summer heat, many households may be tempted to skip the dryer altogether and make the most of the sunshine.

For many households, that means hanging laundry on an outdoor clothesline whenever the forecast looks promising. While there are plenty of benefits of air-drying laundry, including using less energy and helping fabrics retain their shape, outdoor drying also exposes freshly washed fabrics to the elements. Pollen, insects, dust, humidity, and strong UV rays can all affect how your laundry looks, smells, and feels. In some neighborhoods, HOA rules may even prevent outdoor line drying altogether.

When conditions outside aren't ideal, drying clothes indoors can be a more reliable alternative, helping you dry clothes quickly while protecting fabrics from allergens, pests, and unpredictable weather.

'Air drying is gentler on fabrics than machine drying,' says Ken Doty, COO and Cleaning Expert at The Maids. 'However, where you dry your clothes can make a bigger difference than many people realize.'

Here, laundry professionals explain six reasons why bringing your laundry indoors may sometimes be the smarter option.

1. Unpredictable Weather Can Undo Your Hard Work

The ideal day for drying laundry outside is warm, dry, and breezy, but the weather doesn't always cooperate. Sudden rain showers can leave clothes soaking wet all over again, while strong winds may blow laundry off the line or coat freshly washed fabrics with dust, dirt, and debris.

Rain and wind are among the biggest drawbacks of outdoor drying because they can leave freshly washed laundry covered in grime or even send it 'off the line completely,' meaning you'll likely have to wash everything again. This is especially common during summer thunderstorm season across much of the US, when clear mornings can quickly give way to afternoon downpours.

For those unpredictable weather days, an indoor drying rack can be a useful backup. The Amazon Basics Foldable Portable Laundry Rack is a practical choice for air drying clothes indoors, with a collapsible design that makes it easy to store away when not in use.

2. Pollen Can Trigger Allergy Symptoms

If you or someone in your household struggles with seasonal allergies, drying clothes outside could bring pollen straight back into your home. Even after washing with hypoallergenic detergent, damp fabrics can easily trap pollen from trees, grasses, and weeds while they're hanging outdoors.

According to Cleaning Expert Ken Doty, this is particularly problematic during spring and summer, when 'common allergens' become trapped in clothing and carried back inside. Rather than helping to reduce allergens in your home, outdoor drying can spread them onto bedding, towels, and clothing, making allergy symptoms more difficult to manage.

If you do need to rewash laundry after it's been exposed to high pollen levels, a fragrance- and dye-free detergent can help. The all® Free Clear Liquid Laundry Detergent is a good option for allergy-prone households, as it's formulated for sensitive skin and removes 99% of top everyday and seasonal allergens, including ragweed, grass, and tree pollen. It's widely available from Amazon.

3. High Humidity Can Leave Clothes Smelling Musty

Warm weather doesn't always mean fast drying. In humid parts of the country, including much of the Southeast and Gulf Coast, laundry can remain damp for hours, creating the perfect environment for bacteria, mold, and mildew. While the best tumble dryers are designed to dry clothes quickly regardless of the weather, outdoor air drying is far less predictable when humidity levels are high.

Professional Cleaner Trish Duarte, Franchise Owner of MaidPro Temecula and Murrieta, recommends that clothes be dry within two to six hours whenever possible. She says a musty smell is a clear warning sign that bacteria, mold, and mildew are developing and means the load should be washed again. She also recommends adding OxiClean Odor Blaster from Amazon or pure sodium percarbonate when rewashing musty laundry to help tackle lingering bacteria.

If outdoor humidity is high, drying clothes indoors with good airflow, a dehumidifier, or a heated drying rack can often produce fresher, faster results.

If you don't have space for a traditional drying rack, we tested the Eclipse™ 3-tier Ecru Clothes Drying Rack With Screen and loved it as a stylish alternative to drying clothes outside. The slim, foldable design conceals laundry behind a fabric screen while allowing air to circulate freely, making it especially useful for apartments, laundry rooms, or small homes where space is at a premium.

4. HOA Rules Could Limit Your Options

Even if you have a backyard or patio that's perfect for line drying, you may not be allowed to use it. Many homeowners' associations (HOAs) prohibit or restrict visible clotheslines for aesthetic reasons, while some local communities have their own rules governing outdoor laundry drying.

That said, protections do exist. Several states, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Vermont, have enacted some form of 'Right to Dry' legislation, which limits how much HOAs and local governments can restrict residents from line drying their laundry.

Because these laws vary widely in scope, it's worth checking your HOA's bylaws, lease agreement, and local ordinances before installing or regularly using an outdoor clothesline. Even in states with 'Right to Dry' protections, there may still be reasonable restrictions on where and how clotheslines can be used.

5. Strong Sunshine Can Fade Colors Faster

Sunshine helps speed up drying, but prolonged exposure to UV rays can gradually break down fabric dyes. While the current heatwave affecting large parts of the US may seem like the perfect opportunity to dry laundry outdoors, higher temperatures are often accompanied by stronger UV levels. That combination can speed up drying, but it can also increase the risk of fading, particularly for dark or brightly colored fabrics left in direct sunlight for several hours.

Daniel Brown, CEO of Handy Cleaners, says fabrics 'might fade faster due to excessive exposure to the sun,' especially brightly colored or dark clothing. Black garments, denim, richly colored towels, and vibrant summer clothing are often the first to show signs of fading.

If you prefer drying clothes outside, turning garments inside out or hanging them in partial shade can help preserve their color for longer. Washing dark loads with a color-care detergent, such as Woolite Darks Defense Liquid Laundry Detergent, available from Amazon, can also help protect dyes from fading over time, helping your favorite pieces stay looking newer for longer despite repeated washing and sun exposure.

6. Insects Can Hitch a Ride Into Your Home

Freshly laundered clothes can attract more than just compliments. Sweet-smelling detergent residue and damp natural fibers may appeal to ants, spiders, bees, and other insects, especially during the warmer months.

Trish Duarte says insects can stain fabrics, create holes in clothing, and even leave you with an unpleasant surprise when you get dressed. 'Ants can make their way onto your clothes, and some can bite,' she says.

Bringing laundry inside as soon as it's dry and giving each item a quick shake before folding or placing it in the laundry basket can help prevent unwanted summer pests from making their way indoors. If you're storing freshly washed linens or seasonal clothing, adding natural cedar blocks to closets and drawers can provide an extra layer of protection against fabric pests.

The Homode Cedar Blocks for Clothes Storage, available on Amazon, are made from aromatic cedar and can be tucked into drawers, storage bins, or hung in closets to help deter clothes moths while keeping stored fabrics smelling fresh.

Shop Clothes Drying Essentials

Drying clothes outside remains one of the simplest and most energy-efficient ways to do laundry, and in the right conditions, it's an excellent way to help clothes last longer. But when pollen counts are high, humidity slows drying, UV rays are particularly intense, or stormy weather is on the horizon, moving your laundry indoors can help protect fabrics while keeping them smelling fresh.

The good news is that you don't have to rely on the dryer to achieve great results. A well-placed drying rack, heated airer, or dehumidifier can help clothes dry quickly indoors while shielding them from the elements. By matching your drying method to the weather and season, you'll get the best of both worlds: the fabric-care benefits of air drying without the drawbacks that sometimes come with hanging laundry outside.

The Spot+Scrub Ai marks a shift for Dyson as its first robot vacuum to combine suction with a built-in mop. It's also the first real attempt at the wet-and-dry category dominated by rivals for years.

When it comes to vacuuming, particularly on carpet and pet hair, it's a strong contender for one of the best robot vacuums I've tried. When it comes to mopping, it falls short.

At $1,199, this isn't a cheap appliance, and after four weeks of testing, I found the Spot+Scrub Ai does most of what Dyson promises, just not all of it. Read on to find out where it excels, and where it let me down.

The One-Minute Summary

Dyson's first entry into the best vacuum-mops category combines serious vacuuming credentials with a disappointing mop.

Across four weeks of testing with a dog and children in the house, it cut my manual vacuuming by more than 90%, the biggest reduction I've seen from any robot vacuum I've tested. Its carpet and pet hair performance consistently impressed me more than my own upright Dyson, and its see-through dustbin reinforces that, regularly revealing just how much debris and hair it's pulling out of carpets I thought were already clean.

In standardized testing, the Spot+Scrub Ai handled sugar and lentils cleanly, but treated scattered cereal as an obstacle rather than mess, working through it in a stop-start pattern that often left pieces behind. It's a similar story with mopping, where ketchup cleared well, mustard was simply smeared around, and a foam trail left by the wet roller would occasionally trigger the robot into a repeated stain-removal loop until it gave up entirely. Over several weeks, I found myself mopping manually more often than I'd like.

The dock handles roller washing and bin emptying automatically, though the bin's release mechanism isn't obvious without checking a video first. If you're after the best robot vacuum for vacuuming and pet hair, this is one of the strongest I've tested. If mopping matters just as much, the Dreame Aqua 10 Roller remains the more dependable all-rounder, and it's the robot vacuum I always come back to at home when I'm not testing anything else.

Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai: Specifications

Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai: Setup

Getting the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai up and running took a little longer than most robot vacuums I've tested, but that's not a huge surprise for a model with this many moving parts. Inside the box is the robot itself, the docking station, and a docking ramp. The two side sweepers (one red, one blue) and charging cable are in a separate tray, and all of it is packaged neatly and in easy-to-recycle packaging.

The docking ramp clicks onto the front of the station, and the charging cable connects at the back, at which point an LED confirms it's live. This LED was flashing red for a long time, and I wasn't sure what the error was until I filled the clean water tank, at which point it turned white.

To fill this tank, lift it out using its handle, lift the blue rubber flap on the back of the dock, and pour in your floor cleaner. Dyson recommends only using its own 02 Probiotic hard floor cleaning solution, but it doesn't include a bottle in the box, which means spending another $23.99 on top of what is already an expensive robot vacuum.

You can, in theory, use any hard floor cleaning solution or even skip this step completely, but this can cause problems with excess foaming – as I explain more about in the Performance section – and could invalidate your warranty. Once the solution is added, unclip the tank's lid and top it up with clean water before slotting it back into place.

Attaching the side sweepers is the easiest part of the process: turn the robot over on a soft surface, and click the red sweeper into the left mount and the blue one into the right.

Once assembled and positioned, the smart home setup via the MyDyson app is quick and easy. With the robot placed on the dock, the app walks you through connection, and you confirm the pairing by pressing the Power and Home buttons on the robot.

The robot then does a mapping run. Mine created a decent first map in a little under 15 minutes – although it thought my garden was an extra room. Obstacles, furniture, and room boundaries were identified, and the robot was then ready to start deep cleaning my home.

The app recommends charging the robot to 100% before running the initial deep clean, although mine managed it on 52% (the level of battery it had straight out of the box). The dock then takes care of all the prep, including washing the roller mop. All you need to do is clear the floor.

In my test, this initial setup took around 25 minutes, including water tank filling and the first mapping run. This puts it on par with the Dreame Aqua 10 Roller, which I found similarly quick to map but more fiddly to assemble.

Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai: Design and Features

The Spot+Scrub Ai is unmistakably and unapologetically a Dyson, complete with its red, purple, and gray colour scheme running throughout.

The dock is matte gray with a large, see-through dustbin on the left that has Dyson's iconic purple plastic lid with red clips and buttons. Next to this dustbin are two cylinders: one with a small, filled purple circle on the top (clean tank, right-hand side) and one with an outline of a circle (dirty tank, center).

It's not immediately clear which is the clean tank and which is the dirty water reservoir, and even now, after a month of testing, I occasionally forget and have to remove each to see which has the cleaning solution port behind it, and is therefore the clean tank.

Below the tanks are the two charging ports and the textured ramp where the robot sits when it's charging.

The charging cable that comes with the dock isn't very long, which limited where in my kitchen I could set it up so it was close enough to a plug but not in the way. Dyson's manual recommends putting the dock against a wall, on a level surface, with at least 19.7 inches of clearance around the sides and a staggering 59 inches in front, which narrows down suitable locations even more.

As does the fact that this isn't a unit you can tuck unobtrusively into a corner; at 17.9 inches high, 17.3 inches wide, and 20 inches deep, it has a large physical footprint, and I'd recommend checking the space in your own kitchen or boot room before committing.

As a side note, 59 inches is almost 5 ft, and for a lot of kitchens that will be impossible. I positioned mine in a much smaller area, and it had ample space to move around.

The robot itself is a round disc made of matte black plastic. Power and Home buttons sit on the top, and a status light between the buttons pulses white when charging and turns amber if something is wrong.

Just behind these buttons is a hinged panel marked Filter, where you'll find the removable built-in dustbin and filter. To access this bin and filter, you need to push the bottom of the robot up to release the latch. This isn't immediately clear and can be fiddly.

Flip the robot over, and you'll see the wet roller on the front half, which consists of a horizontal blue microfiber cylinder. The two side sweepers, which are used for pulling trapped debris from corners and edges sit above it.

Behind the wet roller is the anti-tangle brush bar, a shorter red-bristled roller beneath a hinged cover with a red release tab, two large treaded wheels and a camera and sensor cluster is built into the front.

According to Dyson, the wet roller uses a "12-point hydration system" that refreshes the roller with heated water on every rotation rather than dragging a single damp pad around the floor. It also extends to both the left and right as and when needed for better baseboard cleaning.

A camera and sensor cluster is built into the front edge, and this is where the Spot+Scrub Ai's stain-detection system lives. This system beams a blade of green light over the floor to spot and catch dust, crumbs, and stains that can sometimes be missed in normal lighting.

On carpet, for example, the AI lifts the wet roller out of the way to avoid spreading stains, while the dry brush bar retracts when it senses liquid, so wet messes don't dirty the roller.

The HD camera then sits just above this light strip, sending what the light sees to an onboard AI processor that compares the image against a reference bank of nearly 200 different substances, from food and liquid to pet mess and hidden dust.

This AI decides how the robot should respond, and all of this happens locally on the robot itself rather than in the cloud, which Dyson positions as a privacy benefit as much as a speed one.

The dock then handles everything else. Its cyclonic system empties the robot's bin, while the wet roller is washed in 60°C water and dried with 45°C warm air, ready for the next cycle without you touching it.

All of this runs through the MyDyson app, which – if you've used any smart Dyson product before – will be instantly recognisable and is where all of your Dyson appliances and tools live.

If you haven't used the app before, it has a black background with white text and icons. The home screen shows a 3D render of the robot and dock, sitting above a navigation bar split into Overview, Manage maps, and Product settings tabs. From Overview, you get a live status showing battery percentage, current activity (washing or drying the wet roller), and an Activity history screen where you can check previous cleans.

The Manage maps tab is where the floor plan lives, and tapping into a clean brings up a "Set up clean" screen with two toggles at the top: Room and Target. This lets you either select specific rooms or draw a target zone for one-off cleans.

For the cleans themselves, you can switch between Auto, Quick, Quiet, and Boost cleaning modes, choose vacuum-only, wash-only, vacuum-then-wash or even adjust hydration level, plus create cleaning schedules. It's a similar level of control to the Dreame Aqua 10 Roller and is one of the best parts of the Spot+Scrub Ai in my opinion.

Maintenance features are built into the app too. You can check the condition of brushes, filters, and bags, see when parts need replacing, and order spares directly. Plus, it's a good place to start if your robot vacuum keeps getting stuck or isn't working as it should.

What Is the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai Like to Use?

Living with the Spot+Scrub Ai is mostly hands-off, which is the point of a robot in this category, but the app takes longer to get used to than the interface suggests.

The basics are easy, but where it often slowed me down was room identification. The dark background and white labelling look sharp, but the room icons on the map aren't always easy to tell apart, and working out which numbered room matched which actual space in my home took some trial and error. Zooming and panning around the 3D map view is also less smooth than the flat 2D view, which I found easier to read during a clean.

The robot moves with the deliberate pace I'd expect from a LiDAR-equipped robot – it knows where it is and easily moves around and avoids furniture legs, shoes, and messy cables left on the floor. It also moves well over the thresholds between rooms.

I have a high threshold between the Karndean flooring in my kitchen and the solid wood of my hallway and the Spot+Scrub Ai didn't once hesitate or get tripped up by this in the same way other robots – even robots that cost a similar amount – have in the past.

Where the AI navigation is less convincing is how it interprets what it finds. You can visibly see the robot reacting to mess and on the most part, this is impressive. The Spot+Scrub Ai can return to areas time and again until it's successfully cleared the mess.

However, there were several occasions where I watched it treat larger debris as obstacles, rather than mess. It would approach, pick up a piece, divert, approach again, pick up another, divert again, rather than running a few passes over the whole area the way it does with finer debris. It would then effectively give up and say 'clean complete,' which meant I had to finish the job manually.

Finally, onto noise. When I first started using the Spot+Scrub Ai, it rattled and was annoyingly loud until I realised the cover on the dry brush compartment hadn't been locked into place properly, after which it was near-on silent during cleans.

The only time its noise felt intrusive was at the end of cleans when the dock automatically emptied the dustbin. It also makes a low hum when it cleans the mop, and that hum lasts for a few hours as the dock dries the mop too, but neither is a problem, and you soon get used to it.

Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai: Vacuuming Tests

To assess how well the Spot+Scrub Ai handles different types of mess, I ran a set of standardized tests on both hard floor and carpet, scattering a quarter cup each of sugar, lentils, and cereal across the floor with some pushed into corners and edges.

Sugar is used as a stand-in for fine debris like dust, lentils are a good proxy for medium debris, and cereal represents larger crumbs, kibble, or similar.

Sugar and lentils were handled well on both surfaces. The Spot+Scrub AI lifted around 95% of the remnants cleanly in a single pass without scattering further across the floor and picked up the rest on a second pass.

I was consistently impressed, both during these fine and medium debris tests and in day-to-day use, by how much was picked up and emptied into the dock each time.

Having the see-through bin helps with this, and it regularly highlights just how dirty my floor can be (even when it's recently been manually vacuumed), and just how much the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai collects.

The standout performance and depth of cleaning, on carpet particularly, also makes the Spot+Scrub Ai a fantastic robot vacuum for pet hair.

Not only could I see just how many hairs had been collected on each run thanks to the see-through dustbin again, but even while building Lego, playing chess or sitting on the floor with my dog, I noticed far fewer dog hairs ending up on my hands, the board or the pieces. This was more impressive than my upright Dyson and gave me huge confidence about how clean my floors were with the Spot+Scrub Ai.

Even areas my dog tends to settle in, which usually need a manual vacuum to remove the dander once a day, stayed visibly clearer for longer than I'm used to.

Sadly, this performance set my expectations so high that when the Dyson performed so poorly with large debris, it made it all the more disappointing.

Rather than clearing the scattered cereal pieces in a few passes – or at all in some cases – the robot seemed to treat them more like obstacles than mess. When used in Room mode, the vacuum worked relatively methodically and was able to capture most of the large debris other than pieces at the edges of rooms and furniture. It wasn't perfect, and it didn't live up to its performance with fine and medium debris, but it was passable.

In Target mode however, when cleaning hardwood floors as well as carpet, the Spot+Scrub Ai consistently failed at the most basic of tasks.

It would often approach a piece of debris, recoil slightly as if it was an obstacle, go back to it, pick it up, divert slightly, approach the next piece, bounce away from it, return to pick it up, divert again and repeat.

It worked in a stop-start pattern rather than running a clean sweep over the area, and this meant that sometimes it cleared the lot, but at other times it only cleared small pockets of debris. It would then announce it had finished and return to the dock, leaving me to finish the job myself again with a manual sweep or vacuum.

In practical terms, and for most day-to-day messes and general upkeep of the house, I can hardly fault the vacuuming prowess of the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai. It cut my manual vacuuming by in excess of 90% – the biggest reduction I've seen in all my time testing robot vacuums. I still used my cordless vacuum on carpets and stairs every weekend, but for daily maintenance, the robot handled most of the work.

I rarely have spills that involve large debris, so beyond the standardized tests, its poor cereal performance didn't make a noticeable impact on my everyday life. It's most definitely worth noting and is a significant flaw in an otherwise brilliant vacuum, but it didn't end up being a dealbreaker.

Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai: Mopping Tests

As the first Dyson robot vacuum to come with a mop, a feature that was missing from its predecessor, the Dyson 360 Vis Nav, I was most excited to see if Dyson's vacuuming expertise could expand to mopping. Sadly, it didn't.

I tested its mopping skills using our standard two-stains method. For the first test, I poured a quarter cup of ketchup onto my kitchen floor; for the second, I used a quarter cup of mustard.

The ketchup, which is slightly thinner, was cleared reasonably well. The mop lifted it within a couple of passes without much residue left behind.

Mustard, being thicker, didn't fare nearly as well.

The robot moved over it repeatedly but largely just spread it around rather than lifting it away. Similar to how it handled the large debris, the vacuum incorrectly concluded it had finished, even when there were still large blobs of mustard on the floor. It scanned the area, announced it was done, and returned to the dock.

After both tests, the floor felt sticky rather than clean, and even when my husband returned home three hours later, he said he could still smell ketchup.

The issues didn't stop there, though. The wet roller would leave trails of foam, evenly spaced, behind it as it worked. Unless caught early, these trails would dry and become water marks, and you could visually see the route the Spot+Scrub Ai had taken.

On the odd occasion, the stain-detection system that makes the robot so attentive to spills also made it overly sensitive to problems like the foam trails. It kept reading each foam trail as a fresh stain; it would then spin back around to deal with it, which would leave more foam behind it, which it would read as a stain, and it got stuck in a stain removal loop to the point I had to send it back to the dock manually.

On one hand, this may be my fault for not using Dyson's own solution. On the other, it's poor form that you're forced to spend more on a very specific product to not have to suffer poor performance. Plus, I've never had this problem using my own solution with any other robot vacuum-mop I've tested, so it's hugely disappointing.

After mopping, floors were left slightly damp but not soaked on the default hydration settings, but you can increase or reduce how much water is used in the app. In most cases, they were dry enough to walk on comfortably within five minutes, albeit a bit sticky.

Over several weeks of testing, I found myself actively avoiding using the mopping feature on the Dyson and mopping manually more often, which is far from ideal.

Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai: Maintenance

One of the main reasons to buy a robot vacuum is to cut down on day-to-day chores rather than add to them, and the Spot+Scrub Ai is a mixed result on that front.

Most routine maintenance is meant to be handled by the dock. After each run, it empties the dustbin, washes the wet roller to stop odor and dries it with warm air automatically. During my tests, the roller always came out clean and dry and never damp or musty.

Hair management is also good, helped by the anti-tangle design on the main brush bar. With a dog in the house and my long hair, I still needed to check the brush bar every couple of weeks and pull out the odd wrapped strand by hand, rather than never touching it at all but it was minimal.

Day-to-day, the clean and dirty water tanks are easy to lift out and refill, but the dustbin itself is trickier, and I had to watch a video to work out how to empty it – it's very easy once you know how, but it's not immediately obvious.

The bin and filter assembly pops up from a hinged panel on top of the robot with a gentle press, and both the robot's filter and the docking station's filter can be rinsed under a tap and left to dry for 24 hours before refitting. The wet roller and brush bar slide out in a similar way, each released by a button or tab rather than anything more involved.

Dyson recommends washing filters monthly and replacing the water filter in the dock annually, and the MyDyson app doesn't yet flag these reminders automatically in the way some rival robot vacuums do, so it's on you to keep track in the Product Settings menu.

It does, however, let you order replacement parts from the app, and because knowing how to clean a robot vacuum is key to extending its lifespan, this is a welcome touch.

Overall, maintenance sits somewhere between hands-off and hands-on. Topping up water, emptying the dirty tank, and the occasional hair check are unavoidable, but the dock does handle the bulk of the day-to-day work without intervention. For a robot at this price, that's about what I'd expect, even if it isn't quite as effortless as the most hands-off robots on the market.

How Does the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai Compare?

Against the eufy Omni S1 Pro, our current favorite robot vacuum, the Spot+Scrub Ai's biggest advantage is its dock, which stores debris for up to 100 days versus the eufy's 60. That means longer stretches between having to manually empty the bin. The eufy edges it on overall vacuuming and mopping consistency, though, and fewer of the stain-detection quirks I encountered.

The Roborock Saros Z70 sits at a similar level but takes a different approach, using a mechanical arm to physically pick up socks, tissues, and other small objects from the floor. It's a novel answer to a problem the Spot+Scrub Ai still hasn't solved, given how it treated cereal more like an obstacle than a mess during my tests.

For a more direct mop comparison, the Dreame Aqua 10 Roller offers stronger suction on paper at 30,000 Pa against the Dyson's 18,000 Pa, along with a longer-running self-cleaning system that I found much more dependable on tougher stains. The Dreame Aqua 10 Roller is my go-to robot vacuum at home when I'm not reviewing alternative models, which says a lot about how highly I rate it.

Alternatively, if budget is the priority, the Shark PowerDetect 2-in-1 costs less but still offers a capable clean across both vacuuming and mopping. It doesn't match the Spot+Scrub Ai's hair pickup on carpet, but for homes without pets that gap may not justify Dyson's premium.

How I Tested the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai

I used the Spot+Scrub Ai as my main robot vacuum for four weeks, running it across hard flooring and carpet, with a dog, children, and the usual day-to-day mess that comes with both.

Alongside daily cleans, I ran our standardized vacuum tests, scattering a quarter cup each of sugar, lentils, and cereal on both hard floor and carpet to assess fine, medium, and large debris pickup, and setting two stains, ketchup and mustard, on hard flooring to test the mopping function.

I tracked how the robot navigated my home, how it handled the dock's self-cleaning and self-emptying cycles, and how the MyDyson app held up across day-to-day scheduling, room management, and cleaning history.

Next, learn how to choose the best vacuum for every home and budget.

So you've just picked up a gorgeous new set of bedding, but should you wash sheets, covers, and pillowcases before sleeping in them for the first time?

As our laundry experts advise − yes, you should, every time you add a piece to your collection.

Here's why this simple step is so crucial for washing, drying, and caring for your bed linen, and how it could play a role in your health.

There's something about a new set of the best bed sheets that always instantly elevates your bedroom space. Whether you opt for bright colors and bold patterns or calming neutrals and crisp whites, it's an easy way to breathe new life into your sanctuary, and it can even help you to sleep better, too.

But, warns Rechelle Balanzat, Laundry Expert, CEO and Founder of Juliette, a New York-based premium laundry service, don't rush to make the bed with your new addition too quickly.

'"New" doesn't necessarily mean 'clean,' she explains. 'Before sheets reach your home, they've often been treated with finishing agents to improve their appearance and have traveled through factories, warehouses, and shipping facilities.'

For that reason, Rechelle always recommends washing them first (not doing so is a bad habit that makes your bed unsanitary) to help remove these residues, soften the fabric, improve breathability, and create a cleaner, more comfortable environment.

As Samantha Shpeen, Controller and Chief Home Officer at Clean Cult, adds, there's a comfort pay-off, too. 'Washing lets the fibers relax, so sheets that may feel stiff out of the packaging come out softer and more breathable from night one.'

How to Wash New Bed Sheets: For Fresh-Smelling, Unparalleled Softness

If you've got a new set of bed sheets that need washing, and aren't clued up on how to avoid common bedding mistakes, the process is simple:

• Check the care label for the relevant laundry symbols
• Use a gentle, non-bio laundry detergent, such as the Seventh Generation Concentrated Free & Clear Laundry Detergent, available at Amazon. As your bed sheets are next to your skin all night as you sleep, it's best to choose something that's suitable for sensitive skin with natural ingredients that won't cause a reaction as you rest. Always follow the instructions on the bottle or packaging in terms of how much detergent to add, and remember that less is always more if you want to avoid spotting any signs that you're using the wrong amount of detergent.
• Set the temperature and spin speed: Knowing the right washer and dryer settings for softness is crucial when washing bedding. In general, bedding is best washed on a hot temperature setting (90-130° Fahrenheit) and medium spin speed, though for linen and silk types, a cold and lower setting should be selected instead.
• Then, either take advantage of the benefits of air-drying laundry, which will naturally freshen your sheets and kill any lingering bacteria, or tumble-dry your sheets with dryer balls, available at Walmart, for added softness.

Once done, your brand new bedding is ready to adorn your bed, whether you're layering your bed for summer, or making your bed look cozy in winter.

What to Shop

From laundry detergents and drying racks to wool dryer balls and linen spray, my curated selection of products, which you can shop below, has got you covered.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Expert

Just like bedding, you should also always wash new towels before using them for the first time.

For more laundry and sleep advice, you can sign up for our newsletter so you never miss the latest features.

Small, compact cleaning gadgets are having a real moment right now, especially as more of us look for easier ways to stay on top of everyday mess without constantly hauling out a full-sized vacuum or heavier cleaning equipment. The latest ALDI Find taps neatly into that shift – and it lands just in time for the busy summer season.

Launching in stores on 1 July, the Ambiano Portable Vacuum Cleaner comes in a choice of black or white, offering a sleek, minimalist finish that feels more like a modern home accessory than a bulky utility appliance. Its compact, lightweight design is exactly what makes it so appealing – it is small enough to sit neatly alongside other vacuum cleaners without taking up the same level of space, while also offering a quick alternative to dragging out a cordless vacuum for smaller everyday messes.

It is easy to leave on a countertop, tuck on a shelf, or store in a kitchen cabinet without taking over valuable space. I currently own the Shark WANDVAC Cordless Hand Vac from Amazon, and I wouldn't be without a cordless vacuum. It is a godsend for small spills, messes and sucking up my cats fur, which just seems to get everywhere.

Given ALDI’s reputation for new launches selling out quickly, we expect this one to fly off shelves once it arrives in stores.

A Compact Design That Fits Real Life

There is no setup, no fuss, and no reason to delay tackling a mess. It is the kind of tool you can grab in seconds – whether it is crumbs after breakfast, flour spilled while baking, or bits of soil tracked in from the garden.

The small size is a genuine advantage in busy homes, particularly in kitchens and open-plan spaces where mess tends to happen in real time. Instead of waiting for a 'proper clean,' it encourages quick, immediate tidy-ups that keep things feeling under control throughout the day.

It is especially useful for those in-between moments when you would not bother pulling out a full-sized vacuum or cordless vacuum, but still want surfaces looking presentable in seconds.

Why Choose a Handheld Vacuum?

I have to admit, I have always been a fan of a handheld vacuum for exactly this reason. There is something incredibly satisfying about spot-cleaning as you go – whether it is clearing crumbs from the dining table after lunch, tidying around the hob while cooking, or doing a quick pass over the sofa before guests arrive.

It takes the pressure off those small messes that would not usually justify pulling out a full-sized vacuum or cordless vacuum, removing that mental load of ‘I will deal with it later’ because it takes seconds rather than becoming a full cleaning task. In a busy household, that small shift makes a noticeable difference to how calm and put-together a space feels throughout the day.

A Surprisingly Useful Tool For Floorcare

In terms of floor care, the Ambiano Portable Vacuum works best as a supporting tool rather than a replacement for your main vacuum. It is particularly useful for hard flooring such as laminate, vinyl, tile, and engineered wood, where small debris like crumbs, dust, and grit can gather quickly. It really shines in those awkward in-between areas – along baseboards, in corners, and around dining chairs – where larger vacuums are less convenient to manoeuvre. It is also ideal for entryways, where dirt and debris are regularly tracked in and can easily spread further through the home if left. Used alongside a regular vacuuming routine, it helps maintain a consistently cleaner floor with minimal effort.

Tackle Pet Hair, Spills, And Everyday Mess

While you may still need a vacuum for pet hair with stronger suction for deeper cleans, this compact option is ideal for everyday spot cleaning and quick touch-ups. For pet owners, it is especially handy for lifting loose fur from sofas, cushions, stairs, and pet beds before it has a chance to build up or spread through the home.

Rather than waiting for a full cleaning session, it allows you to tackle shedding as it happens – keeping surfaces looking tidier with minimal effort. It is just as useful for everyday messes, from dried crumbs in the kitchen and cereal under the dining table to dust and debris that quickly reappear in high-traffic areas like entryways and living rooms.

Shop Alternative Handheld Vacuums

The Ambiano Portable Vacuum is an affordable handheld cleaning tool that fits easily into everyday routines and stores almost anywhere, making it more likely to be used regularly rather than left out of reach. With strong demand expected, this ALDI Find is likely to sell out quickly once it hits stores.

Few things beat slipping into bed beneath freshly laundered sheets. But if you want that crisp, just-washed feeling to last longer, laundry experts say there's one unexpected pantry staple that can help: cornstarch.

Affordable, versatile, and probably already in your kitchen cupboard, cornstarch can help keep your bed sheets looking crisp and feeling fresher for longer, giving them that luxurious, hotel-quality finish without the hefty price tag.

Here's why it's what's missing from your routine when it comes to washing, drying, and caring for your bed linen.

Why Does Corn Starch Work to Make Bed Sheets Crisper and Fresher

As Rechelle Balanzat, Laundry Expert and Founder of Juliette, a New York-based premium laundry service, explains, this old-school DIY trick works by leaving a very thin layer of cornstarch on the fabric. This creates a light structure, giving sheets a crisper appearance while helping to minimize wrinkles.

'As cleaning sheets dry, this layer helps sheet fabric maintain its shape by holding a crisper finish and a cleaner appearance,' she says. According to Parima Ijaz, Textile Expert and Founder of Pure Parimaa, this technique works especially well on percale sheets (a closely woven fabric commonly used for the best cooling sheets), as their naturally matte, crisp weave complements the added structure from the starch. 'The result is an even more tailored look and feel,' she explains.

There are a few important caveats to keep in mind, though. 'Remember that cornstarch is not for cleaning sheets,' Rechelle warns. 'It enhances the look and feel of bedding that has already been freshly cleaned and pressed. Think of it as the finishing touch that gives your bedding a polished, hotel-quality look.'

Parima also cautions against overusing the technique. Frequent or excessive starching can gradually build up on fabric fibers, reducing softness over time and potentially affecting the material's long-term performance. 'For best results, use this technique occasionally when you want an extra-crisp finish,' she advises. It's an easy way to elevate luxury bedroom ideas or make a bed look more expensive without investing in new bedding.

How to Use Corn Starch In Your Bedding Laundry Routine

It couldn't be simpler to use this trick to keep sheets fresher between washes.

'Mix one tablespoon of cornstarch (available at Walmart) with two cups of water, and add the solution during the rinse cycle,' advises Parima. Use a measuring spoon and cup from Amazon for accurate measurements.

'If possible, pour it into your washer's fabric softener compartment to ensure it disperses evenly and avoids direct contact with your linens. Once washed, tumble dry on low heat and remove promptly. Your sheets should emerge feeling smoother, crisper, and more refined.'

What to Shop

If you're interested in giving this secret laundry ingredient a go yourself, below, you can browse everything you'll need, along with a selection of my favorite bedding and accessories for the ultimate hotel experience at home.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Experts

Rechelle concludes, 'It is not a suggestion for every wash, but it is a great option for you if you love the smooth and structured feel of freshly pressed sheets.' Pair it with airing your bedding every morning to avoid trapping bacteria.

For more sleep and laundry advice, you can sign up for our newsletter so you never miss the latest features.

People often think I’m exaggerating when I say I have a tiny kitchen, but trust me – there’s barely enough room for two people to stand in it at the same time.

That’s why every inch of counter space counts, especially around the sink, since we don’t have a dishwasher. Leaving dishes out to air-dry quickly takes over the little workspace we have, and it doesn’t take much before the whole kitchen starts to feel cramped and cluttered.

That’s why the folding, non-toxic RINNIG dish drying mat from IKEA immediately stood out to me. It provides a practical drying space but folds away neatly afterwards, helping me to reclaim counter space in my small kitchen.

No matter if you have a small kitchen with no dishwasher, or you handwash the occasional delicate pan or dish, every kitchen needs space to dry dishes. However, large dish drying racks are the enemy of keeping counters clear.

If you love the streamlined look of having everything tucked away and want to reduce visual clutter in a kitchen, the folding RINNIG drying mat is ideal. The folding mat can be tucked into a cabinet or hung between uses, giving you extra workspace and making your kitchen feel less overwhelming.

In a small space, even small changes to clutter have a large impact. Being able to clear the sink area between uses makes the whole kitchen feel calmer and more intentional.

With its deep grooves and ridges, the mat encourages better air circulation, helping dishes dry more quickly while keeping items like glassware and porcelain securely in place.

Made from thermoplastic rubber, it’s also a non-toxic option, offering added peace of mind in a space that’s constantly in use for food prep and cleaning.

They aren't just good for dishes, either, as happy shoppers point out. One anonymous reviewer gave the mat five stars, adding, 'I bought three for different purposes on my countertop: A coffee station, a place to drain and stack mason jars for making yogurt, and a place to dry and store lids and trays. They blend beautifully into the countertop.'

Another, Jacqueline, adds, 'The mat is soft and flexible, and the ridges are just high enough to keep items above any collected water. Because it is flexible, it's super easy to clean or roll up and take with me. Great for using under dish racks, using outside when washing/drying items, great for camping or when traveling to rentals where you'd like to have the mat in the kitchen.'

What Else to Shop

If you do not want to visit an in-person IKEA store, you will need to make a $35 purchase to be eligible for delivery. I have selected some of my favorite kitchen accessories to help flesh out the order and revamp your kitchen on a budget.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

A tiny space doesn't have to look drab. We have plenty of chic ways to make a small kitchen look more luxurious, even on a budget.

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In cases where a second vacuum cleaner is required for more robust cleaning (que tidying up after some DIY or sweeping up patio debris), a wet and dry vacuum cleaner will give you the versatility you're after since, after all, you should already have one of the best vacuums to use day to day.

I've tested the Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum to see if it can fulfil its mission of providing a 'powerful, convenient cleaning performance'. For one week, every other day, I have challenged it with: removing debris from the patio, blowing leaves out from underneath a table on the patio (using the blower function), lifting cereal and flour from hard flooring, and even removing water from the kids' sandpit.

The WD5 P has a 1100-watt motor to deliver superior air flow, and a 6.6-gallon container capacity for wet or dry debris. It'll remove the debris that you do not want your household vacuum to tackle, and I've found that it's a good appliance to have before pressure washing the patio (for example).

My One Minute Verdict

Easy to set up and simple to use with brilliant results, the Karcher WD5 P wet & dry vacuum cleaner is certainly one of the better wet & dry vacuums that I have used in a long time.

The 1100-watt motor delivers powerful suction to clear fine dust and heavy debris, and the built-in blower will quickly move dirt and debris from hard-to-reach places. It is a top-mounted design, which means that it is suitable for dry and wet debris, indoors and outdoors, but you'll need to swap out the fleece filter bag for any liquid pick-up.

It's one of six wet and dry vacuum cleaners by Karcher, with the WD5 P positioned toward the higher end. For example, it'll dent the wallet by $249, whereas the Karcher WD4 is $199, and the WD3 is $99.99. It is, however, robust. I've also tested the Karcher WD4, and I found that it is overall more powerful (despite having the same 1100-watt motor), more robust, and much easier to move around.

Throughout testing, though, the 26ft/5m power cable came up short. The 11.5ft suction hose is also gangly. And the 84dB noise level causes a stir.

A wet and dry vacuum cleaner that more closely resembles a cordless vacuum, such as the Dreame Z30 Pro Aqua Wet-to-Dry Vacuum, may be the better option if this noise and practicalities are likely to bother you. Alternatively, the Shark Messmaster Portable Wet/Dry Vacuum is compact enough to take outside to the car and leave it there to clear up after any little accidents, like spilled coffee or chip crumbs.

Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner: Specifications

Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner: Design and Features

The Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner is designed to be used on dirt created by home projects outside of the home, which your standard vacuum simply can not handle.

It has a large 6.6-gallon (25L) container, which is suitable for holding wet and dry debris. The top-mounted filter allows for quick and easy removal from the filter box – without coming into contact with dirt. This means that there is no need to remove the filter as you switch between wet and dry cleaning, but you will need to remove the fleece bag to remove any wet stuff.

The top-mount can be released to access the fleece bag by folding down the handle and lifting to remove.

The WD5 P is packed with a 1100-watt motor, which can either clean up or blow away debris. To alternate between the two functions, attach the 11.5 ft. (3.5m) suction hose to either one of the outlets. You do only have the one power setting to use either function, but I found this ample enough for lifting dry or wet debris – and blowing it too.

It has a 26ft power cable and, unless you have a power outlet outside, you may benefit from an extension cord like this 10ft Amazon Basics cord ($6.99, Amazon). And while the 11.5ft suction hose with bent handle provides some extra length during cleaning, it can make it a difficult appliance to store because it doesn't like being wrapped around the container, and it increases the height required in the shed to house it.

At the base of the container are five wheels that help to maneuver the WD5 P. These are installed as part of the setup. You can either wheel it around by the fixed handle or lift it with this handle when taking it to another space to clean.

What Is the Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner Like to Use?

The Karcher WD5 P wet and dry vacuum cleaner is a large appliance that'll need to be stored in the utility room or, better yet, in an outbuilding. It measures 25.7(H) x 15(W) x 16.5(L)in and weighs 19.2lbs, and when it's in use, it will get dirty.

It's designed to be used with either the floorhead or crevice tool attached to the suction tubes while removing debris off the floor, or while using the blower function. I found it easy to switch between the two different functions – blower and suction – by removing the suction tubes and tools, and turning the appliance with the one-speed dial.

The WD5 P is noticeably louder than a standard vacuum cleaner and is more in line with a pressure washer. I recorded a noise level reading of 84dB using the decibel meter reader app on my smartphone. This noise level is the same as that of the Karcher WD4, and it's equivalent to that of a passing vehicle.

Test 1: Flour and Sugar

In instances when you'll be wanting to clean up dust and dead skin, I wanted to see if the Karcher WD5 P could handle it by sprinkling half a cup of flour and half a cup of sugar on our tiled floor in the utility room. The flour is also an excellent visual test, as we can spot when it's left on the floor or stuck in any of the vacuum's parts.

With the floorhead attached to the suction hose and powered by the 1100-watt motor, the WD5 P effortlessly cleared a pathway through the flour and sugar in one clear pass. All the debris made it into the fleece bag; no clouds of 'dust' escaped before, during, and after the removal, either.

Test 2: Pantry

For my next test, I spilled cereal and rice on the tiled floor in our utility room. This was to replicate a scenario where the WD5 P could face larger debris, indoors and outdoors, such as small stones, sawdust, and wood chippings.

The floorhead made a clear pathway through the rice with no grains getting stuck or blown off course. However, the cereal got pushed along by the floorhead unless I lifted and dropped the floorhead on it so that it could be vacuumed. No cereal became stuck or lodged in the hose.

Test 3: Water

As a wet and dry vacuum, I wanted to demonstrate how the WD5 P removed liquid. To do this, I used it in the yard and challenged it with the removal of rainwater from my kids' sandpit after a deluge of rain over the past few days. I figured that it would be a big help to remove and contain the rainwater prior to emptying, rather than to flood the patio and make it wet for play.

When removing liquids, you'll need to remove the bag by lifting off the top of the canister. This will prevent the fleece bag from getting weighed down by liquid and avoid frequent replacement in case the fleece starts to degrade.

For the purpose of the test, I also removed the floorhead to get a clear visual, although it is suitable for use on liquids when the bristles are raised by flipping the switch on the floorhead.

All the liquid was quickly removed from the sandpit and deposited in the container. When I turned off the appliance, water ran back down the suction tubes that were being held in by the strong suction. This is something to be aware of, especially if you're removing floodwater or spilt liquids from washing machine leaks or gas can drops.

Test 4: Attachments

The Karcher WD5 P only comes with one attachment other than the floorhead, and that is the crevice tool. This tool is suitable for targeting the suction and blower delivered by the 1100-watt motor air flow. However, over time, I wouldn't expect this attachment to get much use because you can just use the handle to the same effect.

Throughout the week-long tests, I also used the Karcher WD5 P to clear up the patio in the yard. It was littered with sand from the kids' sandpit, leaves from fall, moss from the roof, and rotting vegetation.

I stretched the 5m-long cable and reached as far round as I could before pulling the plug out of the outlet, and my toddler son wanted to take over.

The WD5 P did a great job at removing everything within its path, with all debris contained in the container. However, some debris did become lodged in the floorhead and suction hose, which limited the suction power. I noticed a shift in gears when this occurred, so I switched off the power to dislodge the tissue and twigs.

Karcher WD5 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner: Setup and Maintenance

The Karcher WD5 P wet and dry vacuum cleaner is a large appliance, so it arrives in a large delivery box. This big, branded yellow box doesn't have any handles, which makes it difficult to move into a space to set up, so I recommend having an extra pair of hands to help out.

A combination of cardboard and plastic packaging secures the parts inside the box. Inside the box are all the parts required to start using the WD5 P from the get-go. This includes: an 11.5 ft. (3.5m) suction hose, (2x) 1.8 ft. (0.5m) suction tubes, hand nozzle, crevice nozzle, a switchable wet/dry floor nozzle, automotive-style pleated filter, and a fleece filter bag. If you're buying the WD5 P in the States, you'll also receive a power tool adapter for attaching to an industrial DN 35 suction hose.

It also comes with the addition of a clip-on storage belt for securing the crevice nozzle and floor nozzle, which, although it isn't classed as an 'accessory' per se, it is a part that doesn't come with the Karcher WD4.

Upon opening, you'll find that the suction hose and five castor wheels are located inside the 6.6-gallon container. It also comes with instructions to "help" with setup, but, as with all Karcher instructions, I found these difficult to interpret and follow because there are no words to support the minuscule diagrams.

Fortunately, I could figure out what goes where using no fewer than some essential DIY skills, such as clipping and slotting together, and some thought.

To set it up, I clipped on the storage belt; attached the suction hose to the container; connected the suction tubes to the hose and hand nozzle; installed the fleece filter bag and popped on the five castor wheels. The pleated filter was already in place. This took no longer than five minutes.

All these parts will need some level of maintenance.

The fleece filter bags will need replacing when they get full, or if they get too damp from removing wet debris. How often you replace it will depend on the type of dry debris that you're removing. Replacement bags can be bought from Amazon for $16.19 (pack of 4), which can be attached by simply opening the bag and placing it inside the vacuum.

The filter bags will need to be removed when vacuuming wet debris or liquids. When this type of debris is being removed, the container will need to be wheeled over to a drain for emptying, which is OK in itself, but the container is large, so it's a bit cumbersome to lift or tip. The liquid will also be filthy dirty, and you won't want that being taken into your home.

In use, I found that the switchable wet/dry floor nozzle and suction tubes became lodged with larger debris, which stopped me in my tracks. I removed the blockage by unclipping the floor nozzle or suction tube (depending on the blockage location).

Over time, a cleaning tip that I would recommend is to wipe each part of the WD4 to keep it in a good working order. The top-mounted filter may also begin to perish and become damaged, so you'll need to replace it with a new one ($22.99, Karcher.com).

How Does the Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner Compare?

The Karcher WD5 P is one of eight wet and dry vacuum cleaners from the German brand, which is available in the United States and the UK. As with half of the category, it's mains powered, whereas the other four wet and dry vacuum cleaners by the brand are battery-powered.

It's priced at $249.99 and is available to buy directly from Karcher or resellers such as Amazon (where you might find it a little cheaper). It is one of the more expensive wet and dry vacuums from the brand, with the more expensive tagged at $349.99 (Karcher WD6 PS) and the more affordable at $99.99 (Karcher WD3).

I've also reviewed the Karcher WD4 wet and dry vacuum cleaner and, after comparing the two, note that the WD5 P is generally more robust with sturdier onboard storage; one button to remove the top mount (rather than two clips at the side) and a stronger, fold-down handle. While it has the same 1100W motor as the WD4, it has a greater suction power (260 watts) and can pack away more debris into its 6.6-gallon container.

The wet and dry vacuum cleaners with a plug do fall short on what it can reach to clean because of the length of the power cable – it's just 5m in length, which can be restrictive when working on different jobs around the home. Karcher also has battery-powered wet and dry vacuums, like the WD2-18 Cordless Wet and Dry Vacuum, which is powered by an 18V / 2.5 Ah Karcher battery and has the largest container capacity (3.17 gallons) in the battery-powered category.

Alternatively, I appreciate that not everyone would be looking to have a wet and dry vacuum quiet as big as these Karchers (including the battery-powered), so, if you're after a second vacuum of this nature that is perhaps even more portable, then I'd be looking at the Shark Messmaster Portable Wet/Dry Vacuum.

This option retails for around $100, and our reviewer, Camryn Rabideau, found that it’s a powerful and versatile cleaning tool that can be used all around your home. On test, Camryn found that it had no problem sucking up spider webs, debris under car seats, and even spilled milk, and unlike a full-size shop vac, this model is quick and easy to clean. Plus, it’s compact enough to tuck into a closet when it’s not in use, so it’s ideal for anyone who has limited storage space in their home.

A wet and dry vacuum that more closely resembles a cordless vacuum is the Dreame Z30 Pro Aqua Wet-to-Dry Vacuum. As a stick vacuum, it is a lot lighter to use, and it'll do a great job of removing pet hair from hard flooring and carpets. Our reviewer, Victoria Woollaston, found that 'it's an impressive multitasker that delivers on its core promise of being a full-power cordless vacuum and floor washer in one.' The Z30 also has a self-cleaning station. However, it is almost double the price of the Karcher wet and dry vacuums, which isn't a drawback, just something to think about.

How We Test Vacuums

At Homes & Gardens, we have a dedicated and thorough procedure for how we test vacuums so we can get a like-for-like comparison between models, and to make sure we're recreating real-life circumstances.

I tested the Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner as and when it was required over a two-week period. It was used on hard flooring (laminate and tiles), liquids and solids, indoors and outdoors. In addition to running all three standardized tests – flour and sugar; rice and cereal – I used it to clean the moss-heavy patio, and to remove water from the kids' sandpit. This included removing leaves, small stones, and moss fallen from the roof. I then recorded how noisy it was using the DecibelX app.

This gave me the complete picture of how this wet dry vacuum would perform in real conditions, rather than a single test session, including the practicalities of cleaning and storage, and its overall condition after the two weeks of testing.

If you're sold on getting the Karcher WD5 P Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner, then it would be wise to know about the things that you can clean with a wet-dry vacuum. However, if you only need a vacuum cleaner for removing dry debris, then check out these vacuum cleaners for pet hair, which are equally as good; just a different spec.

There are plenty of kitchen organizers that promise to free up counter space, but very few are as thoughtfully designed as Joseph Joseph's latest dish rack. If you've ever wished your drying rack could shrink after the washing-up is done, this clever design does exactly that.

The Joseph Joseph Extend Steel Expandable Dish Rack from Amazon has become one of my favorite kitchen finds because it solves a problem so many of us have: not enough space when we're washing dishes, but too much wasted space when we're not. The result is an easy way to declutter countertops and keep kitchen countertops organized without sacrificing functionality.

Instead of committing to one fixed size, this expandable rack slides open whenever you have a larger load of dishes, then neatly contracts back down to reclaim precious countertop space. It's the kind of design that makes you wonder why every dish rack isn't made this way.

It Adapts to Your Kitchen, Not the Other Way Around

What makes this rack stand out is its flexibility. The expandable body increases drying capacity in seconds, making it just as useful after hosting dinner as it is for everyday washing up.

Alongside the generous plate rack, there's a removable cutlery holder and a raised rail designed for wine glasses and delicate stemware. An integrated spout channels excess water directly into the sink, helping keep countertops dry, while non-slip feet ensure everything stays securely in place.

Unlike bulky plastic alternatives, the stainless steel finish gives it a much more premium appearance. It feels like something you'd happily leave on display rather than hide away between uses.

A Small Upgrade That Makes Daily Chores Easier

I'm always drawn to kitchen products that quietly improve everyday routines without demanding extra effort, and this is exactly that sort of purchase. It doesn't rely on gimmicks or smart technology – it simply solves a common frustration with clever engineering.

For smaller kitchens, apartments, or anyone trying to maximize every inch of countertop space, it's an especially smart investment. You get the capacity of a large dish rack when you need it, without sacrificing valuable workspace the rest of the time.

Joseph Joseph has built a reputation for rethinking everyday household essentials, and this expandable drying rack is another example of why the brand has become a favorite among professional organizers and design enthusiasts alike. It's practical, beautifully made, and one of those kitchen upgrades you'll appreciate every single day.

Shop Dish Racks

The Joseph Joseph Extend Steel Expandable Dish Rack is a smart little kitchen upgrade that genuinely makes everyday washing up easier. It expands when you need extra space, then folds down neatly to keep your counters clear – simple, thoughtful design that quietly solves a daily annoyance. It’s the kind of product that makes you wonder why you didn’t have it sooner, especially if you’re into space-saving kitchen setups like the growing over-the-sink dish rack trend gaining popularity in the US.

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The Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra carries only a modest premium over the standard S20, with a price tag that comes in just shy of $1000.

And while that seems like a steep price to pay, it’s competitive in the world of the best robot vacuums. For this price, you're getting a machine that vacuums and mops effectively, delivers strong suction performance, independently navigates around the home, and incorporates several genuinely advanced features.

Like the non-Ultra Yeedi S20 Infinity version that I also reviewed, this robot vacuum also uses two cleaning solutions for cleaner floors – something I appreciate when testing for the best vacuum. Read on to discover how the new Ultra model (currently discounted to $849.99 at Amazon) compares to its predecessor and if it's truly worth the premium price tag.

The One-Minute Summary

When I reviewed the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra’s non-Ultra predecessor, I was impressed, if not quite blown away. While this upgraded version is not perfect, it gets much closer. It’s quieter in operation. Its vacuuming is just as good. Its mopping seems even better. And it’s easier to maintain.

It also keeps the things that I liked about the previous version, including the two cleaning solutions and the Matter-certified smart home support. It adds a few new features like an AI Agent Mode, though the touted 'Jet Spray' addition doesn't feel like a worthwhile addition.

I also think that, despite the price, it’s competitive with other models that offer the same type of cleaning experience. Just be prepared to spend close to a thousand dollars for it. Of course, that’s typically the case with the vacuums of this variety. You’re paying for the convenience and hands-free operation. A typical vacuum offers a deeper clean, but requires some elbow grease, and the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra allows you to postpone those deep cleans and keep up regular cleans with ease.

Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra: Specifications

Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra: Setup

For a product that’s mostly already assembled and arrives in just a few pieces, the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra does take a little while to set up. Now, it’s not complicated. The base station is intact except that the extended base plate needs to be attached (and it just drops in), and the robot vacuum itself already has all the brushes installed. Opening and adding the two different included cleaning solutions is not difficult.

Really, what takes so long is removing the various sheets of plastic and smaller pieces of styrofoam used to keep the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra safe during transport. It’s a little annoying and feels a bit wasteful, but it does at least keep everything extra safe until fully set up, even if it takes five minutes to remove everything.

The physical assembly is otherwise straightforward and takes about three minutes of work. Plug the base station in, add the extended base plate, put the robot vacuum all the way back in the base station, and then just power on both the base station and robot vacuum. At that point, the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra just needs to map your space before cleaning.

To fully finish setting up the robot vacuum, you will want to go through the app setup as well to get access to all the functionality of this vacuum. I did have some initial trouble connecting the robot vacuum to my phone (the whole process starts with a Bluetooth connection between a smartphone and the S20 Infinity Ultra), but I do have some wonky internet. Once connected, I had to just go through the prompts to finish setup. I would say the app setup process, not including my technical WiFi difficulties, probably took ten to twenty minutes.

Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra: Design and Features

One thing, among many, that I’ve noticed about expensive robot vacuums is that they all talk to you. They talk when they start up. They talk when they’re done. They talk when something’s in the way. But not all of the vacuums let you talk to them. The Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra, with its Matter Ecosystem support, lets you do so via voice assistant (as long as you’ve set up the robot through the Yeedi app already). I was able to connect through Alexa.

And like most expensive tech these days, the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra also uses AI. You can run the vacuum in AI Agent Mode in the app, and the vacuum will adjust on its own the various cleaning settings, like suction power, to clean my floors as it sees fit. And truthfully, when using the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra more passively (and not to vacuum up large messes), I ran it in this mode.

While features are a bit more fun to write about, the actual design of the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra can’t be overlooked. I don’t quite mean the durability or build – those are on par with every robot vacuum I’ve tested above $500, but there are a couple of additions that make cleaning easier.

I really appreciate that the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra uses two different cleaning solutions with its mopping capabilities. There are two cleaning solution-specific reservoirs inside the base station – along with the much bigger 4 and 2.2 litre respective clean and dirty water reservoirs – for those solutions, which help break down stains and feel more like a deep cleaning.

The base station also has a decently sized 2.5-litre dust bag. It can probably hold a good month or two of auto-empties from the robot vacuum before needing to be replaced. Also, it's worth mentioning that the base station is that it does mop drying, so be prepared to wait a few hours after mopping for the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra to fully dry the mop roller.

As far as the robot vacuum itself goes, it’s flat on top – no little lookout tower in the middle – with just a magnetic top plate hiding its onboard dustbin and onboard controls, so that it can fit under furniture like a couch that some other robot vacuums can’t.

On the bottom, it may have just one side brush, but at least the bottom roller brush hoovering everything up, has zero tangle technology, a good option for those dealing with lots of pet hair. I find some variation of this type of anti-tangle tech on most mid-range to premium robot vacuums, so I’m a little more impressed by the Ozmo Roller 3.0, Yeedi’s mop roller, which not only mops a very even 27cm wide path, but lifts when going over carpet, and, most importantly, can extend out a couple of inches to get into edges and corners.

What Is the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra Like to Use?

Interacting with the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra is much the same as its smaller sibling, the non-Ultra version. Press the center button on the robot vacuum itself, and it will just start – usually using whatever settings were selected the last time the app was open. If you press the button without setting up the app, it does a standard level of vacuuming and mopping.

Within the app, starting to clean is pretty straightforward as well. If AI Agent Mode is selected, all you have to do is press start for a cleaning. If you want something specific, you can manually adjust several settings specific to that cleaning, such as cleaning mode (vacuum only, vacuum and mop, vacuum then mop), four levels of suction power from quiet mode to max, water flow level up to 50 (mL presumably), three levels of cleaning speed, and whether I want it to do one or two passes. My only issue here is that the app wanted to collapse this menu when I changed the water flow level, even though I was not done choosing my settings.

It’s also worth noting that the app allows you to choose some station-specific functions – Empty Bin, Wash Mop, Dry Mop – at will, which is nice. The app also lets you create a schedule as well as clean specific rooms or even specific zones if there’s a specific spill that needs cleaning – something I had to do for the vacuuming and mopping tests below.

Speaking of the map, I had no trouble dividing or combining rooms, though I didn’t need to with how accurately the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra mapped out my space. I was also able to select rooms and select what kind of flooring is in that room (hardwood flooring, marble, etc.) as well as whether there’s carpet (a separate selection for some reason). You can even add furniture on the map, though this doesn’t seem necessary, and create a second map for another area in your home.

I want to mention some general things when the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra is running. First, it’s among the quieter robot vacuums I’ve used. At standard vac and mop settings, this robot vacuum registers around 56dB in volume. That doesn’t mean you can’t hear it while going, but it’s quiet enough to ignore.

Also, I’ve already mentioned how this robot vacuum can get under furniture easily thanks to its flat top. What I haven’t mentioned is object avoidance, which I found to be very good here. Since I had it set to be very sensitive, it registered and avoided just about everything I would put in front of it, even thicker cables like an HDMI cable, only having trouble with a translucent container with water. That said, I still suggest picking up before running the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra as it gives a good six-inch berth to anything it’s trying to avoid, so it will leave fairly large spots untouched because it’s avoiding a frisbee sitting on the floor.

Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra: Vacuuming Tests

When testing robot vacuums, we reviewers like to spot clean an area covered in different-sized granules to see how the unit responds. Usually, it’s cereal, lentils, and sugar. I had run out of lentils, so I used long-grain rice instead. For the vacuuming tests, I ran the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra on both hard flooring and carpet.

After having run my tests, I found this robot vacuum to do well on both surfaces, but still not quite catch everything put down in front of it, especially if it wasn't set to deep cleaning and two passes in the app. This was particularly true on hard flooring, where it did kick a Cheerio or two around and left a trail of sugar on its first pass. It did pick up the rice immediately, however.

The story was much the same on carpet, though it didn’t kick the cereal around. It still needed an extra pass to pick up all the sugar. With a suction power rating of 22000Pa, the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra is as powerful a robot vacuum as I’ve come across.

It still does not replace the need for a regular vacuum for deep cleaning. This is true more on carpet than on hard flooring, because the mop brush is not involved (it lifts up 15mm off the floor to keep it from getting wet), and that mop brush is the only part extending out, meaning that the vacuuming alone is not getting to the edges and corners where dust tends to build up most.

Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra: Mopping Tests

I was more impressed with the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra’s mopping than its still-good vacuuming. A big part of that is that 27cm cleaning path width from the mop roller that is not only covered in a micro-fiber type fabric but puts 2800pA of downward pressure as it’s mopping. Also helpful is the fact that the mop roller extends out when cleaning. The Ozmo Roller 3.0, as Yeedi calls it, is how this robot vacuum is able to get into the edges and corners of a room.

As mentioned before, the addition of the two cleaning solutions is also something that I believe adds to this robot vacuum’s cleaning prowess. And, of course, the fact that it has the new 'Jet Spray' feature, to handle stains one would normally grab a wet/dry vacuum for, is nice, though I have to select a zone for the feature to use it, as opposed to doing it on its own. To test this feature, I rubbed some wet dirt on the floor and selected 'Jet Spray.' The Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra seems to spray water at the corner of the zone just to add extra water that it would push around instead of directly on the dirt, strangely enough. However, it also sucked everything up and left a very clean floor. I can’t decide if this feature is useful or a gimmick, but again, the floor was clean.

For the actual mop testing, I put some soy sauce, ketchup, and mustard on the floor all at once to see how the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra would fare. The robot vacuum needed just one pass to mop everything up and leave a clean, non-sticky floor.

Just be aware that if you’re mopping large areas – I’m usually covering about 7 - 800 square feet on a usual cleaning - the robot vacuum will return regularly to the base station to fill up water and wash the mop roller. I appreciate the thoroughness and cleanliness, even if it does mean that the actual cleaning time for that space is about an hour.

Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra: Maintenance

When I reviewed the non-ultra version of this model, I felt that the ability to clean it up and maintain it was good, but not great. I could get to the onboard dustbin if I needed to, I could remove the central roller brush if something got tangled, and the app would let me know when certain things needed to be refilled or replaced.

But figuring out how to clean this robot vacuum is just a little bit easier than the previous model. That’s because the mop roller brush is actually removable, something that was not the case on the previous version meaning if it ended up trying to mop up a mess too big for it and something got behind the mop roller, I would have to use a Q-tip to get behind the mop roller and do what I could, hoping that running the mop wash feature in the app would be enough to finish the job. With the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra, I can just remove the mop roller, clean it, clean behind it, and put it back in. Much easier.

The water tanks are as easy to access as they are with any other model. I will say that the door covering the cleaning solution reservoirs and the dustbag requires a little more force than expected to open. Out of all the expensive, feature-filled robot vacuums I’ve tested, I think this might be the easiest to clean. Just expect to spend a little money down the line to replace the cleaning solutions and dust bags.

How Does the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra Compare?

Homes and Gardens’ top robot vacuum pick at the time of writing is the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller, which has an MSRP of $1,599.99, though it is currently being offered up for a slightly more reasonable price of $1,049.99. It has a lot in common with the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra thanks to its excellent mopping and object avoidance, not to mention its fairly low maintenance. The reviewer of the Dreame robot vacuum did find the app a bit overwhelming and not consistent when cleaning carpets.

Considering the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra costs $999.99, I find it a very competent alternative to the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller. After all, the app only becomes a bit much if you’re digging into all the various extra settings, and the carpet cleaning is good. That said, the Dreame is a little stronger in the vacuum compartment since it has 30,000pA of suction power, requiring fewer passes to handle vacuuming up, say, some spilled sugar.

It’s also worth comparing the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra to the Yeedi S20 Infinity, which has an MSRP of $899.99. While the Ultra has the jet spray feature, I think the Ultra is worth the extra cost mainly because of the removable mop roller and quieter operation. That said, the non-Ultra version has a dustbin that doesn’t require dustbags, so it has less recurring costs in the long run.

How I tested the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra

We take a methodical approach to how we test vacuums, which involves in-depth and standardized performance tests, running benchmarks, and living with the product to see how it fits into everyday cleaning.

For the Yeedi S20 Infinity Ultra, I used it for a week, running it every day in an area regularly occupied by five adults and two French Bulldogs (with the odd appearance of a reclusive cat). I ran it typically with vacuum and mop functionality together – often with the AI Agent Mode on – though I’ve run it with just one or the other for testing.

As far as targeted tests go, I did run it to pick up about a quarter cup of sugar, rice, and cereal, testing with each type of substance individually on both hard flooring and carpet. I also tested the mopping by running a test with ketchup, mustard, and soy sauce.

Next, explore our guide for choosing the best vacuum for pet hair for your home.

Sometimes, you need more than just a vacuum cleaner when cleaning. I'm thinking of the times when cereal has been spilt; the car is in need of a deep clean and the outbuildings need a vacuum. Fortunately, the Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner is designed to handle these messes, and more.

It'll effortlessly remove wet and dry debris, and all the things that you're best vacuum can't or won't want to get involved with. I know this first hand because I've been using it over a long weekend in my own home in other scenarios including to vacuum-away spilt dried cereals; clean-up the porch and suck-up water from the kids' sandpit after a deluge of rainfall.

On paper, the specification says that the 1100W of suction power will clear fine dust and heavy debris. Was it any good? Keep reading to find out what I think about it, and how it compares with similar wet and dry vacuums.

My One Minute Verdict

The Karcher WD4 wet and dry vacuum cleaner has been designed for substantial home projects where a standard vacuum cleaner lacks the durability required.

It provides 1100W of suction power to clear fine dust and heavy debris, including the removal of all the things that you really don't want your household vacuum to get involved with. The top-mounted design means that it is suitable for dry and wet debris, indoors and outdoors; you'll need to swap out the fleece filter bag for liquid pick-up, though, admittedly, I did find it to be a bit of a faff.

It's one of six wet dry vacuum cleaners in the product category, with the WD4 positioned as a mid-range appliance. For example, it has a greater capacity than the WD3 (17L), yet smaller capacity than the WD5 (25L). The price of Karcher wet dry vacuum cleaners ranges from $89.99 to $349.99, and the WD4 is marked up as bang in the middle of this range with a price of $199.99.

On test, I found it bulky to maneuver around; it has a restrictive 26.2ft power cable and 7.2ft suction hose that I felt like I was wrestling with. If you're after a wet dry vacuum that is perhaps more portable then I'd be looking at the Shark Messmaster Portable Wet/Dry Vacuum. Alternatively, the Dreame Z30 Pro Aqua Wet-to-Dry Vacuum more closely resembles a cordless vacuum, so it's more portable and versatile, and it handles pet hair on both carpet and hard floors.

Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner: Specifications

Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner: Design and Features

The Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner is designed to be used on the inside of the car, garage floor, or on yard jobs that your standard vacuum cleaner can not handle. I see it as the larger cousin to a canister vacuum.

It has a large 5.3-gallon (20L) container that'll hold large debris and liquids. The tear-resistant fleece bag slots inside the container and clips over the hose. When you're vacuuming liquids, it's advised to remove this bag, although it can easily cope with damp debris such as soggy cereal and wet houseplant soil.

To access the bag, the motor can be removed and lifted off the container by releasing the two clips on the side.

You'll find that the filter is top-mounted too. This is enclosed in the filter box, which can be easily removed without coming into contact with any dirt. This means that in the event that the filter becomes damaged, it can be easily replaced with a new one ($22.99, Karcher.com).

The WD4 is kitted out with 1100W of suction power, and the 2025 model (that I have) has a blower function too. There is only one power setting when using the "suction" or "blowing" function, which is strong enough to remove small stones or empty a 200lb sandpit full of water, and blow away dropped damp compost.

I found that the 26.25ft power cable was sufficient for the cleaning tasks I set. However, I will need an extension cord like this 10ft Amazon Basics cord ($6.99, Amazon) so that I can clean the car and further around the patio area.

The WD4 also has 7.2ft suction hose that connects to two suction tubes to add a further 3.28ft to the overall length when vacuuming; the floorhead or crevice tool accessory (included) simply slots onto the end of a tube. These can then all be taken apart just as easily as they connected together for storing onboard.

It can all be maneuvered as one appliance unit on four castor wheels that slot onto the base of the container as part of the setup. You can either wheel it around by the handle or lift it with this handle when taking it to another space to clean.

What Is the Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner Like to Use?

To look at, the Karcher WD4 wet dry vacuum cleaner is big. Measuring 20.7(H) x 14.4(W) x 15.1(L)in and weighing 15.2lbs, it is positively a unit and one that I needed to allow a generous amount of space for while cleaning my allocated spaces. It's also one that I would use and store at ground level because its size would be difficult to carry up/down stairs.

It's designed to be used with either the floorhead or crevice tool attached to the suction tubes while removing debris off the floor, or with the bent handle attached to the suction hose while using the blower function. I found it easy to switch between the two different functions – blower and suction – by removing the suction tubes and tools, and turning the appliance with the one-speed dial.

The WD4 is noticeably louder than a vacuum cleaner and is more in line with a pressure washer. I recorded a noise level reading of 84dB using the decibel meter reader app on my smartphone. This noise is equivalent to that of a passing vehicle.

Test 1: Flour and Sugar

In an instance where you'll be wanting to use the Karcher WD4 to clean up flour and sugar, I spilled some on our tiled utility room floor. I used half a cup of flour and sugar (about 50/50 split) to see how well the suction coped with fine debris.

The 1100W suction meant that the floorhead was firmly attached to the floor, but because this debris was so fine, the suction created a clear radius around it, and it removed all the flour and sugar within its path in one clear pass.

Test 2: Pantry

Next up, I spilt cereal and rice on the floor to emulate the type of larger debris that the WD4 could face, indoors and outdoors. I poured half a cup of cereal and half a cup of rice onto the tiled flooring in our utility room.

The floorhead effortlessly removed the rice with no grains getting stuck or blown off course from the floorhead. The cereal, however, got pushed along with the floorhead unless I lifted and dropped the floorhead on it so that it could be vacuumed. No cereal became stuck or lodged in the hose.

Test 3: Liquid

As a wet-dry vacuum, I wanted to demonstrate how the Karcher WD4 removed liquid. To do this, I took it into the yard and challenged it with the removal of rainwater from my kids' sandpit, which is more used to holding 200lbs of play sand, rather than rainwater. I figured that it would be a big help to remove and contain the rainwater prior to emptying, rather than to flood the patio and make it wet for play.

When removing liquids with the WD4, you'll need to remove the bag by lifting off the top of the canister and removing it. For the purpose of the test, I also removed the floorhead, although the floorhead is suitable for use on liquids because it doesn't have any bristles.

All the liquid was quickly removed and contained in the 5.3-gallon container. When I turned off the appliance, water ran back down the suction tubes that were being held in by the strong suction. This is a testament to the powerful suction and versatility.

Test 4: Attachments

The Karcher WD4 wet-dry vacuum only comes with one attachment other than the floorhead, and that is the crevice tool. This tool is suitable for targeting the vacuum suction. However, this would get seldom used if the WD4 is going to be used as an outdoor vacuum (porch, shed, and patio). It'll be better used to help clean the car, although I find it easier with a cordless vacuum cleaner.

I've also tested the WD4 in our grubby porch, which was shamefully littered with debris such as dirt, old receipts, cobwebs, and even Christmas tree branches. It's one of those jobs that I didn't want my household vacuum to clean, so I'm glad I had the WD4 around.

The only item it struggled to lift was a scrunched-up piece of tissue because it was larger than the diameter of the hose. Everything else was removed and banished into the 5.3-gallon bag in the container.

I then thought it would be prudent to try out the "blower" function. To do this, I dropped some old, damp compost on the patio in the yard. The WD4 had enough power to propel it in an onwards direction, and in any direction I wanted it to go. I imagine that this function would also be great for blowing away leaves, but this test will need to wait until fall, when the leaves are off the trees.

Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner: Setup and Maintenance

As a large appliance, the Karcher WD4 arrived in a big and heavy box. The box doesn't have handles either. To move it I managed to get my arms around it to lift but I imagine that, for some, it may be too difficult to move without some help.

The WD4 arrived as a complete kit, packaged using cardboard to secure each part inside the box and plastic bags around each part. I don't think that the use of plastic bags was necessary because with cardboard packaging securing it all within the box, there was no risk of movement and, therefore, no risk of damage.

Inside the box is: the main unit (WD4), a 7.5 ft. (2.2m) suction hose, (2x) 1.8 ft. (0.5m) suction tubes, hand nozzle, crevice nozzle, a wet/dry floor nozzle, an automotive-style pleated filter, and a fleece filter bag.

It also comes with some instructions, as with all Karcher instructions, I really struggled to read them. Fortunately, as all the parts were laid out, it was obvious how it all fitted together using no more than just a few essential DIY skills.

To set it up, I attached the suction hose, connected the suction tubes to the hose and hand nozzle, installed the fleece filter bag, and popped on the four caster wheels. The pleated filter was already in place. This took no longer than five minutes.

The fleece filter bags can hold up to 53 gallons of debris. How often you replace it will depend on the type of dry debris that you're removing, or if you end up cleaning more damp dirt than dry. Replacement bags can be bought from Amazon for $16.19 (pack of 4), which can be attached by simply opening the bag and placing it inside the vacuum.

When removing liquids, this will need to be poured away – ideally wheeled over to a drain because the size and weight of it is difficult to lift, and you may not want the dirty liquid poured down a sink plug inside the home.

Over time, a cleaning tip that I would recommend is to wipe each part of the WD4 to keep it in a good working order. The top-mounted filter may also begin to perish and become damaged, so you'll need to replace it with a new one ($22.99, Karcher.com).

How Does the Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner Compare?

The Karcher WD4 wet and dry vacuum cleaner is one of eight in the category from this German brand, and it's positioned in the middle of the range. For example, it has a greater capacity than the WD3 (17L) yet smaller capacity than the WD5 P (25L). The price of Karcher wet dry vacuum cleaners ranges from $89.99 to $349.99, and the WD4 is marked up as bang in the middle of this range with a price of $199.99.

I've found that the Karcher WD5 P wet and dry vacuum cleaner is generally more robust than the WD4 with sturdier onboard storage; one button to remove the top mount (rather than two clips at the side) and a stronger, fold-down handle. While it has the same 1100W motor as the WD4, it can pack away more debris, so it's made for bigger projects. This one costs $249.99 and, for the money, it must be said that I feel a lot more confident with it.

I appreciate that not everyone would be looking to have a wet-dry vacuum as big as these Karchers. If you're after a wet-dry vacuum that is perhaps more portable, then I'd be looking at the Shark Messmaster Portable Wet/Dry Vacuum.

This retails for around $100, and our reviewer, Camryn Rabideau, found that it’s a powerful and versatile cleaning tool that can be used all around your home. It had no problem sucking up spider webs, debris under car seats, and even spilled milk, and unlike a full-size shop vac, this model is quick and easy to clean. Plus, it’s compact enough to tuck into a closet when it’s not in use, so it’s ideal for anyone who has limited storage space in their home.

Alternatively, the Dreame Z30 Pro Aqua Wet-to-Dry Vacuum (LINK WHEN LIVE) more closely resembles a cordless vacuum, so it's more portable and versatile, and it handles pet hair on both carpet and hard floors. Our reviewer, Victoria Woollaston, found that 'it's an impressive multitasker that delivers on its core promise of being a full-power cordless vacuum and floor washer in one.' The Z30 also has a self-cleaning station, but it costs around $470, which puts the Karchers' indoor and outdoor versatility back into perspective.

How We Test Vacuums

At Homes & Gardens, we have a dedicated and thorough procedure of how we test vacuums so we can get a like-for-like comparison between models, and to make sure we're recreating real-life circumstances.

I tested the Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner as and when it was required over a two-week period. It was used on hard flooring (laminate and tiles), liquids and solids, indoors and outdoors. In addition to running all three standardized tests – flour and sugar; lentils and cereal; hair – I used it to clean the grubby porch and moss-heavy patio, and to remove water from the kids' sandpit. This included removing leaves, dried mud, bits of Christmas tree, and moss fallen from the roof. I then recorded how noisy it was using the DecibelX app.

This gave me the complete picture of how this wet-dry vacuum would perform in real conditions, rather than a single test session, including the practicalities of cleaning and storage, and its overall condition after the two weeks of testing.

If you're sold on getting the Karcher WD4 Wet & Dry Vacuum Cleaner then it would be wise to know about the things that you can clean with a wet dry vacuum. However, if you only need a vacuum cleaner for removing solely dry debris then check out these best vacuum cleaners for pet hair which are equally as good; just a different gig.

I love the crisp, hotel-like look of all-white bedding, but there is nothing luxurious about sheets that have developed a yellow tinge over time. Even the highest-quality linens can lose their brightness after years of regular use, leaving them looking tired rather than timeless.

In an effort to restore my own sheets to their former glory, I begged the experts to share their secrets. Time and again, they suggested the OxiClean White Revive Whitener & Stain Remover Liquid Additive, available from Amazon, as one of the simplest ways to keep white bedding looking fresh and bright.

Designed to tackle dullness, yellowing, and everyday stains without bleach, it promises to revive whites with minimal effort. Here’s why laundry pros swear by it, and why it could be the secret to keeping your bedding looking hotel-fresh for longer.

As a Sleep Editor, my ever-growing collection of best bed sheets is my pride and joy. Loath to let my older, well-loved sheets retire before their time, I spoke to Rechelle Balanzat, Founder and CEO of premium laundry service Juliette, to find out her secret laundry ingredient for restoring their bright whiteness. Her best recommendation? The OxiClean White Revive Whitener & Stain Remover Liquid Additive available at Amazon.

'It takes the hassle of time out of restoring sheets, pillowcases, and towels to bright white, and doesn’t have the adverse effects chlorine bleach does,' she explains. 'Revive is effective because it targets and removes the body oil and detergent residue, and the mineral buildup that lines and forms a layer on white fabric, which causes a yellow and dull appearance.'

As Rechelle highlights, OxiClean White Revive is also far more fabric-friendly than the typical bleach used in laundry, keeping fabrics soft and supple and preventing premature wear. The same applies when washing towels.

'A soak in OxiClean White Revive is essential,' she adds. 'You can literally see the results, and it speaks for itself, so other specialty treatments are not worth the purchase.'

Natural Alternatives

If you'd prefer to ditch harsh commercial chemicals altogether, you can also use lemon juice in laundry to a similar effect, though likely not quite so effective. Add around half a cup of lemon juice to your detergent dispenser, alongside your detergent, or add it straight to the drum.

'After the washing cycle was complete, I removed the laundry and began to notice the results as soon as they started to dry,' says our tester Megan Slack. 'After just one wash, I noticed my whites looked notably brighter and emitted a subtle citrussy scent.'

Alternatively, you can also use white vinegar in laundry (provided you know where to put vinegar in a washing machine and when to add vinegar to laundry), which is also a proven method to dissolve dull, dingy build-up and naturally brighten whites while making laundry smell better long-term.

What to Shop

Below, you can shop from a selection of whitening essentials, as well as a few of my favorite bedding picks if yours are past their prime. If that's the case, don't throw them away: They can be cut and used as cleaning and dusting cloths, or donated to pet shelters for a second, sustainable life.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Expert

Don't forget to keep these mistakes to avoid when washing whites in mind to avoid undoing your hard work.

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On June 2, Levoit dropped two new vacuums – the Levoit VortexIQ and the VortexIQ Pro. Both vacuums boast Levoit’s new LED system called NeoSight, a 150-degree green LED light that better illuminates dust, pet hair, and debris that you wouldn’t be able to see by sight or with a regular light.

I’ve been testing cordless vacuums for five years, witnessing the evolution of vacuum technology from the introduction of auto-empty docks to smart features. So, I know that Levoit is not the first brand to employ a green light. Other vacuums like the Dyson V16 Piston Anima and the Ultenic U16 Flex boast it too. However, I’d never used a vacuum with this technology, which is why I was so excited to test the Levoit VortexIQ Pro for two weeks in my 1,600-square-foot home on historic hardwood and laminate floors and short- and high-pile rugs.

After running a variety of tests with the VortexIQ Pro, I understood the hype and got a better sense for its other features, like its impressive suction capabilities and attachments. Keep reading to learn more about this vacuum before checking out our best cordless vacuums guide to see how the Levoit VortexIQ Pro compares.

Levoit VortexIQ Pro: Specifications

Unboxing & setup

The Levoit VortexIQ Pro arrived in a lightweight compact box with two attachments, a charger, and a charging holder that can be affixed to the wall.

The vacuum was broken down into four parts, and it took me less than a minute to assemble it. The Levoit VortexIQ Pro arrived with a 77% battery life and took less than an hour to fully charge.

Levoit VortexIQ Pro: Design and Features

LED lights on vacuums aren’t anything new. They allow you to see dirt and debris in dark spaces. However, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro sports a NeoSight Dust Detection Light, or a 150-degree high-contrast green LED Light, which magnifies microscopic items on your floor like dust and hair.

According to Levoit, the green light makes particles appear 12 times larger than regular lighting. Unfortunately, the green LED light is only present when the regular vacuum head is in use and isn't employed with any of the attachments.

NeoSight light aside, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro is a standard cordless stick vacuum with a 180-degree lay-flat design and a single floorhead with an anti-tangle brush design that works on different floor types.

The handle features a power button and three power mode buttons – eco, mid, and turbo. Unfortunately, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro lacks smart features, which means the vacuum doesn’t increase the suction power if it recognizes dirt or debris or a different floor type.

Like other stick vacuums, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro can be broken down into a handheld device with or without the stick. Two attachments are provided. The 2-in-1 crevice tool is perfect for cleaning along baseboards, in corners, or blinds, while the mini motorized brush is perfect for removing pet hair from a couch or vacuuming in tight spaces, like next to your toilet.

The dustbin is 0.85 liters and features five-stage HEPA filtration that captures 99.99% of particles (like pet dander, pollen, etc.) as small as 0.3 microns.

Even though the vacuum can stand upright on its own, Levoit provided a charging dock that can be fastened to your wall (with screws provided). You can then plug the charger into the dock and set the vacuum to charge. If you don’t want to affix the charger to your wall, you can plug the charger into the battery when it's on or off the vacuum.

What is the Levoit VortexIQ Pro Like To Use?

At 3.5 lbs., the Levoit VortexIQ Pro is a considerably lightweight vacuum. As I vacuumed my house, it glided across my floors and didn’t scratch my historic hardwood. The vacuum head fit in tight spaces and maneuvered easily, so I didn’t have to move as much furniture around to clean in tight spaces.

With its 180-degree lay-flat design, I could reach under my bed and cabinets, pulling dirt and debris from hidden spots with ease. The vacuum head is also short enough to fit under my cabinet overhangs without issue.

The most prominent feature of the Levoit VortexIQ Pro is its NeoSight Dust Detection Light. I was astounded by the difference that a green LED light makes. It highlighted dirt, dust, and microscopic materials that I could not see with my naked eye or even a regular LED light. Tiny scratches on my historic wooden floor were even visible.

Although I wish the Levoit VortexIQ Pro had smart features – like the ability to recognize dirt and debris and automatically increase the suction power – I can see how the green LED light is meant to offset that lack of technology. I hope other vacuum brands adopt the green light. because I’m now convinced that I've been missing a lot of dirt, debris, and allergens in my home that I couldn't see before.

In general, I thought the Levoit VortexIQ Pro cleaned my house well, no matter the floor type. It suctioned up day-to-day dirt and debris that I tracked in from the mudroom, food waste that fell to the floor in my kitchen, and all the dust that comes with having a historic house. I tested the Levoit Aero last year, and I felt like the Levoit VortexIQ Pro did a better job at cleaning my floors of different-sized materials.

One of the biggest drawbacks to this vacuum was the front edge cleaning. When I used the vacuum head to clean straight at a wall, there was about an inch and a half strip of floor between the wall and the vacuum head that wasn’t cleaned. Thankfully, the edge cleaning was much better, reaching within a centimeter of the wall.

Whenever I turned on the vacuum, it automatically started in eco mode, but I preferred using the mid option as it offered better suction on hard floors and high-pile rugs, as well as 40 minutes of battery life. I was able to clean my entire house on the mid setting and still have 45% battery life left.

When I conducted cleaning tests (which you can see below), the eco mode performed better than expected. I was hoping that the battery would last longer than 48 minutes on eco mode, especially since the mid setting lasts 40 minutes. An eight-minute difference was disappointing.

The turbo setting was necessary to pick up larger debris, though with only a 13-minute battery life, I did not use that setting often because it then took 3 hours and 45 minutes for the vacuum to fully recharge. In terms of sound, Levoit VortexIQ Pro had a 75 dB rating on eco mode and a 79 dB rating on turbo mode – which is pretty standard, if not a bit on the low end.

It felt so good to use the VortexIQ Pro as a handheld vacuum, especially since I've been using a vacuum -- the Shark Freestyle Max cordless vacuum -- that can't be broken down. With the VortexIQ Pro, I utilized the 2-in-1 crevice tool to clean cobwebs from my 10-foot ceilings, dead bugs on my windowsills (I have over 20 windows), and dust around my tall baseboards (which cover the entire house). Not to mention, I used the mini motorized brush to clean tight spaces and my furniture, which is again something I can’t do with the Shark Freestyle Max.

Overall, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro is a solid vacuum for cleaning up daily messes, especially with the green LED light. The battery life is average, and the front edge cleaning is shockingly poor, but perhaps the attachment, side edge cleaning, and suction capabilities make up for that.

Test 1: Flour and Sugar

When it comes to vacuums, we always want to see how well it can pick up fine materials, especially things like dust, dead skin, and allergens. That’s why I sprinkled flour and sugar on my high-pile rug, hardwood floor, and laminate floor then used the vacuum on the eco and standard modes to suction up the fine materials. The white coloring makes it easy to see what’s left on the floor or the vacuum during the test.

When it came to the carpet test, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro suctioned 100% of the flour and sugar on mid mode. On eco mode, it picked up 95% of the material and left a light dusting of flour and sugar behind that only required one more pass to completely suction up. Bonus -- the Levoit VortexIQ Pro did a great job vacuuming fine materials in reverse on my rugs.

Although I expected to have similar results on hardwood and laminate, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro performed slightly differently for each. It suctioned all the flour and sugar from my laminate floors on eco and mid power modes. However, if I tried to vacuum in reverse, the flour-sugar mixture got stuck behind the wheels.

As for the hardwood floors, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro appeared to pick up all the flour and sugar in a single pass. That is, until I noticed that some of the mixture had stuck to the wheels and created lines on the floor that I then had to vacuum over. At least, no flour or sugar remained in the grooves of the hardwood.

Test 2: Pantry

Whether it’s dried mud, cereal, or rice, there will come a time when you need to vacuum medium and large items from your floors. To see if the Levoit VortexIQ Pro could handle larger debris, I laid out a row of Cheerios and dried green split peas on my hard floors and high-pile rugs.

No matter the floor type, the vacuum did a great job with suctioning the green split peas on eco and mid mode.

However, it pushed the Cheerios forward when I tried to vacuum them on all three floor types, which made it much more difficult to suction them up. I had to go very slowly over them and/or use the turbo mode, and even then, some of the Cheerios and split peas were flung about.

Between the historic hardwood floor test (which came after the rug test) and the laminate floor test, I got an error message on the vacuum, and it powered off. A little investigation revealed that the Cheerios had gotten stuck at the top of the vacuum, right before making their way into the dustbin. I had to remove them with a butter knife before I could complete the final test.

The Levoit Vortex IQ Pro may do a great job with fine and medium materials, but its capabilities with suctioning large materials are subpar and could result in a blockage issue.

Test 3: Hair

In my 20s, I developed a slight allergy to pet hair, which is why I don’t have pets. However, to give you the best insight on how well the Levoit VortexIQ Pro does with pet hair, I went to my neighbor’s house and procured cat hair to test on my hard floors, high-pile rugs, and an armchair.

When it came to my hard floors and high-pile rug, the vacuum suctioned up the cat hair quickly and efficiently on eco mode alone.

I used the mini motorized brush on eco mode to clean cat hair from a cream-colored armchair – and was amazed to see that it picked up nearly all the hair in a single pass. Two small hairs weren’t picked up on the first pass, but if I’d been using the mid or turbo mode, I have no doubt the results would’ve been perfect.

I even went the extra step of grabbing some hair from my hairbrush and putting it on the same chair. The results were practically the same, with one long piece of hair needing to be suctioned up on a second pass.

Test 4: Attachments

The Levoit VortexIQ Pro has two attachments – a mini motorized brush and a 2-in-1 crevice tool – that are easy to swap out. I found myself using the mini motorized brush quite a bit, and not just to clean my furniture.

There are plenty of spaces in my home, like between the oven and my wall, and alongside the toilet where the vacuum head can't fit. Yet, the green light shone bright in those tight areas, showing me just how much dust and dirt needed to be picked up. It’s a little awkward to use the mini motorized brush on my hard floors because it doesn’t bend like the robot vacuum head, but I got used to it because I'd rather use the attachment than pull out a broom.

The 2-in-1 crevice tool was excellent at cleaning the top and bottom of my baseboards and grabbing spider webs from the corners of windowsills and the ceiling. It even suctioned sugar in a single go on eco mode when I sprinkled it along the edge of a wall. The brush tool cleaned dust from my blinds decently on eco mode, but I had better results on mid and turbo modes.

Levoit VortexIQ Pro: Cleaning and Maintenance

The Levoit Vortex IQ Pro doesn’t come with an auto-empty dock, so whenever the dustbin became full, I had to turn it into a handheld vacuum and place it over the trash. From there, I pushed a button, and the lid swung open, emptying the dust and debris. The process is simple, but if you’re very sensitive to allergens and dust, there’s really no way to prevent the fine particles from escaping into the air. Cordless stick vacuums with sealable dust bags aren't common, but there are a few on the market.

I should note that when I emptied the dustbin, clumps of dirt and debris got stuck on the metal filter. I had to rotate the metal filter counterclockwise and remove it so that I could empty all the materials into the trash.

The dustbin can be removed from the vacuum and washed by hand with water. Same with the metal filter. The felt and foam filters should also be removed and washed by hand at least once a month and replaced every three months. As for the HEPA filter, it can be washed once a year.

How Does the Levoit VortexIQ Pro Compare?

Levoit has plenty of great cordless vacuum options that are comparable to the VortexIQ Pro. I recently tested the Levoit Aero, which performed similarly in suction tests, edge cleaning, and battery power to the VortexIQ Pro. The Aero has a headlight, but it’s not a green LED headlight. If you dislike maintenance, you may want to go with the Aero, which has an auto-empty charging base.

The Dreame R20 has a similar price point to the Levoit VortexIQ Pro but boasts smart features like adjusting the suction based on dust volume and floor type. The Dreame R20 may not be ideal for those with pets, but an up to 90-minute runtime and a weight of only 3.88 lbs. is impressive. Interestingly, it has a blue light that emits from the bristled floorhead (there are two floorheads), which does better than a regular light at revealing dust, though it's not up to par with Vortex IQ Pro's green light. Oddly, the soft floorhead – which is better on hardwood floors and tile – doesn’t have a light.

The Ultenic U16 Flex is probably the most similar cordless vacuum to the Levoit VortexIQ Pro, because it lacks auto-suction capability and has a floorhead outfitted with a green LED headlight. The two vacuums differ slightly in their cleaning capabilities, with the Ultenic U16 Flex performing better with large debris and the Levoit VortexIQ Pro better suited to suctioning pet hair and fine materials like flour and sugar from carpet.

Should You Buy It?

Thanks to the green LED light on the Levoit VortexIQ Pro, I was able to see a lot more dirt and debris on my floors, which resulted in cleaner floors.

Its lightweight nature, 180-degree lay-flat design, and compact floor head meant I could access tight and hard-to-reach spaces without having to move a lot of furniture. The suction power isn’t the highest I’ve tested, but it performed above average suctioning fine materials like flour from carpet and pet hair from furniture. It may struggle with larger materials like Cheerios and have poor front edge cleaning, but at least its side edge cleaning is efficient.

The battery dropped to about 50% once I cleaned my entire 1,600-square-foot home on a single charge on eco and mid modes. Those with decent-sized homes and apartments will likely have the same experience. Larger homes should consider a vacuum with a higher battery life.

All in all, the Levoit VortexIQ Pro is a great mid-range option for pet owners and those who hate the idea of missing any dirt, dust, and debris on their floors.

How We Test

At Homes & Gardens, we have a dedicated and thorough procedure of how we test vacuums that involves noting everything from unboxing to maintenance and using the vacuum around the house. I tested the Levoit VortexIQ Pro for two weeks on my high-pile rugs and hardwood and linoleum floors. This included sprinkling various substances on the three floor types to recreate real-life cleaning scenarios.

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My One Minute Verdict

The Karcher WD 6 P is not a vacuum for the faint-hearted. At 21.2lb / 9.6kg with a 7.9-gallon / 30-liter stainless steel tank, it most definitely earns its industrial, wet/dry shop title. It's a machine built for the kind of mess your everyday cordless won't touch, like flooded garages, workshop sawdust, post-renovation rubble, and anything liquid or heavy that has no business going near a regular vacuum.

When it works, it really works – and it’s a strong contender for the best vacuum for pet hair in the right setting. The suction is impressively powerful; my chocolate Labrador’s hair disappeared from hard floors and upholstery in a single pass. The blower function is equally effective, making quick work of leaf clearing and even blasting away water balloon debris scattered across the garden.

On carpet, the brushes on the main vacuum nozzle make the head stick and drag rather than glide, and on smooth hard floors, the same brush strips pushed debris around rather than picking it up cleanly.

This made it abundantly clear that the Kärcher WD 6 P is designed for rougher, uneven surfaces – garages, patios, workshops – rather than everyday flooring. Switching to wet mode, where the rubber lips take over from the brush strips, is a much more satisfying experience, and the machine's true strength lies in liquid pickup and heavy outdoor tasks.

Elsewhere, it's not an easy vacuum to build. Setup took close to 20 minutes – longer than any vacuum I've tested. Once built, it's also a beast of a machine and takes up a lot of space, which saw it quickly relegated to the garage.

At $349.99, this is a premium investment in a very specific kind of cleaning. If you have a garage, workshop, or outdoor space that regularly generates mess, it may well be the most capable tool you own. Especially if you have the storage space to match. For DIY fans, the integrated power tool socket on the front lets you plug your sander or drill directly into the machine and the vacuum starts and stops in sync with your tool, capturing dust at the source without any extra effort. Yet it is ultimately a niche recommendation.

If you're hoping for a versatile everyday vacuum that also handles the odd spill – especially if you have a low tolerance for noise and friction – you're better off with a standard wet-to-dry upright, like the Dreame H14 Pro or the Dyson V15 Detect.

Kärcher WD 6 P: Specifications

Kärcher WD 6 P: Design and Features

There is nothing subtle about the WD 6 P. It's unapologetically large, bulky and bright yellow. The 7.9-gallon / 30-liter stainless steel tank sits on five castors and is topped by a yellow motor head that houses the controls, filter system and accessory storage.

As with the rest of the Karcher range, it's a design that says workshop rather than home, which is exactly what Karcher intends – this vacuum is built for the kind of heavy-duty mess that a domestic canister or cordless simply can't handle.

The motor delivers 1,300W of rated input power and 300W of suction power – figures that put it well ahead of the Kärcher WD 5's 1,100W, and on par with the Bosch AdvancedVac 20's 300W suction, despite the Bosch drawing only 1,200W. The stainless steel tank is noticeably more durable than the plastic containers on lower-priced wet-dry vacs and is designed to withstand abrasive debris.

One of the WD 6 P's standout features is its push-button filter cleaning system, which Kärcher calls pulse technology. A single press sends a burst of air through the flat pleated filter, dislodging accumulated hidden dust back into the tank and restoring full suction power. This is particularly useful when vacuuming fine dust without a filter bag.

The flat pleated filter is also designed to stay dry during wet pickup – it sits in a top-mounted filter box that doesn't come into contact with liquid. This means you can switch between wet and dry tasks without removing or changing the filter. You do have to remove the fleece dustbag when switching to wet vacuuming, though (which I have forgotten on several occasions to my despair.)

On the front of the motor head is a rotary dial that you turn left to control the suction/blow power of the vacuum, and to the right to control the integrated power tool socket. This socket sits next to the dial and lets you plug in external tools to either provide power without the need for a separate extension lead, or it can be used to set the vacuum to switch on and off in sync with the tool. This is a useful feature during sanding or drilling and is something its predecessor, the WD 5 lacked.

An 8m (26.2ft) cord and 2.2m (7.2ft) hose then give the WD6 P a total working radius of just over 10m (33.5ft), which is more than enough for most workshops or large rooms. I could vacuum all rooms on my entire ground floor and into my garden without having to swap to different plugs.

The hose connects to two stainless steel extension tubes, a removable handle, and the floor nozzle. The other attachments include a crevice nozzle for baseboards, stair edges, and corners. A 1m (3.3ft) flexible hose is also included for connecting to the dust port on a power tool, and there's a bent handle you attach to the tubes to give you better control across the floor.

The floor nozzle is relatively narrow for a machine this size, which does limit how well it covers open floor areas, but allows it to get into tighter spots. It has a lever on the side that switches between two modes – dry, where brush strips extend down to sweep debris toward the suction inlet, and wet, where rubber squeegee lips take over to drag liquid toward it.

There is no neutral position; the nozzle is always in one mode or the other, so for bare suction without either the brushes or the rubber lips, you need to switch to a different attachment.

Both the cable and hose have dedicated storage positions on the machine, and the floor nozzle has a parking position so it can be hooked onto the body during work breaks.

For wet tasks, a drain screw at the base of the tank allows liquid to be emptied without lifting the machine – a practical consideration given that a full tank of water on the Kärcher WD 6 P will weigh around 66lb / 30kg.

The blower function works by moving the hose to the outlet port on the machine, reversing airflow to dislodge debris from hard-to-reach areas such as gravel beds or patio crevices. It's a small and simple touch, but it's super effective and useful, especially outdoors.

What Is the Kärcher WD 6 P Like to Use?

One of my favorite features of the Kärcher WD6 P is its castors. I never thought I'd celebrate something so innocuous, but having reviewed dozens of vacuums, these genuinely elevated the experience for me.

They make the machine incredibly easy to pull across hard floors and carpet, despite its bulk. I often get frustrated with the cord on upright and domestic vacuums always getting in the way, but the smooth way the castors navigate and pass over the WD 6 P's cord, plus having 26.2ft / 8m of cord to play with, means this was never an issue.

At 9.6kg (21.2lb) without accessories, there's no denying this is a heavy machine, and the weight is still felt when maneuvering in tight spaces or changing direction frequently, but the castors again make it feel much lighter and easier.

Due to the brushes on the floor nozzle, the Karcher WD6 P's performance on carpet and hardwood floors depends on getting the nozzle angle right. You have to tilt it slightly in order to pick up debris, rather than just move it around, and this doesn't always feel comfortable.

On carpet in particular, the brush and powerful suction work against you: the head drags and sticks, requiring real effort to push, and the brush strips tend to bury finer debris deeper into the pile rather than lifting it. This is not a machine built for carpeted rooms, or certainly not without switching to a different nozzle.

Switching to wet mode is a much better experience. The rubber lips glide across hard floors and pick up liquid cleanly and confidently, which is where the WD 6 P really earns its price.

On noise, the Kärcher WD 6 P is loud. The specification lists 73dB, but in my test, it was closer to 89dB on the minimum suction power, and 92dB on maximum. It's not comfortable for long periods.

Test 1: Flour and Sugar

For our flour and sugar test, I scattered a half-cup mixture across carpet, hardwood, and laminate to see how well the Kärcher WD6 P handles fine dry debris. This test is a proxy for the dust, skin cells, and fine dirt that build up across real homes.

On hard floors and laminate, the WD 6 P performed well, with the floor nozzle in dry mode picking up the mixture cleanly. The brushes on the underside of the nozzle come into their own here and guide the dust towards the suction inlet. Residue was minimal after a single pass.

Carpet was a different story. The suction and brush combo ended up simply pushing the flour and sugar deeper into the pile, leaving streaks across the carpet.

Working the nozzle repeatedly at different angles helped, but even with effort, some residue remained. If your home is predominantly carpeted, a dedicated upright or canister vacuum will serve you considerably better.

Test 2: Pantry

For my pantry test, I poured half a cup of cereal and lentils onto the same three floor types as before – carpet, hardwood and laminate.

On the laminate and wood, the Kärcher WD 6 P did an OK job with the lentils but struggled with cereal – you can clearly see in my review videos how the floor nozzle pushes the Cheerios around the surface rather than drawing them in cleanly, scattering pieces rather than collecting them.

Again, this is managed by angling the nozzle slightly, but the trade-off is that this isn't comfortable for long.

The brush strips work well on rougher, more uneven surfaces, such as garage floors or patios, where they have something to grip against, but on smooth flooring, they don't have enough purchase to guide lighter debris toward the suction inlet.

Test 3: Pet Hair

Maisie, my chocolate Labrador, is a dependable supplier of dark, dense, medium-length hair across my hard floors, upholstery, and carpets – and a solid real-world test for any vacuum claiming to be the best vacuum for pet hair.

On hard floors, the WD 6 P performed extremely well. Maisie’s hair vanished in a single pass, pulled straight into the hose without wrapping or leaving stray strands behind.

Suction is more than strong enough to handle even heavy concentrations of pet hair, and the lack of a brushroll means there’s nothing for hair to tangle around. A few strands do collect in the nozzle brushes, but they’re quick and easy to remove.

On carpet, the same angle-dependent performance applies, although longer pet hair is easier for it to lift and capture than fine dust and powder.

For pet owners with mostly hard floors and upholstery, the WD 6 P is highly capable. For carpet-heavy homes, however, a more dedicated pet-focused vacuum like the Miele Guard L1 Cat & Dog, available on Amazon, would be the better fit.

Test 4: Attachments

Swapping between attachments is refreshingly simple – in fact, it was the easiest part of the entire process. Everything twists and clicks securely onto the hose or extension tubes with a firm push, and detaches with a quick thumb press.

Nothing felt loose during use, although the fittings do require more force than you might be used to with a standard domestic vacuum – a reminder that this is built for tougher, more industrial-style cleaning.

The floor nozzle saw the most use. In dry mode, the brush strips are better suited to rougher, more textured surfaces than smooth floors, as noted in the tests above. In wet mode, however, the rubber lips performed noticeably better, giving a more controlled, purpose-built feel for handling spills and wet debris.

The lever switch between the two modes is easy to access and can be operated with your foot, making transitions quick and low-effort mid-clean.

The crevice nozzle proved genuinely useful. Dust in corners and along edges was removed cleanly in a single pass, with the strong suction doing most of the heavy lifting. It also came into its own for clearing the residue left behind during my flour and sugar tests, and it’s equally effective on baseboards, stair edges, and the gaps between appliances.

The bent handle noticeably improves control when pushing the floor nozzle across surfaces, particularly on carpet. It also detaches easily, allowing you to connect a nozzle directly to the hose for overhead cleaning or awkward angles without fuss.

One notable omission is the lack of an upholstery nozzle in the box – surprising at this price point – although a range of compatible accessories can be purchased separately from Kärcher.

Kärcher WD 6 P: Setup and Maintenance

The Kärcher WD 6 P was one of the most frustrating vacuums I’ve tested when it came to setup. Every step introduces more friction than you’d expect, from trying to attach the rotating castors to a wobbly, upside-down base, to repositioning the carry handle just to remove and refit the motor head.

Figuring out where everything goes isn’t intuitive either, and because the manual is mostly illustrated rather than genuinely explanatory, I ended up having to look up additional guidance online. The whole process took around 20 minutes and tested my patience more than once.

Emptying the WD 6 P is very dependent on what you’ve been cleaning. For wet waste, the drain screw at the base of the tank is the cleanest method – simply unscrew it, tilt the machine forward, and the liquid flows out without needing to lift the tank.

For dry waste, you need to move the carry handle forward to unlock the motor head, then twist, lift, and tip the tank into a bin.

Both emptying methods are straightforward enough, although the size and weight of the tank mean the process is less elegant than simply emptying a compact dustbin.

On the upside, the tank takes a long time to fill – unless you’re tackling a particularly large job – so this isn’t something you’ll need to do frequently in everyday use.

When used for dry tasks, the fleece bag does a good job of containing dust and can be lifted out cleanly without releasing a cloud of debris. That’s a meaningful advantage over bagless designs, especially after vacuuming fine dust or sawdust.

Replacement bags are readily available from Kärcher as well as third-party suppliers, and they’re simple to fit when needed.

The flat pleated filter is the component you’ll interact with most regularly. The push-button cleaning system takes care of the bulk of day-to-day maintenance, but when a more thorough clean is needed, the filter box releases with a press, folds open, and the filter lifts out cleanly without requiring you to reach inside the tank.

It can be rinsed under a tap and reused – Kärcher describes it as a lifetime filter when properly maintained – but it must be fully dry before being reinserted, which does require a bit of planning ahead.

The stainless steel tank interior is smooth and easy to wipe out, and shows less staining than a plastic container would over time. The hoses and tubes are straightforward to clear if blocked – disconnect, run water through if needed, and allow to dry.

Overall, the machine feels built to last, with the stainless steel tank and solid connection points giving it a durability that cheaper plastic wet-dry vacs don't match, and which helps justify the higher price.

How Does the Kärcher WD 6 P Compare?

The Kärcher WD 6 P sits at the mid-to-higher end of the wet-dry vacuum market at $349.99, and whether it justifies that price depends almost entirely on what you need it for. The most direct comparison is its predecessor, the $249.99 Kärcher WD 5. It shares the same core wet-dry design, but omits several key upgrades – including the power tool socket, push-button filter cleaning, and drain screw – all of which make a noticeable difference in day-to-day usability on the WD 6 P.

It also uses a smaller plastic container rather than the WD 6 P’s stainless steel tank, and the 16ft / 5m cord feels more restrictive in comparison. At $100 less, the WD 5 makes sense for lighter or occasional use, but for regular DIY work or more demanding wet cleaning tasks, the WD 6 P’s added features comfortably justify the step up.

How We Test Vacuums

We test every vacuum we review in real-world conditions across a range of floor types and debris categories. Each model goes through a consistent set of tests: flour and sugar on carpet, hard floors, and laminate to assess fine debris pickup; a pantry-style test using larger, heavier debris to evaluate general performance; and a pet hair test using real fur from Maisie, my chocolate Labrador, across both carpet and hard flooring.

We also assess each vacuum across setup time, ease of use, noise, manoeuvrability, and ongoing maintenance – including how simple it is to empty, clean, and reassemble. Every attachment is tested individually as well to understand its real-world practicality.

For wet-dry vacuums, we run additional tests covering wet pickup performance, evaluate any blower or secondary functions where included, and measure noise levels using the DecibelX app.

For full details of our testing methodology, see how we test vacuums.

An overflowing under-sink cabinet, brooms spilling out of cupboards, and enough cleaning cloths to last a lifetime: If this sounds familiar, you may need a compact and versatile cleaning system to help reclaim your storage space.

As I'm currently in the process of a house move, I'm streamlining my cleaning tool clutter once and for all, which is why I am glad to have spotted the $24 IKEA PEPPRIG Cleaning Set.

With a cleverly compact design, it's perfect for storing in even the smallest of apartments, and comes complete with all the essential cleaning tools everyone needs to refresh your whole home at an impressively affordable price.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

A cleaning tool that's clever, compact, and convenient to store − just like the IKEA PEPPRIG Cleaning Set − ticks all my boxes for a decluttered utility room or undersink storage area.

When deep-cleaning your house, having a 'one-stop shop' with you as you move around will save you so much time and energy, especially when paired with our expert cleaning tips.

The IKEA kit's telescopic handle is adjustable from 30 to 50 inches (handy if you're small like me) and makes cleaning up high, down low, and under awkward spaces like beds, fridges, and cabinets far more accessible than traditional tools. The smart lock mechanism also makes it effortlessly easy to change the cleaning head mid-task.

As the cloths are microfiber, they work well for dusting, polishing, and shining surfaces, even without detergent, and have the added benefit of being machine washable, too. Just remember to skip the laundry softener, as this will coat the microfiber hairs and reduce its ability to absorb liquid.

And, when it comes to small, storage-less home solutions, the included hangers mean you can attach the tool to your wall, keeping it out of the way yet easily accessible at all times.

The price of the IKEA set is one of its biggest draws, as I've been a long-time devotee to the Joseph Joseph CleanTech kit (and do very much feel it's worth the $80 price tag), but if you're on the hunt for something a little more affordable, the IKEA PEPPRIG Cleaning Set is a perfect alternative. It's also an excellent set for a second home, dorms, or a guest house.

What Shoppers Say

'A great set!' reads a recent five-star review on the IKEA site from verified buyer Kim. 'This is an all-inclusive cleaning set which is designed to make your life easier and cleaning more efficient. The multiple attachments meet a variety of different needs in your home.

'A welcome addition to your own housekeeping routine or makes a great housewarming gift for friends or family.'

I couldn't agree more − pair it with some beautifully scented cleaning products, like the Method Pink Grapefruit All-Purpose Cleaner, available at Walmart, and you'll have a thoughtful gift that any new homeowner likely doesn't already have, and would be delighted to receive.

Another, from Maria, calls it a 'must-have,' and adds, 'I love this, it literally has everything you need to clean. We just bought a new house, and the master bathroom has tile up to the ceiling, nine feet high. This helped me reach everything without needing a stepping stool,' while a third, from Shelise, echoes, 'I can get so many cleaning jobs done with just this one set.'

It's worth noting that some reviews say the adhesive storage hooks do not stay on, but many reference a short window for curing. Punteha van Terheyden, Head of Solved, advises, 'Place the adhesive on a dry, clean surface, press hard to remove air bubbles, and then leave it for 24 hours. Do not load it a minute sooner. I've never had an adhesive drill-free mount fall off with this installation method.'

So, if, like me, you're looking to cut your housekeeping clutter for good, upgrade your set-up with the IKEA PEPPRIG Cleaning Set for a versatile and affordable fix.

More to Shop

Ready to give your housekeeping routine a serious upgrade? Our selection of expert-approved tools and products will smooth the way.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

If you're not quite ready to fully upgrade your setup just yet, even taking the time to organize under your sink can make a world of difference to cleaning efficiency.

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When it comes to even heat distribution and flavorful sears, few pans rival cast iron. But with that performance comes upkeep, and it is hardly the most convenient cookware for everyday use.

For years, the fear of rust on my best cast iron cookware kept me away from this much-loved kitchen staple. Now, however, I’ve found the Lodge Rust Eraser, available from Amazon, which has made me far more confident about diving into cast iron cooking.

Designed to remove rust and help restore older pans to new again, this $9 tool is one of the simplest yet most effective additions to any home chef’s maintenance kit. Here’s how it works and why I wouldn’t use cast iron without it.

Understanding how to clean and care for every type of cookware can be overwhelming, leading many of us (myself included) to stick to one simple type that we can toss in a dishwasher and forget about. Cast iron is decidedly not that, requiring gentle washing, thorough drying, and regular seasoning to prevent rust and pitting.

The idea of rust scared me so much that I avoided the material altogether until I stumbled upon the Lodge Rust Eraser. This sturdy rubber block was designed to sand away rust and smooth out the surface of your pans, grill grates, and more. By stripping the pan down to bare metal, you can reseason it and use it as if it were brand new.

The shape of it allows precision removal, too, so you are not stripping away the general and protective built-up patina unnecessarily.

Given that it can be all too easy to miss a damp spot when cleaning cast iron or to make a mistake with seasoning as a beginner, the rust remover offers extra peace of mind that your investment won't be going to waste.

What Shoppers Say

With over 2,000 five-star reviews on Amazon, it is the saving grace for many a cast-iron chef.

One verified shopper, Jinxie, shared, 'Minimal effort and rust is gone! For real. I was even able to save the multiple, inherited cast iron pans which had been languishing in bins, collecting dust, until this bad boy came into my life. I’m an even bigger fan now of actually using my insanely huge amount of cast iron now that I don’t need to worry about someone not drying them well enough.'

Another added, 'Quick and easy, like erasing pencil with a rubber eraser, or using a pumice stone on a swimming pool. My hobby is metalworking, and I have spent many hours de-rusting iron and steel over the years, using everything from phosphoric acid to power tools, and for a small job (like a pot or grill), this is just the ticket! So easy to use, just rub it on the metal!'

What Else to Shop

From cleaning a burnt pan to restoring a well-loved patina, I’ve rounded up six essential cast iron tools to help keep your cookware performing at its best for decades to come.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

To prevent prematurely damaging your cast iron seasoning, brush up on the heat ring mistake that can ruin your cookware.

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Taking your washing to and from the machine is one of the easiest parts of laundry day, but that certainly doesn't mean it's not without its difficulties.

From dropped socks to sopping wet piles, the IKEA TORKIS Flexible Laundry Basket is the cure for all laundry-related woes – and it's only $9.99.

Large, durable, easy-to-carry, and mold-proof, it's makes doing laundry that little bit easier.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

The IKEA TORKIS is universally appealing. If you have a dryer, you can use it to carry items to it from your washing machine, or to hold items securely while you wait for a load to finish.

If you prefer to enjoy the benefits of air-drying laundry, you can carry items in and out of your backyard and around your house with comfortable ease as it's lightweight and has ergonomic handles.

And, in any case, you can use it as a laundry basket, or simply to transport items to and from your laundry room, and the plastic materials mean there's no worry of mold and mildew developing.

For that reason, it's the ideal laundry accessory, whatever your set-up. What's more, it costs just shy of $10, and there are four pretty, poppy colors to choose from.

What Shoppers Say

It's no surprise, then, that verified shopper Cathy crowns the IKEA TORKIS the 'best laundry basket.'

'Highly recommend this great quality laundry basket,' she says. 'I have purchased four of them. Perfect.'

She's not the only reviewer to buy multiple, either. 'Obsessed,' says Jillian,' who has purchased eight in total. 'Started with one for each kid as a laundry basket. Quickly realized that I needed one in my trunk and several more for laundry and toting items to and from home. I am I LOVE with these!'

Additionally, the versatility of this basket doesn't just stop at doing laundry.

As Catherine details in her five-star review, she uses one for dog toys, and another is needed for holding everything needed for painting outdoor pot plants. 'We have special outdoor paints, paint brushes, terracotta pots, and garden gnomes all set for when the kids in the family come to visit,' she explains. 'We just grab the tub, put all the supplies on the patio table, and we all paint away. I absolutely love these tubs!!'

Others note that it's perfect for bottom-watering houseplants, and can even double up as a high-sided cat litter box.

With four colors to choose from, I'm tempted to order one in every shade, just like fellow reviewer Arron, who adds, 'I have this basket in every color.'

What to Shop

If you're currently looking to upgrade your laundry set-up, shop from my selection of essentials and recommendations below.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

These organizing tricks to make laundry easier help prevent overwhelm.

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Air-drying may be the best way to keep laundry smelling fresh, but smaller items can be tricky to keep in place, whether on a line or rack, even with pegs.

That's where IKEA's PRESSA Hanging Dryer comes in handy. With 16 pegs for socks, underwear, infant clothes, and other small items, it can be hung up anywhere and conveniently folds for storage in small spaces when not in use.

Here's why it's the perfect aid for doing laundry.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

When smaller items such as socks fall from your washing line, ending up crumpled, musty, and smelling damp, it's a nuisance, making you retrace your steps or redo a batch in the washer.

But it can be avoided altogether with the IKEA PRESSA Hanging Dryer, with room for 16 small items, or eight pairs, which can be used both inside and outdoors, hung up just about anywhere, and folded away for convenient storage when not in use.

To me, this is the kind of laundry accessory you never knew you needed, until you use it for yourself.

Satisfied shopper Sarah agrees: 'I love this little octopus! This incredible little find is essential in my life from spring through fall − and hangs out on my porch and holds bras, underwear, and socks that I don't want on the clothesline in the backyard.

'I've had mine for [over] 15 years, and I'm finally replacing it only because two of the clips have failed...I'm not getting rid of my old one though − it's coming inside and going on trips with me.'

Another review, from Nancy, echoes Sarah's. 'Love my octopus,' she says. 'This octopus dryer is now home to keep company with my red octopus dryer that I've had for about 10 years or so,' she enthuses. 'Perfect for drying wool socks and bras − stuff that fares badly in the electric dryer,' with all the added benefits of air-drying laundry.

Additionally, as Nancy highlights, not only is the IKEA PRESSA perfect for air-drying in warmer weather − it also has an unexpected benefit in the cooler seasons. 'Also helps to humidify the home in winter − a bonus!'

What to Shop

If you're looking to give your laundry routine some love, shop our selection of essentials below to successfully swerve any bad laundry habits ruining your laundry and washing machine.

Knowing how to organize a laundry room is key to a stress-free laundry day. Our expert-led guide details everything you need to know.

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If you’ve ever forgotten a key ingredient in the fridge and fetched it mid-prepping your chicken or other meat for the grill, you’ve likely also cross-contaminated your appliance’s door handles in the process.

Professional cleaners warn that your fridge handles are one of the most easily forgotten areas for kitchen cleaning, but one of the most important to prevent avoidable illness, especially in the hotter summer months.

Here, experts explain why sanitizing this area is vital, and how to do so adequately without the need for harsh chemicals, so you can maintain the non-toxic home you have created.

Rosa Picosa, a Fabuloso® cleaning expert, explains, ‘We tend to use the fridge multiple times a day, and throughout the swirl of the day we can pick up germs unintentionally and then, we go to touch our face, food, and utensils without realizing our hands may not be as clean as we may think, which can potentially lead to spreading bacteria.'

This cross-contamination can be a key carrier for spreading germs in the kitchen, especially if you touch raw chicken or unclean produce and then proceed to open the fridge and other appliances. In one study on cross-contamination, it was reported that 'good hygiene practices in the kitchen are crucial to reducing the risk of foodborne diseases.'

To help prevent that spread from happening, Rosa adds, 'When cleaning the kitchen, I like to finish the area by wiping down the spots people touch all the time, like fridge doors, cabinet handles, and the faucet. These little details don’t take long, but they help the kitchen feel clean and keep germs from spreading too far out of our control.’

Why Fridge Handles Are Often Forgotten When Cleaning

Despite fridge handles being a high-traffic zone, they’re often forgotten, with professional cleaners identifying this area as a grimy spot they always notice in clients' homes.

Rosa adds, ‘I find people often stick to cleaning high-traffic, visible areas such as countertops, stovetops, and sinks. I always recommend spending no more than 10-15 minutes each day tackling one zone – I love to set a timer – wiping down counters and stovetops, spot-cleaning cabinet fronts, refreshing the sink area, or cleaning kitchen appliances such as the fridge.

‘The key is cleaning consistently to avoid the build-up of grime and sticky fingerprints before they turn into bigger cleaning jobs. These mini refreshes help the kitchen stay cleaner longer and make weekly deep cleans much easier.’

Keeping a regular and achievable cleaning schedule will also help, but washing your hands well when handling raw produce and before touching handles is the best preventative measure you can take.

How to Keep on Top of Fridge Hygiene in Busy Hosting Periods

Little and often works best, so that your kitchen’s hygiene remains an ongoing project. You don’t have to do it all at once; chip away at the tasks, zone by zone, regularly to ensure everything is tackled without your cleaning chores feeling overwhelming.

Rosa adds, ‘The main takeaway is that cleaning frequency is really about consistency, not perfection. My top tip for maintaining a frequent cleaning routine is to start small and be consistent.

‘Focus on managing daily cleaning tasks by doing a little bit each day, then conduct deeper cleans with what best fits your schedule – whether weekly, biweekly, or even monthly. For me, consistency helps ground me and determine what is essential.’

For easy upkeep of your fridge:

• Clean the handles when you wipe your countertops, so it becomes a habit-stacking task that's easy to keep the momentum going. Of course, if you have cross-contaminated the handles during meal prep, sanitize those immediately. Clorox wipes, available at Amazon, will eliminate all bacteria.
• Wipe down your fridge shelves as groceries run out and space clears, or just before loading your new haul of food.
• Clean the shelves inside your fridge's door once every week or two, especially if you store drinks and open jars here.
• Don't forget to tackle your fruit and vegetable drawers, as that forgotten-about tomato or lettuce will release liquid and become a hot spot for mold and bacteria, even in the chilled environment of your fridge. Using hot soapy water and a clean microfiber cloth, and drying the drawer fully will work just fine. You can also remove these and wash them by hand in the sink with a spot of dish soap, such as Dawn, from Walmart.
• Sanitize your water dispenser weekly to avoid 'pink mold', which is actually a common household bacterium that thrives in damp spaces.

The Realities of Sanitizing Without Harsh Chemicals

While harsher commercial cleaners work more quickly and efficiently, studies have confirmed the efficacy of natural cleaning products when used correctly and at the right concentrations.

A study in BMC Microbiology in 2020 found that vinegar at a minimum concentration of 10%, with 1.5% citric acid, kills many household germs, including strains of E. coli. Both vinegar and citric acid are available to buy at Walmart.

The exception to this natural cleaning rule, and where more astringent solutions may be needed, is if a member of your household is ill with a viral or bacterial infection that could spread.

In this case, make sure to use an adequate disinfectant such as Clorox wipes, available at Amazon, which eliminates 99.9% of germs.

What to Shop

Cleaning, sanitizing, and disinfecting bring different levels of germ-busting, and it is possible to use gentler cleaners and natural ingredients with adequate effect if you leave them on for long enough.

Here are a few sanitizing essentials to help you achieve this without resorting to harsher chemicals while still cleaning well.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Expert

Fridge door handles are not the only place you might be forgetting to clean. There are vital spaces in the bedroom easily forgotten, which also require regular sanitation.

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When offered the chance to review the eufy Omni E25, I was delighted to oblige. Anything that can help keep the constantly-building layer of dust and hair at bay and leave my kitchen and bathroom floors sparkling is an excellent floorcare upgrade for a busy home such as mine.

As I live in a cottage with wonky floorboards and nooks and crannies that collect all manner of hair and debris that comes from a busy life as a family of four, including two young children, I'd always imagined that even the best robot vacuums would find my higgledy-piggledy home something of a nemesis.

However, I have been deeply impressed with how well this sleek and efficient automatic appliance performs, handling all floor types and obstacles with ease, and saving me around 80% of my usual manual cleaning.

My One-Minute Verdict

On the whole, I found the eufy Omni E25 did a great job of keeping on top of my day-to-day cleaning, and, as it's so easy to use once you've set it up, whether from home, remotely, or with the scheduling option. I cleaned far more regularly with this than when I have to use a manual vacuum or mop; my house definitely feels cleaner.

It's not perfect, of course, and despite the corner-roving arm feature, there was still some dust and dirt to deal with manually in those pesky crevices, and spot cleaning after an accidental spill was more fiddly and time-consuming than simply getting my trusty old cordless Dyson out.

I won't be giving up my cordless vacuum for quick cleaning tasks, but it is also fair to say that I haven't gotten my stick vacuum out once since owning the eufy Omni E25 - a testament to its ease of use and efficiency. The dual brushes have also saved me the usual hair-wrap frustration, disposing of hair cleanly and neatly by itself. This feature will be a big win for pet owners, too.

Plus, if you suffer from chronic pain, a robot vacuum like this could be life-changing. No more bending and reaching into awkward spaces, as it does the work for you.

Eufy Omni E25: Specifications

eufy Omni E25: Setup and Maintenance

On delivery, the box was very heavy, and I was unable to lift it myself, so you might want to ensure that you have someone on hand to help you put it in place for unboxing. The eufy Omni E25 was very well packaged with a handy quick-start guide right at the top of the box, featuring a QR code for the e-manual and app download.

Inside, another smaller box, with a handle, was easy to pull out, and contained the vacuum itself, along with the power cord, base plate from the Omni station and a bottle of mop cleaning liquid (a nice bonus, as some products require you to buy these separately from the outset at extra cost).

The base station could then be easily lifted out and placed in position. I'd recommend choosing a designated spot for this before you start unboxing, as eufy suggests a 1.6ft clearance on either side and 4.9ft in front.

In my small cottage, finding a spot with the right clearance proved tricky, but it's worth noting from our other eufy robot vacuum testers that if you don't have the larger clearance on each side, the appliance will still function as expected. The clearance in front, however, is a must.

I positioned mine in the corner of my kitchen near the bins (with a much smaller clearance space) and haven't experienced any issues. The video below shows the robot locating and docking in the base station.

The power cable was too short to reach my socket on the kitchen counter, so I had to use an extension cable. It's not a deal breaker, but a minor irritation and worth considering before positioning.

Once I'd filled the clean water tank, the circular ring light lit up, indicating it was ready to go. I slotted the robot into its charging position and got to work downloading and exploring the app.

I added my eufy Omni E25 as a device on the eufy app and it indicated over 90% battery power, so it was good to go straight out of the box without the need for charging. All in all, I'd say the setup and mapping took me around 1-1.5 hours, but it's a one-time job and worth spending the time to get it right. Read on for more details, or jump to design and features, or the results of the tests we ran to determine its vacuuming performance and mopping power.

Then I followed a series of voice commands, triggered by the app, including connecting the device to my WiFi network, which was easily done, then mapping my floor to create 2D and 3D maps of each room.

When you select 'start mapping', the robot does a cursory sweep of the space, using its cameras and laser sensors to detect any furniture or obstacles. Eufy's advice is to remove as many obstacles as possible, such as power cables, toys, shoes and lightweight furniture, such as dining chairs, for the initial mapping to give a full scope of the area to be cleaned. Once complete, a map of my ground floor appeared on my phone.

This wasn't as accurate as I'd hoped initially, and the map indicated additional rooms where there weren't any, but luckily, there's an 'edit' option which you can use to merge, divide, rename, and expand rooms on your map. Additionally, the map updates with each cleaning to improve accuracy, and it produced a much better representation of my space after the first full floor clean.

Once happy with the map, you can create cleaning tasks and schedules for individual rooms or zones, adjusting the settings to vacuum, mop, or both, and the suction power and water levels to suit your floor surfaces.

The vacuum also automatically recognises when a surface changes from hard floor to carpet or rug and raises the mop head accordingly, but you can also add elements to your map, such as carpet, and even update the specific floor material to wood, marble, tile, and terrazzo, for more tailored cleaning.

Adding furniture, no-go zones (like staircases), or vacuum-only zones to your map allows for an even more tailored result. This does take a little time, but once it's done, you shouldn't need to repeat the process, and you can make small tweaks at any point.

There's no messy dustbin emptying to do with the eufy Omni E25 as it automatically collects dust from the vacuum into the dust bag in the base station after every 15 or 30 minutes of cleaning, or after every clean, which can be adjusted in your settings.

This is the loudest it gets at nearly 80dB, but it's very short-lived, and the clever 'do not disturb' setting will ensure this doesn't happen between certain hours of the day, such as when the children are asleep, or overnight.

The 3L dust bag is large enough for 75 days of continuous cleaning, according to eufy (but it does only come with one bag included, so you'll need to buy replacements, which come in a set of three 3L bags directly from eufy for $16.99).

I can't comment on ease of emptying yet, as I haven't had it for long enough. However, others on our team who have been using eufy robots for over a year say it's as simple as opening the compartment lid on the dock, pulling the bag up and out, and then slotting a new one in its place. The eufy app also provides a prompt and visual step-by-step for all maintenance as it arises, making switches fast and simple.

The self-cleaning mop scrapes away dirt and washes the extra-long brush in real time whilst in use, then performs a more thorough wash and dry afterwards – this can take as long as five hours, but it's quiet enough that you'll barely notice. This stops mold and bacterial growth, causing any odors or sanitation issues.

You can cut short the drying time if you want to perform other tasks, but it's advisable to revert back afterwards to complete the process, as it will prolong the life and hygiene of your mop.

You can empty the dust, clean or dry the mop in the app easily, at other times, too. I haven't had to empty the dirty water tank yet, even after two weeks of use, but I only have a small area to mop, and eufy says this usually needs emptying around once a week, so it will depend on how big your mopping area is.

Our colleagues who have tested for longer tend to empty it weekly to avoid odors building up inside that area, although this is not something you can smell unless you open the compartment.

The high-performance filter is easy to remove and clean with running water, which eufy recommends doing every two weeks, with a full replacement every six months.

There's a handy maintenance guide in the e-manual, which recommends manually cleaning the mop and brushes once a month and replacing them every six months.

While this sounds like a substantial outlay, the most cost-effective way of doing this is to buy a eufy accessories package for $69.99, which includes at least one of everything, and actually works out as quite a good deal.

Design and Features

The eufy Omni E25 has a good range of features, as you'd expect for the $1300 price tag, including a 250% improved turbo suction power of 20,000ps, compared to the brand's previous generation models.

Then there's the HydroJet™ Self-Cleaning Roller Mop, which distributes water evenly through 32 ports, cleans as it mops (120 times per minute).

And, as it removes the dirty water as it goes, my floors were nowhere near as wet as they are when I use a manual mop, even on the high water level setting, meaning they dried quickly, too (no more being banished from the kitchen for hours when I'm craving a coffee).

The 11.4" brush head is nearly the full width of the vacuum itself, allowing for the maximum cleaning area, and it applies 1kg of downward weight as it goes, designed to replicate the pressure you'd apply with a manual mop.

The Edge-Cleaning CornerRover™ Arm extends from the vac body and has thin, flexible bristles that navigate around corners and baseboards, where dust, hair, and crumbs gather, and flick them underneath the vacuum to be sucked up. I found this to be reasonably effective, but sometimes larger debris was flicked away from the vac and missed if it didn't do a second pass of the room.

The AI.See™ Obstacle Avoidance claims to offer superior object recognition, enabling the robot to dodge over 200 common objects as opposed to getting stuck or attempting to climb over things.

It did successfully dodge rogue toys and cables, but proved a little tricky when I actually wanted it to vacuum larger debris, such as in our cereal tests.

However, for the most thorough clean, you'll want to pick up any obstacles before starting a full room vacuum. On the plus side, this has meant I've been keeping my floors tidier and clutter-free more regularly – one of the unexpected benefits of owning a robot vacuum.

The eufy Omni E25 also has built-in carpet detection, automatically increasing its suction power, which is audibly noticeable, and it worked perfectly in my living room, which has wooden floors and a large rug.

And if, like me, you have an ongoing battle with hair, from people or trying to keep your house clean with pets, the DuoSpiral™ Detangle system is a revelation.

As the name suggests, it features not one, but two roller brushes, which direct collected hair into a gap in the middle, where it's sucked up, rather than getting wrapped around repeatedly and caught up.

Head of Solved and cat owner, Punteha Van Terheyden, also wrote about how her eufy robot vacuum was a game-changer for tackling pet hair, too.

Before this robot, I was having to constantly manual unravel hair from my old vacuum's brushroll, which was a deeply unpleasant task.

What Is the eufy Omni E25 Like to Use?

Once the app and mapping were set up, I found the eufy Omni E25 really simple to use. I simply selected 'start' on the app to begin cleaning, or choose a room and tailor the cleaning preferences (mop, vac, turbo etc).

I also liked the option to add custom cleans by room, as this allows for pre-programming cleaning preferences. Another option is to 'draw' out a zone, which is handy if you want to just clean a specific area, like under the dining table, rather than the whole room. I also enjoyed setting it to clean from the comfort of my car (via the app), while I was travelling back from a weekend away, then coming home to a freshly mopped kitchen.

Whilst the vacuum re-charges automatically whenever it's in its base station, I've not noticed it drop below around 80% during my testing period, so losing charge during a clean hasn't been an issue for me. However, I will caveat that by saying that my home does have a relatively small square footage compared to some.

The manufacturer says that the standard run time for the E25 is 125 mins, which is comparable to most of its models and only a touch less than the older, but more expensive eufy Omni S1 Pro at 140 mins.

One of my concerns was whether I'd be able to use the eufy Omni E25 on different floors of the house (I have friends who have invested in one robot vac for each floor).

This proved surprisingly easy with the multi-map function, which allows you to create and edit up to three different maps. I carried the E25 upstairs and placed it on floor, then put a physical barrier at the top of the stairs so that it didn't fall down during the initial mapping process, though it has anti-tip technology to prevent this anyway.

I also added a 'no-go' zone as an extra precaution. Once the cleaning upstairs was complete, the robot returned to where it started, so I could carry it back down and place it back in the base unit to empty and recharge.

The eufy Omni E25 navigated corners and edges really well, stopping short of my wooden furniture and baseboards by a hair's breadth, meaning no bumps and scratches, but allowing for close cleaning.

It even managed to get in between the legs of my dining chairs (with enough force to slightly nudge them out of the way), as well as under my sofa without getting stuck – if you do encounter this problem, these easy ways to stop your robot vacuum getting stuck could help.

The corner rover arm did whip up most of the dust and debris stuck around the edges of the rooms, but this feature isn't faultless, as some larger debris was simply flicked too far away from the machine for it to register, meaning it gets missed. I do like that you can visibly see where it has vacuumed on carpeted floors – like stripes on a freshly mowed lawn – as it adds to that 'just cleaned' feeling.

Whilst the eufy Omni E25 coped well with the transition from my wooden parquet flooring to the central flat rug in my living room (auto-adjusting the suction power when it recognised the change of surface), it did struggle with my smaller, more lightweight rug, which has a fringed edge and got tangled in the brushes.

I followed the advice in the app to tuck it underneath, and the vacuum attempted to get up and over the edge before giving up and going around it, instead.

If you're concerned about noise, it's not loud – around 51-55dB for normal cleaning (which equates to 'quiet home' noise levels according to the decibelX app that I used), and 59dB at maximum in turbo mode. It certainly wasn't enough to interrupt my work or even a call if I closed the door. This is also considerably less than comparable robot vacuum models, like the Dreame X50 Ultra which runs at 73dB.

The mop function coped with day-to-day surface dirt well, but did struggle to remove more dried-on stains (like coffee) even after a few attempts on the same spot. Having said that, I think it did loosen the stains as they wiped cleanly away with a damp cloth afterwards. I also liked the fact that the floors weren't sopping wet after use, thanks to the excess water being vacuumed up, meaning they dried almost instantly.

It's a huge improvement on manual mopping.

Vacuuming Performance

I performed three specific suction tests (sugar, lentils, and cereal) on two different surface types (tile and carpet), to gauge how successfully the eufy Omni E25's vacuum function performed.

At Homes & Gardens, we carry out the same standardized vacuum tests to create an even playing field for comparing and rating performance.

Here's how the eufy Omni E25 got on.

Test 1: Sugar

I poured a quarter of a cup of sugar out onto my kitchen flooring for the first test to see how the eufy Omni E25 coped with fine debris. The thing I found most fiddly about this test was working out how to clean a small area. There is a spot cleaning function, but it's quite well hidden in the settings part of the app. This cleaned around a 2ft square area, but I did find it difficult to pinpoint where I actually wanted the vacuum to go.

I found the most effective option to be the remote control function, which gives you freedom to decide where the vacuum goes. With this option, I cleaned up most of the sugar, but some did get stuck in the grooves between my kitchen tiles, and I had to finish the job manually.

The same test on the carpet was more successful (no tile grooves to contend with), and the turbo suction cleared the fine sugar from my thick-pile carpet with ease, although it did need a few passes to get all the granules.

Test 2: Lentils

This time, I scattered a quarter of a cup of dried lentils on my tiled kitchen floor, ensuring some landed in the grooves and along the baseboards.

Using the remote control function again, the eufy Omni E25 crunched through the lentils, sucking up most of them, but quite a few were scattered further away thanks to the brushes on the corner rover arm.

When you're in spot cleaning mode, the vacuum doesn't detect the debris that has been flicked to the opposite side of the room, but with the manual controls, I was able to pick up all the loose lentils.

On the carpet, the performance was similar, and the lentils seemed to prove tricky to suck up from the thick pile, even in turbo mode. I did manage to clean up most of them, but the weight-to-size ratio of the lentils made this a more challenging task.

Test 3: Cereal

For the final vacuuming test, I spilt a quarter cup of O-shaped cereal on the kitchen floor and another on the carpet. Initially, the eufy Omni E25 backed up when it encountered some of the large pieces of cereal, acting as if they were objects to avoid (small Legos, perhaps) rather than clean up.

But when I switched to remote control mode, it actually coped better with this larger debris than with the lentils and crushed the cereal into a powder before sucking them up from the tiled flooring.

On the carpet, the odd few Os were flung into corners, but again the remote control function allowed me to go back and forth over the same area a few times to pick most of them up.

It's also worth noting that a few days (and a few bin empties) after all three tests, I was still finding remnants of sugar, lentils and cereal in the base unit, and when I took the filter out to clean it, there were lentils left in the vacuum's small dustbin compartment, indicating that they hadn't been sucked into the main unit, so I did have to empty it manually.

How It Performed on Hair

While this isn't a specific test, it's worth a mention here, as hair can be troublesome for vacuum cleaners, getting tangled in the brushes and negatively affecting performance. It's especially important if you own pets or have long-haired members of your household who are constantly shedding.

I fall into the latter category (no pets, but three long-haired family members, me included), and one of my most heinous chores involves taking apart my vacuum brushes to untangle handfuls of tightly wound hair from the mechanism.

I was interested to see how the eufy Omni E25 would tackle this, having read about its dual brushes, which claim to prevent tangling. Well, this was one of my favorite features.

When I turned the robot upside down after vacuuming the whole of my first floor (all carpet, and the worst offender when it comes to hair), the brushes were clean as a whistle. I picked out a very dense hairball that was in the middle of the brushes and about to be sucked up for disposal, and one or two of these were also dropped on my carpet during the process (which were easily popped in the trash), but – crucially – none in the brushes themselves.

I did notice a little bit of hair tangled around the wheels, though, which I had to unwind, but compared to the alternative, I can live with that.

Mopping Performance

To put the mopping power of the eufy Omni E25 to the test, I put it through its paces with Ketchup and mustard spills – the same tests Homes & Gardens use for all robot vacuums with a mop function. This helps us to make a fair comparison and you to decide what to spend your money on.

Test 1: Ketchup

The eufy Omni E25 features a built-in camera to detect stains. For this test, I squirted a quarter cup of ketchup across my tiled kitchen floor and set the mop to work. There's no mop-only function, so the only option is to vacuum and mop. Before it starts cleaning, the base station performs a mop clean in situ, dispensing clean water and cleaning fluid onto the roller.

While the robot did seem to detect the spillage, honing in on it (in the zone cleaning mode), it did leave a fairly substantial smear on the floor, with more between the tile grooves, before returning to the base station. Once a mopping task is complete, the base station auto-cleans the mop, and you have to wait until this is finished before starting another task. It then moves on to drying the mop, but you can interrupt this to do more cleaning, which is a good thing, as a full dry can take up to five hours.

I was able to start the mop again in remote control mode and cover the ground that it had missed before, but I still needed to wipe the remaining Ketchup up from between the tile grooves with a kitchen towel to complete the job.

Test 2: Mustard

The eufy Omni E25 did a good job of cutting through the thick mustard spillage (again, around a quarter cup's worth), on the tiled kitchen floor. It didn't seem to smear it around as much as it did with the ketchup, but it did still leave some in the grooves and a slight residue on the tiles.

When I flipped the vacuum over, I also discovered a fairly sustantial about of ketchup and mustard in the brush and the tread of the wheels. This was a concern as I didn't want to risk vacuuming the rest of my home afterwards, without thoroughly cleaning off the residue, for fear of smearing sticky sauce on my other floors and carpets.

Whilst in general I really like the mop function of this robot vacuum, and think it's really effective at day-to-day cleaning, I think it has some way to go in terms of being effective at spot cleaning. It's also worth noting that the spot clean and remote control options aren't available in mop mode, so you'll need to rely on full room or zone cleaning to tackle spills like this.

How Does the eufy Omni E25 Compare?

The only difference that you'll find the eufy Omni E25 and its upgraded sister model, the eufy Omni E28, which we're in the process of reviewing, is the lack of a detachable portable deep cleaner, which puts the price tag up by $100.

This would be useful for tackling problem areas and dried-on stains, but it depends on what you're looking for in a robot vacuum and how much you want to spend.

If you do like the versatility of having a stick and handheld vac as well, you might want to try the eufy 3-in-1 E20, which includes all three options that share a canister for dust collection. It's around half the price and will save on storage compared to three completely separate items, but the robot vacuum power is considerably lower than the eufy Omni E25, with 8,000pa compared to 20,000pa.

The eufy Omni S1 Pro is a good bet if you have cats or dogs. This robot vacuum still comes highly recommended for pet hair, by Home Tech Editor Dan Fauzi, despite being an older and less powerful model.

But, the eufy Omni E25 swings it for me thanks to the higher suction power (20,000pa vs 8,000pa), more rotations per minute, and the improved detangling brushes, as well as for its more compact base station (the S1 stands at over 26" tall, compared to the E15 at 17"). The E25 is also $200 cheaper, so it's a win-win. It can often be discounted by hundreds of dollars at a time during retailer events, so look out for good deals.

If you have a lot of hard flooring, you'd do well to check out the newer, but more budget-friendly eufy Omni C28, which has similar functionality but slightly lower suction power (15,000pa), for around half the price of the E25.

As for other brands, the Dreame X50 Ultra comes at a similar price point to the eufy Omni E25, and our reviewer said it offered 'outstanding' cleaning performance, was 'a breeze to set up,' and she liked its 'lightweight design'. It's a bit louder at 73db, compared to the much quieter eufy Omni E25, which maxed 55db on turbo mode. But if that's not an issue, this is a good alternative.

How I Tested the eufy Omni E25

At Homes & Gardens, we have a dedicated and thorough procedure for how we test vacuums. We recreate real-life circumstances by putting each vacuum through its paces, making note of how it performs with different substances on different surfaces.

I tested the eufy Omni E25 with sugar, lentils, and cereal on both hard and carpeted floors, using various vacuuming modes (from spot cleaning to zone cleaning and remote control) to find the most effective, and recorded how successful it was at vacuuming each substance. I noted down any issues and where the vacuum struggled or excelled in my home, and took photos and videos to give an accurate representation of daily performance over the course of two weeks.

To test the mopping functionality of the eufy Omni E25, I spilled ketchup and mustard on a tiled kitchen floor, and recorded how effectively it cleaned the spillages up. I noted whether it left smears or residue between tiles and whether it required an additional clean to finish the job, as well as what was left on the vacuum after the task was complete.

Once you've mastered using the eufy Omni E25, (or a different model, if you prefer), you'll want to know how to clean your robot vacuum to ensure it performs at it best and lasts for as long as possible.

The Yeedi M16 Infinity robot vacuum is one of the most feature-packed automated floor cleaners you can buy, with its advanced roller mop, hot-water self-washing capabilities, and intelligent cleaning options making light work of even the toughest stains on my floors.

It quite easily ranks among the best robot vacuum cleaners available, even if it’s a bit large.

At a retail price of $999, it’s expensive, but not nearly as expensive as competitors, from Dreame and eufy, and has been seen on sale for as low as $599 in the two months since it launched.

One-Minute Summary

For those who like to take full control of their house cleaning, the Yeedi M16 is for you. Not only does it offer superb vacuum and mopping performance, but the app also allows you to customize a wide range of settings to help you find the perfect cleaning setup for your home.

Like most other flagship robot vacuums from the past several months, it uses a new roller-style mop that delivers a much better clean than the traditional pad or scrubber mops. The dock completely cleans the vacuum, both emptying the dust and thoroughly washing the mop during and after each mopping run, saving you from having to complete the dirty jobs yourself and preventing odors from building.

It is simple to set up and use, and is quite intelligent about mapping and avoiding obstacles. It’s not perfect, and it's best to first remove smaller toys and clutter from floors before commenting on a clean.

While the plethora of options and settings in the app are great for fine-tuning your cleaning regimen, it can also be quite overwhelming for someone just wanting to set and forget it. Overall, it’s a great option for families who need some low-maintenance automated cleaning help.

Specifications

Setup

Setting up the Yeedi M16 Infinity was quite simple. I was pleased to see a very minimal amount of styrofoam in the box, with all the components well packaged. I was less pleased to see the lack of additional accessories included. Aside from a bottle of cleaning solution, there’s nothing else included. Even the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal, which was quite light on accessories as well, came with an extra side brush.

Once unboxed, the setup process in the Yeedi app is simple. Connect to your home Wi-Fi, tap through a few screens, and you’re ready to begin mapping. The mapping process was surprisingly quick and took less than 10 minutes to get through my entire 1-story, 1,800 sq. ft. home.

It is recommended to fully charge the vacuum before mapping your home for the first time, but you could manage it on less battery if you needed to. The app also recommends cleaning up the floors and moving curtains and such, but I noticed it only really moved through the middle of each room and spanned around to scan, so you won’t need completely bare floors to get up and running.

Design and Features

I personally like the design of the Yeedi M16 Infinity. The slightly two-tone white and beige color, combined with the matte finish, looks very premium and looks much better than many of the cheap black plastic-looking models.

It's a bit larger than some other models on the market, so if you're worried about it fitting into smaller spaces, make sure to check the dimensions of the spot you intend to place it in, my specifications table above.

The vacuum itself has only a large button on top with a panel that lifts to access the power and reset buttons, and the removable dust bin.

Around back are the charging connectors as well as the dock connections for emptying and refilling the mop water and emptying the dust bin. Underneath are the wheels, side brush, roller brush, and extendable roller mop. The Yeedi M16 Infinity is a bit thicker than some other models I’ve tested, but it never had a problem getting under my furniture.

The dock contains the dirty and clean water tanks on top, and popping off the front door reveals the disposable dust bag. The bottom of the dock, where the robot sits, houses the mop washing system, which is impressive at cleaning the mop roller thoroughly, so you don't have to. There’s also a tank for the cleaning solution.

The Yeedi app is where most of the controls live for the vacuum. From here, you can create cleaning schedules and fine-tune the way your vacuum cleans your home. When you select the Yeedi M16 Infinity in the app, the first thing you’re greeted with under the map is an option to immediately start a clean or to turn on Agent Mode.

Agent Mode uses AI to intelligently build cleaning patterns based on the cleanliness of your home and when you typically send it to clean. After a few uses, the app will automatically set whether to just vacuum or vacuum and mop, which suction power to use, the water flow rate for mopping, and a variety of other settings you would normally set manually.

The idea is that the Yeedi M16 Infinity will learn your home and your cleaning schedules and patterns, to quickly make the process even more hands-off over time.

In my testing, this worked pretty well but I have young children, which means lots of unpredictable messes. I had to exit out of Agent Mode to manually adjust settings, probably every three or four times I sent it to clean to better suit my household's floorcare needs.

In the same place where you turn on Agent Mode in the app, you can switch tabs between the vacuum and dock settings. Up front, you can tell the station to empty the dust bin, wash or dry the mop, and both tabs take you to more advanced settings at the bottom.

This is one area where the Yeedi M16 Infinity sets itself apart from the pack. There are more options in the settings menu for both the vacuum and the dock than I’ve ever seen in all my years of testing the latest robot vacuums.

There are all the expected settings like scheduling, auto-resume, do not disturb, and more, but Yeedi also gives you several additional useful options, like letting you select the order of rooms to clean, suction settings for the type of carpet you have, and even the sensitivity of obstacle sensing.

Most people won’t need to change the default settings, but it is impressive to see just how deeply you can customize the settings on the Yeedi M16 Ultra.

Vacuuming Performance and Tests

To test the vacuuming performance of the Yeedi M16 Infinity, I ran a series of our pantry tests using sugar, lentils, and cereal to represent fine, medium, and large debris.

Starting with tiled floors, I spread a bit of granulated sugar in a small area, but was sure to put some near the edge of the wall to see how well it could reach there. The results were not surprising; the Yeedi M16 Infinity picked up all the sugar in the first pass with no issues.

One thing I appreciated is that by default, the vacuum will clean long-ways across the area, then double back and clean in a perpendicular direction. This ensured that even the sugar that had fallen into the cracks of my tile was picked up, which is not something I can say for many other vacuums I’ve tested.

The lentils were also cleared away well, though, being large, some were pushed around a bit during the vacuuming. However, it did get them all in the first pass, and there were none left behind or pinged out of the cleaning path.

Cereal presented the hardest challenge on my tile floors, but again, the Yeedi M16 Infinitely performed admirably. As with the lentils, some of the cereal pieces got pushed around a bit on the tile while cleaning, and it missed a few on the first run.

However, the vacuum continued to clean the area until all the cereal was gone. If you typically deal with larger-sized debris like cereal, our best Dyson alternatives also handle large debris quite well.

My rugs offered a bit more of a challenge for the Yeedi M16 infinity, but once again, I was impressed with the results. On the standard suction, I could still see a few sugar granules left in the carpet after the first pass, but using stronger suction, it cleaned them up fine.

Once again, the lentils were picked up with no issues. It did push a few around again, but the extra pass got everything. Vacuuming in both directions in one pass provides an extra thoroughness I don't often see with other vacuums.

As expected, cereal debris presented the toughest challenge for vacuuming on the rug, but once again, I was impressed with Yeedi M16 Infinity's performance.

I had to run two passes to get it all picked up, but nothing was left behind after the second pass. Admittedly, I also spilled more on the floor than is likely to be the case with a typical spill, but it still shows the cleaning power of this robot.

Max suction power is typically only necessary for cleaning thick carpets or rugs, but I did run it just to see how it was, and it was honestly a bit loud. Granted, it would be quieter on a thick carpet, but it was still louder than I expected it to be at 88 decibels, which is as loud as a motorcycle.

Standard suction, which is the mode I most often left it on, registered at 66 decibels via the DecibelX app.

If you're more sensitive to noise and don't have much carpet, you might prefer one of the best cordless vacuums, which often offer quieter operation on area rugs.

Mopping Performance

For the mopping tests, I used ketchup and mustard to simulate stickier substances that might trip up some robot cleaners. Also, instead of cleaning the entire floor, I did a spot clean in only the area where the stain was. I was pleased to see that you can adjust the size of the spot cleaning depending on the size of the mess.

Also, similar to the Yeedi S14 Plus from late last year, the roller mop brush extends out from the side of the vacuum to get into all the corners and edges, which was much more effective than I thought it would be.

The Yeedi M16 Infinity had no problems cleaning up the ketchup. In just one pass, it cleaned up the entire spill without any residual mess left behind. This is the first vacuum I’ve tested with a roller mop instead of a pad mop, and I have to say it makes quite a difference.

Other vacuums have still been able to clean up similar messes, but not nearly as well as the M16 Infinity. Some, like the eufy X10 Pro Omni we have reviewed, didn't manage to clear ketchup and smeared it around. This performance from the Yeedi shouldn't be underestimated.

What impressed me most about the Yeedi M16 Infinity was how well it handled the mustard. Mustard is a thicker, oilier substance than ketchup, which makes it harder to clean, and it often leaves a smell behind.

With other vacuums, it took at least two, sometimes three passes for all the mustard to be cleaned up, but the Yeedi handled it in one go. I was truly impressed with just how well it cleaned.

One thing to note is that the M16 Infinity returns to the dock to clean the mop much more frequently than other mops I’ve seen. You can adjust this a bit in the settings if you want, but personally, I prefer it. It may take a few extra minutes to finish clearing, but it ensures the mess is cleaned more thoroughly, and it helps keep the mop from staining.

Overall, it performed better than most other vacuums I’ve tested, and for mopping your floors daily, it will do a superb job. This might make it particularly useful if you have lots of hard floors or have pets to contend with when keeping your house clean.

Ease of Maintenance

One of the biggest benefits of robot vacuum cleaners is that they mostly take care of themselves, and the Yeedi M16 Ultra does just as good a job at that as all the other top robot vacuums we’ve tested.

The OMNI dock empties the dust bin and dirty water after every clean and even washes the mop roller as well. The docking area would sometimes show pet hair or other dirt left behind from the cleaning, but that stuff never ended up back out on my floors.

My wife has long hair, which can often be a robot vacuum’s biggest challenge, but after a couple of weeks of testing, I never had to cut hair off from the vacuum brushes, which proves its anti-tangle technology is working exactly as expected. Even so, regularly checking the brushes as part of regularly cleaning your robot vacuum is a good idea.

Emptying and refilling the water tanks is very simple, as they both easily slide in and out from the top of the OMNI dock. I do miss the bag-less dustbin of the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal, as it’s easier to maintain and I have fewer parts to purchase, but having to replace the bag is just part of having a robot vacuum, and it’s certainly easier than having to vacuum the house myself.

Unfortunately, like the Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal, replacement parts are not easy to purchase directly from the app. This is likely due, in part, to how new the vacuum is to the market, and thankfully, there are easy-to-find parts on Amazon, and the app notifies you when it’s time to replace them, but it’s still a bit annoying not to be able to purchase in-app.

Overall, the Yeedi M16 Infinity, even with having to empty the bags and manage the water buckets, cut my cleaning time effort by at least 80-90%.

How Does the Yeedi M16 Infinity Compare?

The Yeedi M16 Infinity cleans exceptionally well and has more than enough features and settings to give you a fantastic cleaning setup. The launch price was $999, but we’ve seen it for as low as $599, and the current listed retail price on Amazon is $799.

That’s almost the same price as another one of our favorite vacuums, the eufy Omni S1 Pro, but the Yeedi M16 looks a bit more premium and has more features and settings options.

Another favorite, the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra, typically runs closer to $1,200, but it also includes a roller mop that physically cleans itself while in use, so it does a better job of mopping.

How I Tested the Yeedi M16 Infinity

We’ve built a robust approach to how we test vacuums to ensure that every appliance we review endures the same in-depth and unbiased performance and benchmark tests. We also live with and regularly use the products for several weeks, giving us a good look at what it's like to have them in our homes.

I tested the Yeedi M16 Infinity for about three weeks in my single-family home with two adults, two young children, and a large dog.

I used the same materials for each test, including sugar, lentils, and cereal to represent fine, medium, and large particles as well as ketchup and mustard to represent a variety of liquid stains. Noise levels were measured using the DecibelX app, and I used a mixture of the scheduling and manual cleaning modes.

This process gave me a comprehensive look at how effectively it can replace the bulk of manual vacuuming and mopping chores around my house.

Next, explore our best vacuums for pet hair to better remove dust, fur and dander from your floors.

One of the most heralded laundry practices is drying linens and garments in the great outdoors. Effective at combatting musty odors, sun-bleaching lingering stains, and leaving laundry dry and fresh for free, it's a simple way to get multiple loads dry in minimal time.

And, with the IKEA JÄLL Drying Rack, it's easier than ever. The clever design, typical of the retailer, folds completely flat for storage when not in use, and is suitable for both indoor and outdoor drying − all for just $11.99.

It's a budget-friendly addition to your routine that will mean you can enjoy the benefits of air-drying laundry throughout spring and summer without the space-zapping clutter of a large rack that's hard to hide.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

One of the easiest ways to make laundry smell better is drying it outdoors, particularly on a warm, breezy day. The crisp, fresh results simply cannot be replicated by artificial dryer sheets and softeners, and the sunlight also has the added benefits of killing any lingering bacteria and brightening whites.

It's not just banishing odors that drying laundry outdoors is good for, either. It's also an effective way to save money on your laundry, reducing energy costs and entirely eliminating how much it costs to run a tumble dryer, all while effectively getting mildew smells out of clothes and towels.

If you're in the market for a new rack, the IKEA JÄLL Drying Rack is a perfect contender − compact, lightweight, and easy to store and carry, it can be conveniently used both indoors and outside, and is gentler on both your clothes and the environment. No wonder shoppers love it.

What Shoppers Say

'Fits perfectly in our laundry room!' beams one recent review on the IKEA site. 'This is exactly what my laundry room has needed! I've used it both indoors and out. Holds a lot more than you might think for the size and folds away to store easily when you're done,' highlighting that it's suitable for even the smallest of laundry rooms. 'Thanks for a great and useful product!'

Another, from Angela, dubs it 'perfection,' and adds that it's excellent for air drying outside and inside, holds a lot of items, and is great 'where space is premium,' to maximize space in a small laundry room and help avoid any small laundry room mistakes.

A third, from Karen, echoes that it's brilliant for spaces where adding one of the best clothes dryers isn't an option.

'This is so convenient to use and to put away,' they write. 'I use it indoors when the weather is bad outside. When the weather is nice, I use it outside. Lightweight and so easy to fold up and store. Plus, the price is fantastic.'

As Karen highlights, as it can be used both inside and outdoors, it's ideal for drying clothes in a small space, meaning you'll get plenty of use out of it throughout fall and winter, too.

What to Shop

Below, you can shop from a curated selection of laundry room accessories, all of which sit among the things organized people have in their laundry rooms and serve to elevate your everyday laundry routine.

Explore our smart ways to do less laundry to lighten the load.

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Whether you have a dedicated mop and broom storage space or a little corner that houses these and other long-handled cleaning tools, you’ve probably felt the irritation that these clatter-prone items bring when they just won’t stay put.

I have allocated a dedicated storage area for almost everything, but mops and cleaning brushes are the rogue items that get tucked next to the fridge, end up behind the door, or lean against something, but always fall over or end up underfoot.

I’ve recently picked up these no-drill wall-mounted broom holders from Amazon, and they’re perfect for organizing the kitchen or a utility room with minimal DIY skills or time.

The rust-resistant stainless steel wall mount can help square away your mops, long-armed cleaning tools, microfiber dusters, and more. It also has four handy hooks in between each pincer, which is perfect for drying cleaning rags, storing spare bags, or aprons.

This nifty little addition not only keeps your items from cluttering up space in and around your kitchen, utility room, and pantry, but also creates a simple organizing system that allows everyone in the household to keep the space tidy, moving forward.

Having spoken to hundreds of cleaning experts and professional organizers, a lack of a system that everyone can easily keep up with is the home organizing mistake that leads to never-ending clutter around the house.

Giving your cleaning tools permanent housing that is convenient to use and stays firmly on the wall will create a floor care and chore station that will serve your household for years to come.

The downside with mounted adhesive hooks is that if you use them too soon, before the adhesive has cured to the wall, gravity will more often than not win, and then that sticky surface will not typically restick a second time.

My advice, if using the adhesive option on the Voze mounts from Amazon, is that regardless of what the instructions say, install them, press firmly to remove any air bubbles, then leave them for 24-48 hours before loading.

Leaving it to properly stick to the surface will allow the firmest and longest-lasting bond. I have tried and tested this method myself, and have adhesive caddies in my shower that have stayed up for more than five years, wall hooks to expand storage in my busy coat closet that are fully loaded with heavy items and never budge, and pot lid holders inside a kitchen cabinet that have stayed put for a year.

This technique is the best way to ensure it stays on the wall and doesn’t pull off immediately upon use.

What Shoppers Say

Rated an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon by nearly 2000 shoppers, this item comes highly recommended by those who have purchased it. It’s also marked as Amazon’s Choice, which is a label that only Amazon can award, and digital shops on the marketplace cannot pay to use. It indicates the item is highly rated, rarely returned, and usually in stock.

Customer photos from verified shoppers show them in use all over the home and on various surfaces, including tiles and plaster.

A recent verified shopper, Bree, gave it the full five marks for being ‘super strong and great for organizing.’ They explain, ‘This mop and broom holder works amazingly well! The adhesive is very strong and holds all my cleaning tools securely without slipping. I love that it comes with 5 racks and 4 hooks – it gives plenty of space to organize mops, brooms, dusters, and even small items like brushes.

'Installation was quick and effortless, and it instantly made my laundry room look cleaner and more organized. The quality feels solid and durable, and everything stays in place. Highly recommend for anyone needing extra storage or wanting to tidy up their cleaning supplies!’

It can also hold more than your standard lightweight mop. Shopper A.M.Whittemore says, ‘The metal rack is very sturdy, strong enough to hold large brooms and mops. We installed it with the screws provided. Love the hooks to hold small items. I would definitely recommend this item and would buy it again.’

What to Shop

Keeping on top of your home’s housekeeping schedule requires the right tools, adequate storage, and some clever organizers to keep essentials accessible without excess clutter.

I have curated some useful items to help.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Upgrading to one of the best robot vacuums or a vacuum-mop could mean you say goodbye to mops altogether and either automate this endless chore, or combine it with vacuuming to half the time you spend sanitizing your floors.

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If stepping onto your rug often feels like a ride on a magic carpet, then it’s time to easily and quickly secure it to the floor without damage or fuss.

I have a mix of carpeted and hard floors and love adding a cozy rug to easily change up the look of my rooms and add texture to the space. However, that annoying slippage underfoot is not just a nuisance; it’s a hazard, as I have a condition that means my joints dislocate at the tiniest slip.

That’s why I always use the Gorilla Strip Rug Gripper, available at Amazon for fast delivery. Simply lay it under your rug and trim to size. It’s non-sticky, but beautifully grippy. It also makes it easier to clean with your best vacuum's high suction, and not have your floor coverings sliding around mid-clean.

I have been using these since I moved into my first home in 2012. They last for years and have survived three house moves and countless rug swaps in my home, which I share with my husband, young daughter, and pets.

Having the rugs underfoot is a big bonus for us to avoid falls and injuries, and because we have to vacuum our home daily to keep it clean with pets, we need floor coverings to stay firmly put.

Even with the most powerful vacuum, my trusted Miele C3, which we have reviewed and love, the grippers do not budge.

To install, simply clean the floor and make sure it is free of dust and debris. Arrange it in the position you need and lay your rug on top. I trim any extra that is sticking out in view with a pair of sharp everyday scissors, available at Walmart.

I use the offcuts under the slippery doormat I have in the kitchen. And the best thing is, when you no longer need it, or change your living room layout, simply peel it off the floor – there is no adhesive to leave a mark behind – and reposition it elsewhere for more years of use.

What Shoppers Say

More than 50,000 Amazon shoppers have purchased and reviewed this affordable item on site, garnering an average rating of 4.4 stars out of 5.

Marquette D Evans recently added her thoughts, giving the 'great product' the full star rating. She explains, ‘I have never been disappointed by anything from Gorilla, and these pads are no exception. Easily trimmed to fit with scissors.

'Provides a nice light padding without raising the level of the rugs so that doors don't drag. Keeps rugs in place very well. Bought them for three runners, and they work so well that I got a small one for the rug at our entry door. Finally, the price is very reasonable. Great purchase.’

Another five-star write-up comes from Angela Robinson, who says, ‘This works well under a small wool rug that had been sliding all over my bedroom. It keeps the rug in place. I end up straightening the rug about once a week as the rug shifts a bit off the gripper (though the gripper stays in one place on the floor). So far, no marks on the floor or rug, but we've only had it about a month.’

I have found that sort of shifting happens minimally when the gripper is in place on top of a carpet, and not at all on top of hard floors.

Other shoppers are using it around the home, including keeping chef mats in place in the kitchen, memory foam bath mats that have lost their grip after washing, and to aid elderly pets that were slipping on rugs that moved underpaw.

Many note how useful it is to be able to trim it with scissors to fit exactly. The Gorilla Grip Strong Pad Grippers from Amazon are available in rectangular and round versions with multiple sizing options to keep manual trimming to a minimum.

What to Shop

Keeping your floors clean during the busy spring and summer seasons is no mean feat. Here is a selection of the best products and tools to keep yours fresh with minimal daily effort.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

To refresh rugs without harsh chemicals, we tried a baking soda and essential oil mix and were impressed with the results.

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As I've found out, if you suffer from seasonal allergies, an air purifier is an absolute essential for the spring and summer months.

But, HVAC experts advise, the placement of your purifier is far more important than you may think, and the height at which you place it can make a drastic difference in its performance.

Here's everything you need to know about the best place to put an air purifier throughout the sunnier seasons.

Ian Palmer-Smith, appliance repair expert at Domestic & General, shares, 'As a general rule of thumb, you should place the air purifier five or six feet above the floor to ensure the correct airflow all around the purifier for optimum performance. Putting it on the floor would restrict the airflow and reduce performance.'

In my bedroom, where I use my best air purifier most often − the IKEA UPPÅTVIND Air Purifier − I place it on a chair at night, away from the walls. Now, I know that placing it on an even higher shelf will allow it to work even better.

Jordan Benjamin, owner and president of Done Rite Services, agrees. 'Dust, allergens, and other contaminants tend to circulate most around head level, so placing your air purifier around five to six feet above the floor allows it to pull air from an active air region and do its job in the most efficient way possible,' he advises. 'If you place an air purifier on the floor, you’re forcing the unit to deal with restricted air flow due to furniture, carpets, et cetera.'

As for where you should place an air purifier in a bedroom, in a kitchen, or anywhere else, Ian adds that there isn't a 'one size fits all' answer.

'But,' he emphasizes, 'they should be in an area with no obstructions and no sufficient flow of air, as well as always at least six inches away from any furniture or walls.'

And, Jordan adds, while many people use their air purifier around areas that tend to produce strong odors, like in or near a kitchen, bathroom, or cat litter box, it's important to remember that air purifiers are designed to do more than simply reduce odor.

'Their main purpose is to clean the air and improve indoor air quality, so don’t limit their placement to smelly areas,' he says. 'Whatever room you spend a lot of time in is a great candidate for an air purifier.'

What to Shop

Below, you can shop from a selection of our tried, tested, and recommended air purifiers for use all around the home.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Expert

If you're wondering how to choose the right air purifier for your home, our expert guide includes everything you need to know.

For more air purifier content, you can sign up for our newsletter so you never miss the latest features.

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal is the latest cordless vacuum from Dyson, with higher suction power than any previous model.

It introduces a new conical floorhead design, a dust compressor, and a suite of usability improvements to make it a thorough but effortless floorcare solution.

I tested the Dyson V16 Piston Animal in my own home after a dog stayed over the weekend, to see how well it handles every kind of mess on every type of surface. The result? This is one of the best cordless vacuums out there, if you can afford it.

My One-Minute Summary

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal pulled hair, dust, dirt, and all manner of debris out of my carpets, upholstery and floors, thanks to its super-strong suction and a new, robust floorhead design.

The dust illumination is just as effective as in previous models, revealing hidden particles that you can't normally see, and it adapts its suction and brush speed to the surface you're vacuuming and to how dirty it is.

Being able to compress the contents of the dust bin is useful while you're cleaning, to make the most of the space, but also when emptying, to make sure everything falls out without having to get your hands dirty.

However, it's not perfect, as occasionally debris would be flung behind the floorhead when vacuuming, meaning I would have to go over the area again. This is somewhat of a disappointment, as previous Dysons have never had this issue, but it's one that is easily manageable if you're prepared to catch a few stray crumbs.

It's also expensive, costing $979 at full price. So, if you're looking for something cheaper but with similar cleaning prowess, I'd recommend the Dyson V11 or the Dyson V15 Detect.

Dyson V16 Piston Animal: Specifications

Dyson V16 Piston Animal: Design and Features

Moving away from the grey color schemes of previous models, the V16 Piston Animal introduces a bolder, black aesthetic, paired with a striking red and blue floorhead.

There are many similarities to previous Dyson vacuums such as the Dyson V11 and the Dyson V15 Detect, but with a few notable improvements.

Like previous models, the V16 Piston Animal has a lifetime washable HEPA filter and Dyson's signature cyclone engineering, and the attachments are the same (which is great, as Dyson's vacuum attachments are among the best).

One of the most notable improvements is the suction power. Reaching 315 air watts (compared to the V15 Detect's 240 and the V11's 185), it has the strongest suction out of any cordless Dyson.

I tested the airflow myself using an anemometer, and it reached a maximum 23.4mph, 1.5mph higher than the V15 Detect, but still not quite as strong as the corded Miele Guard L1 Cat & Dog, which can go up to 33mph.

The new conical floorhead is another step away from previous Dysons. Instead of having two separate floorheads – a soft one for hard floors and a bristled one for carpet – the V16 Piston Animal combines them into one, to avoid swapping them out mid-clean.

The new floorhead promises no hair wrap, too, although Dyson has always excelled in this regard, and their vacuums consistently top our best vacuums for pet hair guide.

The dustbin has a new compressor lever to make the most of the 1.37qt capacity. Unlike the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones that uses air to compress dust, the V16 Piston Animal has a grey lever that you pull with your hands to compact the dust, which also makes it easier to empty.

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal also has app compatibility. If you pair with the MyDyson app, you can view recent cleaning sessions, check battery health, and manually adjust brush speed and dust illumination.

This is useful, but by no means essential. It also requires location access and access to devices on your local network, so if you’re protective of your data, you can easily skip this step without losing any functionality.

What is the Dyson V16 Piston Animal Like to Use?

The V16 Piston Animal's cleaning performance is outstanding on every surface, and Dyson has introduced new features to make cleaning your home easier, while keeping the features from previous models that already worked well.

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal detects what's on your floors to automatically adjust the suction, brushroll speed, and whether the dust-revealing light is on.

When cleaning carpets, the suction will rise, the brushroll will speed up, and the light will turn off, as the green laser has little use on soft, bumpy surfaces.

On hard floors, the suction will lower, and the brushroll will slow down to preserve battery life, as hard floors don't require strong suction – and the light will turn on to reveal dust that your naked eye can't normally see (genuinely). But if the vacuum detects a high volume of dust, the suction will ramp up again to clean it thoroughly.

This intuitive design makes it seamless to use throughout your home, and I enjoyed not having to fiddle with any settings to make sure the vacuum was constantly cleaning at its best.

The dust-revealing laser is a feature that I've touted from Dyson time and time again, as it genuinely does make a huge difference knowing whether your floor is truly clean. No other vacuum, even the best Dyson alternatives, has achieved dust illumination this effective.

I tested the V16 Piston Animal's noise levels using the DecibelX app, and it reaches a maximum of 74.2 decibels and can go as quiet as 65.6 decibels. This is standard for cordless vacuums, sounding similar to a busy restaurant.

I like the new floorhead design, and it saves time not having to swap them out while cleaning. My current Dyson has two floorheads, but when doing quick cleans, I would often avoid swapping out the attachments to save time, meaning I was missing out on cleaning performance. So, in real terms, the V16 Piston Animal makes those quick clean-ups easier.

Another nice touch is the grip pad on the back of the battery, so when you lean the vacuum against a wall, it becomes quite hard for it to topple over.

My minor complaints are that it's hard to reach the power button with the same hand that's vacuuming, and it isn't as good at cleaning backwards as it is forward.

But really, this is an outstanding cordless vacuum cleaner that brings the ease, convenience, and strong cleaning power you would expect at this high price point.

Test 1: Flour and Sugar

I tested the Dyson V16 Piston Animal using our standardized vacuum tests, which include a half cup of flour and sugar. This test assesses a vacuum's ability to pick up fine material such as dust, dander, and pollen.

On carpets, everything was picked up in two passes. Almost everything was vacuumed in the first, but the brushroll actually made some smaller sugar pieces bounce backwards, past the opening, meaning I had to go back and vacuum again. This could pose a risk of certain household allergens not being cleaned when it appears that they have been.

On hard floors, virtually all was vacuumed in one pass, with a clean line through the pile on both auto and boost. But again, a few tiny particles were flung backwards, which I had to go back and vacuum. I have never faced this issue with previous Dyson floorhead designs, such as the Dyson V11 and Dyson V12 Detect Slim.

Test 2: Pantry

I also tested the Dyson V16 Piston Animal using a cup of cereal and lentils to evaluate its ability to vacuum medium and large debris, including common household messes such as kitchen spills, dried mud, and pet kibble.

When vacuuming carpet, a noticeable amount was flung backwards. This is a stark downgrade from the Dyson V15 Detect, and somewhat of a disappointment considering the V15 Detect performed flawlessly in this regard. I adjusted the floorhead opening in both configurations, but lentils were flung backwards either way.

Strong performance on hard floors. It easily vacuumed the large debris, and almost everything was vacuumed in one pass, minus the few parts that were flung backwards.

If you're looking for a hard floor vacuum, the Shark PowerDetect Cordless and Dyson V12 Detect Slim are affordable alternatives that vacuum without sending debris backwards.

Test 3: Hair

Fortunately, the weekend before testing the Dyson V16 Piston Animal, I was looking after my friend's Labrador, and as it's currently shedding season, my house was full of short dog hair on our carpets and upholstery.

Also, three of the people in my home have medium to long hair that finds itself on every surface around the house, so I was able to test the V16 Piston Animal's anti-tangle claims, as well as its performance at pulling hair out of soft surfaces.

The V16 Piston Animal performed brilliantly. It ramped up the suction whenever it was cleaning carpet, pulling up every visible strand of hair in one or two passes every time.

I have continued using the V16 Piston Animal as my home's primary vacuum since the initial testing session, and a week later, it has never wrapped with hair. Moreover, the dustbin compressor meant that hair never gets stuck inside when emptying.

I would easily recommend it as one of the best vacuums for pet hair.

Test 4: Attachments

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal includes a dusting brush, crevice tool, and motorized hair screw tool. They're the same as in previous Dyson models – which is to say, highly effective at their respective uses.

With just two sweeps, I was able to clear almost every speck of dust from a hard-to-reach baseboard (as seen in the video above). Baseboards can be one of the most difficult cleaning tasks, so being able to clean them with minimal effort is a game-changer.

The crevice tool sucked up dust and debris from my stairs in one or two passes, and the hair screw tool performed almost effortlessly to pull up hair and dirt from my upholstery.

Dyson V16 Piston Animal: Setup and Maintenance

I appreciated that the Dyson V16 Piston Animal included zero plastic wrapping, minus a few stickers on the parts themselves. Everything was held together using cardboard molds, with paper bags to prevent scratching.

The only setup required was to charge the vacuum to full before the first use, which took 1.5 hours, and to then attach the wand and floorhead to the vacuum cleaner – the V16 Piston Animal is then ready to use to deep clean your home.

Maintenance is straightforward, too. The HEPA filter is washable, meaning you'll never have to buy another to replace it, and it can be cleaned simply by shaking dust loose and rinsing under cold water until the water runs clear. It's recommended to do this once a month.

The MyDyson app will alert you to any other maintenance issues, and the vacuum itself will tell you if there's a blockage. This happened once during testing, but as soon as I emptied the dustbin, the blockage was cleared.

The dustbin is easier to empty than most cordless vacuums, thanks to the dust compressor lever that pushes the contents out swiftly. It avoids the frustrating task of having to pull trapped hair and dirt out of the container.

How Does the Dyson V16 Piston Animal Compare?

The Dyson V16 Piston Animal will be released on June 2 in the US, costing $979 at Dyson. That makes it one of the most expensive cordless vacuums on the market, topped only by the Dyson Gen5detect and the Samsung Bespoke AI Jet Ultra.

The Dyson V15 Detect is our current best-on-test cordless vacuum, costing $849.99 at Dyson, but often discounted to as low as $549.99. Its cleaning performance is essentially on par with the V16 Piston Animal, even though the V16 has higher suction, as the V15 Detect doesn't have the issue of debris being flung backwards. If you're looking to save some money, I'd recommend the V15 Detect.

The Dyson V11 is another strong choice. It doesn't have the smart, floor detection features, but it cleans impressively well, leaving very little behind (if anything) on the first pass, every time. It costs $659.99 at Dyson, but is often discounted to as low as $449.99.

Next, see which models top our rigorously tested guides of the best robot vacuums on the market.

The Dyson PencilWash is a sleek, lightweight hard floor cleaner that promises clean floors with minimal effort, using only fresh water and a fast-spinning mop roller. It's one of Dyson's latest releases that focuses primarily on hard floor cleaning.

On test, the Dyson PencilWash certainly lived up to its name as a near-effortless appliance to use, but its cleaning performance left much to be desired. However, if you're looking for a gentle cleaner to handle daily messes on your hard floors between your weekly cleans, then this is perfect.

If you're in the market for one of the best vacuum-mop combos to streamline vacuuming and mopping for truly spotless floors, the PencilWash may not be for you – and I'd recommend other models from Dreame and Tineco that have shone from our rigorous testing sessions.

My One-Minute Summary

The Dyson PencilWash is a smooth, maneuverable wet floor cleaner that is so lightweight and nimble, it almost feels like it's an extension of your arm. It's sleeker than other vacuum-mop combos out there, and its metallic, bronzed aesthetic would make a nice addition to a kitchen or laundry room.

However, it's only really useful as a light, gentle cleaner. It can't handle thick spillages easily, nor can it pick up medium or large debris. It takes repeated passes to clean stains, and its suction is a little poor when it comes to picking up residue that's stuck between any cracks.

In reality, this means you'll still need your best vacuum cleaner, as well as a regular mop, to be able to deeply sanitize your floors.

At a similar price, I would recommend the Dreame H14 Pro or the Tineco Floor One Strech S6. Both vacuum-mops clean much more thoroughly, while being less messy to empty, and with a charging station that cleans and dries the mop roller to avoid bacteria buildup.

Dyson PencilWash: Specifications

Dyson PencilWash: Design and Features

The Dyson PencilWash is a slimmer, more stylish vacuum-mop than those popularized by brands such as Dreame, Tineco and Bissell. It has a sleek, metallic aesthetic, with a bronzed orange wand that will blend nicely into chic kitchen interiors and laundry rooms.

Other than the floorhead and the coloring, it's designed almost the same as the Dyson PencilVac Fluffycones, Dyson's latest and slimmest cordless vacuum:

Both models are part of Dyson's latest push to release sleek appliances that can easily blend into the home, take up minimal storage space, and are lightweight and effortless to use.

Like most vacuum-mop combos, the PencilWash has multiple suction modes, but only two: Normal and MAX. There is no dirt detection, so it won't adjust its cleaning based on how dirty your floors are.

Instead, when you need to spot clean stubborn stains, press the MAX button, and the roller will clean using more water for five seconds. Or, you can hold it down to use for longer.

The Dyson PencilWash is designed to be used with just water, but you can use the Dyson 02 Probiotic Hard Floor Cleaning Solution (that costs $23.99) for a more thorough clean. It isn't included with the initial purchase.

The roller spins while being continually refreshed by clean water from eight hydration points, while a fine scraper removes dirty water and debris with every spin.

The Dyson PencilWash keeps all clean and dirty water within the floorhead, so it doesn't move up through the machine, eliminating the need for a filter and minimizing potential durability issues.

However, this means that the water tanks are tiny. Compared to the 20-30 fluid ounces you'd typically expect for each tank, the PencilWash has a 10.1 fl. oz. clean tank and an 11.5 fl. oz. dirty tank.

The vacuum has a maximum runtime of 30 minutes, and charges on the charging dock in around two hours.

What is the Dyson PencilWash Like to Use?

The Dyson PencilWash has the best manoeuvrability out of any vacuum-mop I've tested. The straight handle offers natural, controlled movements, swivelling around objects and into tight spaces with ease.

That, in my view, is this vacuum's greatest strength. It's a lightweight and nimble appliance that can swiftly mop hard floors, removing light debris and liquid spills.

But after testing the Dyson PencilWash throughout my home, which has a mix of tile, wood, and laminate flooring, I felt that it was only carrying out a light clean.

On normal mode, it felt as if the mop roller wasn't cleaning as thoroughly as a regular mop. There was occasionally a thin, dry gap in the cleaning path, showing that the wet roller wasn't always consistently touching the floor, and afterwards, the floor still felt a little sticky, and by no means sanitized.

This may be improved with the addition of the Dyson 02 Probiotic Hard Floor Cleaner, but even if so, the suction wasn't strong enough to pick up many visible pieces of debris on my floor. Onion peels, crumbs, and other debris were either left on the floor after repeated passes or sucked up only to fall back out of the floorhead minutes later.

I wouldn't rely on the PencilWash to be your home's only wet floor cleaner, which may be somewhat excessive considering the $350 price point. But, if you're happy to always vacuum first, and perhaps spray some of your own cleaning solution on the floor to help with the deep clean, then the PencilWash could make a sleek, easy-to-use addition to your cleaning toolkit.

Dyson PencilWash: Cleaning Tests

I tested the Dyson PencilWash using our standardized vacuum-mop tests, to assess its ability to clean up messes of different consistencies and sizes. This includes ketchup, mustard, chunky pasta sauce, a raw egg and its shell, and milk and cereal.

I first attempted to clean the ketchup and mustard stains in normal mode, but a significant amount of residue was left behind. But unfortunately, in MAX mode, the results were quite similar.

The PencilWash cleaned the majority of the mustard in about four passes, but it then took a lot longer (and cleaning from different angles) to get the mustard that was between the cracks. Plus, watery mustard residue seeped out of the floorhead, meaning I had to go over the patch a few more times to make sure that was cleared, too.

This problem persisted when cleaning ketchup, too. As the vacuum passed through the ketchup stain, mustard residue spilled out of the floorhead again. This is indicative of the dirty tank design. It isn't completely self-contained; rather, it is essentially a drip tray with no secure lid, allowing dirty liquid to easily spill out.

The stain removal performance on the ketchup and pasta sauce was similar to that of cleaning mustard. Most of it was cleared in three passes, but it took longer to vacuum between the cracks and what had spilled out of the floorhead.

Attempting to clean the egg, milk and cereal demonstrated how poorly the PencilWash handles debris. Granted, these can be challenging tests for even the most robust vacuum-mops, such as the Dreame H14 Pro, but the PencilWash was virtually unable to vacuum any eggshell pieces or cereal crumbs, leaving me to wash the entire floorhead by hand to remove the stuck-on mess.

To summarise, the PencilWash can clear sauce spillages faster than your regular mop, but for any debris, you'd be better off cleaning it by hand.

Dyson PencilWash: Setup and Maintenance

Setting up the PencilWash was a quick process. Attach the handle to the main wand, insert it into the charging base, and plug it in until fully charged (for me, this took two hours).

The charging dock doesn't clean or dry the roller. Instead, the floorhead must be removed and placed into a separate drip tray (pictured above), while the 'Pencil' wand attaches to the charging station.

This doubles the floor space needed to store the vacuum. But more importantly, it makes the floorhead more easily prone to unwanted odors, bacteria and mold growth.

Dyson recommends that you rinse the roller and the floorhead parts after each use, however there's no way to do so without getting your hands dirty:

The dirty water tank is essentially the entire bottom of the floorhead, so all of the vacuumed-up mess gets into every part. Each part is small and needs to be taken apart by hand.

Thoroughly cleaning the floorhead after every use would undoubtedly minimize the risk of smells and bacteria growth, but as it's such a messy process, this would naturally be an off-putting step for many, especially when alternative models such as the Dreame H14 Pro and the Tineco Floor One Stretch S6 can be emptied and rinsed largely without having to touch the mess yourself.

That said, every part is small and therefore easy to rinse with minimal splashing, even if you have a small sink.

How Does the Dyson PencilWash Compare?

The Dyson PencilWash costs $349.99 at Dyson. That's more affordable than the $600 to $800 you can typically expect to pay for flagship models from brands such as Dreame and Tineco, but still quite a high price when you consider the PencilWash's lackluster cleaning performance.

The Dreame H14 Pro, our best-on-test vacuum-mop, cost $699.99 when released, but now you can find it for around $350 to $450 at Dreame. It cleans more thoroughly than the PencilWash in every way – handling thick spillages and large debris as easily as small stains – and it also self-dries the mop roller to avoid bacteria growth and odors.

The Tineco Floor One Stretch S6 is another great option, with similar maneuverability to the PencilWash, including the ability to lie completely flat. It costs $349 at Tineco, and again, cleans more effectively than the PencilWash, with more robust debris pickup, and a less messy emptying mechanism.

For more vacuum shopping advice, learn how the best robot vacuums from our rigorous testing sessions can make your weekly cleans less intensive.

With soaring temperatures and sticky nights, it's no surprise that your bedding needs washing more regularly during spring and summer.

In fact, say laundry experts, at least once a week is the frequency you should be aiming for, to keep your bed fresh and hygienic.

Here, they explain everything you need to know about washing, drying, and caring for your bed linen throughout the warmer months.

The Exact Frequency You Should Be Washing Your Bedding In Spring and Summer

We're all familiar with the struggle of trying to keep a bed cool in summer. Whether you lean on your best fans, switch to lighter bedding, or swear by the cross-draft trick, those hot nights mean you need to be washing your bedding more regularly to avoid any bedding mistakes. So, what's the expert-recommended frequency?

Rechelle Balanzat, Founder and CEO of Juliette, advises, 'In spring and summer, I recommend washing your sheets once every five to seven days, and even more frequently, every three to four days, if you sleep hot, sweat at night, or keep windows open,' she says. 'Warmer weather changes everything. Your sheets are exposed to more moisture, body oils, and environmental particles, so they simply don’t stay fresh as long.'

And, as she highlights, while your body produces more sweat and oil when you sleep in the warmer months, creating the perfect environment for bacteria and dust mites to thrive, once you add in things like pollen, open windows, and even sunscreen residue, your sheets accumulate buildup much faster than they do in cooler seasons.

'In fall and winter, you’re typically cooler, drier, and more covered, so you can stretch washes a bit longer,' she adds.

Using the right products when doing laundry makes a world of difference, too. Rechelle recommends:

• Tide Free & Gentle Liquid Laundry Detergent, available at Walmart: 'I always recommend a gentle, fragrance-free detergent like this,' she says. 'It effectively removes sweat, oils, and buildup without leaving behind residue or irritating sensitive skin, especially important when your sheets are in constant contact with your body.'
• Arm & Hammer Pure Baking Soda, available at Amazon: 'Baking soda is one of the simplest ways to keep sheets fresh,' she adds. 'It helps neutralize odors and break down buildup, which is key during warmer months when fabrics hold onto sweat more easily.'
• Wool Dryer Balls, available at Walmart: 'Instead of traditional fabric softeners, I prefer wool dryer balls. They naturally soften sheets, reduce drying time, and keep fabrics breathable without coating them in chemicals that can trap heat.' Using them is also a convenient laundry hack to save time.
• Oxygen Bleach Alternative, available at Amazon: 'For white or light-colored sheets, this is a great way to maintain brightness without damaging fibers,' adds Rechelle. 'It lifts stains and keeps sheets looking crisp, which is especially noticeable in summer when everything should feel light and clean.'

Finally, Rechelle shares a pro-tip to keep in mind. 'If your sheets don’t feel fresh when you get into bed, they’re not clean enough,' she advises. 'Spring and summer are when your laundry routine should work a little harder because your body does too,' which, in turn, will help you to sleep better all throughout the warmer months.

What to Shop

If you're going to be doing laundry more regularly, having the right products to keep your bedding looking, smelling, and feeling its best is imperative. Below, you can shop a selection of products that get recommended to me by laundry experts time and time again.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Expert

You can also use these clever tricks to keep your sheets fresh between washes.

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I cannot remember a time before I relied on natural cleaning methods to scour each inch of my home. It seemed affordable, healthier, and foolproof. That is, of course, until leaving my dad's decades-old cast-iron pan to soak in lemon juice nearly ruined it for good.

Over the last few years, I have found a few applications where 'non-toxic cleaning' does not work, but having left citric acid in the base of my best cast iron cookware for a few hours (by accident, I might add) proved to me that 'natural' cleaning is not as ironclad as I thought.

Luckily, one chef came to my rescue. 'It's a misconception that you can never bring damaged cast iron back to life,' assured Joanne Gallagher, co-founder and recipe developer at Inspired Taste. Here are her quick-fix tips, and the $19 Cast Iron Care Kit from Amazon that fixes it.

Why You Shouldn't Use Acids to Clean Cast Iron Pans: And How to Fix Them

I have long been an advocate for non-toxic cleaning products, championing them over harsh chemical variants any day of the week. That is why I turned to cleaning with citric acid (lemon juice) without a second thought when dealing with tough, stuck-on food in a cast-iron pan. I had just used lemon juice to clean a stainless steel pan, after all.

In my defense, you can clean cast iron with citric acid to help get rid of rust. However, in that application, it is left for just a few minutes or used to aid in scrubbing. What I did was add lemon juice to the base of the pan and forgot about it for several hours. It is safe to say that the otherwise perfect seasoning layer was completely ruined, and the base metal was left at risk of corrosion and pitting.

As Joanne reminded me, 'You should never let your cast iron soak in water for long or use harsh and acidic cleaners like vinegar for extended periods. Doing both will strip away the seasoning and leave the surface vulnerable to rust and metal leaching.

'You should never put your cast iron in the dishwasher, either, and avoid aggressive scrubbing,' she added. 'Leave that for when you’re intentionally reworking the surface, or else you’re just wearing down that protective layer you’ve built up over time.'

The fix, luckily, was simple. It was a case of restoring that seasoning layer to eliminate the risk of rust formation.

Joanne suggested cleaning the pan with a small amount of hot water and a light scrubbing tool, such as a brush or chain mail scrubber, from Amazon. This will remove any lingering debris and rust that has started to form. 'The key is drying it immediately,' she notes, 'or else rust will set in quickly.'

Once dry, season your cast-iron pan quickly and bake it on. The Lodge Seasoning Kit from Amazon comes with everything you need for this, and a spray application bottle, which makes even application quick and relatively mess-free. However, if you don't need the added care kit, grapeseed oil from Walmart is a great neutral-tasting, affordable option. 'This starts the process of rebuilding your non-stick seasoning,' Joanne assures.

From there, it is about maintaining your cast-iron pan. This means clearing it as stated above, with a small amount of hot water just before the pan cools down, and drying immediately. Building that seasoning up after use will also prevent future risk of pitting.

What Else to Shop

Cast-iron pans can last for generations when cared for properly. If you’ve made a similar maintenance misstep to mine, or are dealing with the telltale heat ring on cast iron, these care essentials can help restore your pan and protect both your cookware and your kitchen from further damage.

Meet the Expert

If you want to avoid other pan cleaning mistakes, brush up on how to clean and care for every type of cookware to save yourself some time and energy.

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While you may be storing away your warm winter sweaters and accessories in favor of your lighter summer wardrobe, the last thing you'll want is to pull them out of your closet or from storage in the fall and find them ruined with holes from pests.

All too often, though, moth deterrents are heavily chemically scented or simply not effective. By contrast, the Richards Homewares Moth Away Sachets, available at Amazon, are entirely natural, naturally delicately scented, and loved by shoppers for their trustworthy protection.

They're a convenient, affordable way to prevent moths in the closet and are a smart choice to pack into clothes storage.

These Non-Toxic Sachets Protect Against Clothes Moths

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

As with most things, preventing them is far easier than getting rid of moths once they've settled into your closet. And, with the Richards Homewares Moth Away Sachets, available at Amazon, non-toxic pest control is easier than ever.

'The sachets come individually wrapped, and they’re super easy to place in closets, drawers, and storage bins,' reads one verified review. 'Unlike traditional mothballs, these don’t have a strong chemical odor – instead, they have a light, herbal scent that’s much more pleasant.

'Do they work? So far, I haven’t seen any new moth damage on my sweaters and wool clothing. They seem to repel moths without being overpowering. I also like that they’re non-toxic, so I don’t have to worry about using them near my clothes.'

Another, from Margaret, states, 'Five years; no moths,' showcasing just how well they work, while a third, written by Rita, dubs them 'The perfect sachet anti moths.

'I love this product,' they write. 'Have ordered it several times. The smell is perfect: Not too strong and pleasant. Clothes don’t smell bad after having been subjected to these sachets.'

That natural fragrance will also protect your clothes from any other insects that cause holes in clothes, like carpet beetles, and help you to avoid any clothes storage mistakes that leave your items smelling musty.

In a pinch, you can also make your own homemade moth repellent, with dried lavender, thyme, rosemary, chamomile, and bay leaves, and small reusable cotton bags, available at Walmart. Don't forget to take active steps to get rid of pantry moths, too, which can feed and nest in your dried food goods.

More generally, taking the time to clean your clothes closet will ensure you spot any moth problems before they become too difficult to tackle yourself, leaving you having to call pest control.

Doing this regularly, paired with the Richards Homewares Moth Away Sachets, available at Amazon, should help you to avoid any nasty surprises.

More to Shop

Preventing moths from ruining your favorite garments can feel tricky, but the right storage ideas, deterrents, and additions can make a world of difference. Shop from an effective selection below to banish these pests from your closet space for good.

It pays to look out for these signs that you have moths in your home, so you can take action at the very first indication.

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If, like me, seasonal allergies are keeping you awake, you're not alone. Trying to balance the cost of running your AC for pollen-free cooling at night, or opening a window for fresh air but accepting the sneezing and itchy eyes that come with it, is a persistent nuisance in later spring for many, with over a quarter of adults in the US suffering.

If this feels all too familiar to you, the bestselling UPPÅTVIND Air Purifier from IKEA is compact, affordable, and tastefully designed.

Its filter is optimized to filter away more than 99.5% of small airborne particles, such as dust and pollen, so it will help you sleep better without running up your energy bills as the temperature and pollen counts continue to rise.

IKEA's Compact Purifier Helps Me Sleep in Pollen-Heavy Spring

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

If you suffer from allergies, keeping a bed cool in summer won't be your only concern. Additionally, dust and pollen can hamper any efforts to get a good night's rest, no matter which sleep position or sleep hacks you try.

According to the Allergy & Asthma Network, over a quarter of adults based in the US suffer from seasonal allergies. This is something I'm met with every spring and summer, and why I was so intrigued and excited to try the UPPÅTVIND Air Purifier from IKEA.

Typically, the best air purifiers carry a premium price tag, but at just $49.99, this IKEA one is budget-friendly. And it doesn't have that bulky, plastic look that's so typical, either – instead, it's small, sleek, and even features an ergonomic carrying handle for convenient portability.

On the lowest setting, it's more than quiet enough to sleep with it on, and the medium and highest settings will work in just the same way as white noise or sleep frequencies if you find, like me, that that kind of low-level sound helps you get to sleep.

It's also extremely easy to set up – I'd say it took me about 30 seconds to take off the front grill cover, insert the included filter, pop the cover back on, and plug it in.

Since I started using it, I've had no issues with it unexpectedly stopping or starting, and I have found it a simple and effective way to combat common allergens.

To that end, I've noticed a significant reduction in how often I wake up with itchy eyes, an irritated nose, and throat, and haven't found myself struggling to sleep and wheezing late into the evening.

I don't commonly allow my four dogs into my bedroom, but if you often share yours with a furry friend or two, using the UPPÅTVIND Air Purifier is an easy way to reduce pet dander in the bedroom, too.

One thing to note: There's no timer setting, which is, I'd wager, a direct reflection of that lower price point. But that didn't stop one verified five-star reviewer, Anthony, from cleverly using it with a smart plug, available at Amazon.

'The UPPÅTVIND is a great addition for a bedroom or small-medium open floor room at a great price,' they say in their review on the IKEA site. 'It's multi-placement and minimalist design helps it fade away, while it remains minimally noisy when on low.

'The best part about it, and why I bought more again, is that it retains its mode (1-3) even after power loss, so you can use a smart plug to automate on/off at a set mode level. Great for automatically turning it on in the morning to freshen the air, and when I'm away from home.'

It's undoubtedly a useful addition when setting up a smart home, particularly if it works to banish one of the most common things in your bedroom that could be ruining your sleep – allergens.

More to Shop

If, like me, you find yourself battling allergens every spring and summer, shop from a selection of more air purifiers below, all of which are among the best hay fever remedies for the home.

This low-energy bedroom hack stops allergies at night if you have pets: Simply pop a blanket over your bed during the day to prevent their dander getting onto your best bedding.

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Come spring, attention quickly turns from the inside of your home to the great outdoors. After colder months spent hibernating, the season for al fresco hosting and relaxing is here, but while you may have been furiously spring cleaning indoors, it's likely that your patio, windows, and walls outside aren't looking quite so sparkling.

Fortunately, with the Windex Outdoor Window and Glass Cleaner, available at Amazon, ticking off the task of cleaning your windows is quicker, easier, and more efficient than ever before.

It's also free of phosphorus and ammonia, so you won't need to worry about harming your plant life or patio, either.

This Windex Formula Works Without Wiping

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Remembering to clean the outside, rather than just the inside, is one of the crucial things people with clean windows always do. It's an outdoor cleaning task that all too often gets overlooked, but makes a real difference to the way your home looks and feels – particularly important when hosting friends and family over the spring and summer months, and as those long summer days come in.

With the Windex Outdoor Window and Glass Cleaner, available at Amazon, getting the job done is easier than ever before, and now's the ideal time to do so, as you shouldn't clean windows in hot weather.

Cleverly, the specially-designed spray bottle conveniently attaches directly to your garden hose (available at Walmart if you don't have one already) for spraying and rinsing your windows, leaving them streak-free and clear of any stubborn dirt and grime. As there's no wiping required, you can even tackle upper-storey windows with no ladder required.

And, once your windows are gleaming, you can also use it to clean your outdoor furniture, lamps, umbrellas, and more, too.

What Shopper Say

It's no surprise, therefore, that the Windex Outdoor Window and Glass Cleaner boasts almost 9,500 five-star reviews on Amazon.

'Crystal Clear Exterior Window Cleaning Magic,' reads one recent review, from GML. 'Amazing product...We have a whole lengthy wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, and every spring and fall, I have been hand-washing the windows with an extendable squeegee and window cleaner. This is because I do not want to pay for professional window cleaning, which is very costly.

'My results took all day, and the windows weren’t as clear as I wanted. This spring, I had enough other projects to do that again. I did not want to spend a whole day on window cleaning, so I hooked up the Windex cleaner to our hose, turned the water pressure on about halfway, took off the little yellow cap, and started to clean and rinse.

'In a matter of an hour, I had all of the windows cleaned...the results were great, crystal clear views outside, and a lot less wear and tear on this DIY’er. A great value and time saver for beautiful windows.'

More to Shop

Get your whole patio ready for spring with this selection of cleaning essentials, from banishing mold and mildew to scrubbing stains on your decking, paving, and in your pool.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

For another quick cleaning solution, you can also use a pressure washer to clean patio furniture.

The kitchen is the heart of the home, and increasingly, one of the most sociable. Having a bulky dish rack might feel like a necessary practicality, but it doesn’t have to take up so much space or impinge on your room's design.

You can enjoy faster drying and less sink-side clutter by switching to a non-toxic stone drying rack from Aldi, which is currently available in a twin pack for just $6.99.

The day-to-day organizing of your kitchen will be more efficient if dishes dry faster and the rack takes up less space. Having a finite limit on how much you can wash up before you need to put items back in your cabinets is also a simple but effective way to stay on top of the mess that can quickly accumulate in a busy home.

Stone Dish Caddies Optimize Busy, Social Kitchen Spaces and Mean Less Clutter

Kitchen layouts have evolved in function over time, and are now as much entertainment spaces as they are a place to cook a meal or wash up. That’s why visible clutter in the kitchen that can be eliminated is a simple step in getting the most out of this versatile space without impinging on your stylistic choices.

Design expert and Head of Interiors here at Homes & Gardens, Hebe Hatton, explains, ‘People's kitchens are becoming more lived in than ever – more like living rooms, with soft seating, characterful decor, and what you don’t want is a glaring reminder that you are in a kitchen.

‘Having a busy sink space with a packed and cluttered dish rack is exactly one of those visual signals you can do without when hosting or enjoying time with your family.

‘A stone dish rack is perfect for homeowners who are looking for ways to hide or disguise more practical elements, which you really need in a kitchen, but that risk interrupting your carefully chosen design elements.’

Why the Aldi Stone Caddy Is a Non Toxic Gem

The Aldi stone dish caddy is slim, stackable, and when not in use, can remain near the sink and keep a low height profile, or slot away in the cabinet underneath.

Diatomaceous earth, a natural, porous stone-like material made of tiny fossilized aquatic organisms called diatoms, dries exceptionally quickly, so you can stow it away quickly after use.

Much like replacing your shower mat with a stone one, this dish rack will be dry within a minute or two, and its absorbency will also draw moisture away from your dishes, allowing for rapid drying. This makes drying your dishes more efficient.

That quick evaporation will also make it hard for bacteria and common household mold, which typically thrive in damp environments. This will make keeping this item sanitized and freshly maintained, while your sink space stays hygienic.

You can rinse the stone dish caddy for day-to-day cleaning or for a deeper refresh, scrub with baking soda, available in a handy resealable pack at Walmart, or lightly sand with fine-grit sandpaper (available in ergonomic sponges at Walmart) to revive.

What to Shop

As Aldi’s limited edition items often go out of stock and disappear fast from the store’s famous middle aisle, here are some suitable alternatives, as well as some useful accessories for the modern and versatile kitchen to limit clutter and increase functionality, especially around your sink area, which is a common congestion point.

Next, use the Japanese concept of Mottanai to easily clear cabinet clutter.

A resentment for laundry day is an almost universal feeling. It's a never-ending, time-consuming, and tiresome chore that we simply cannot skip.

But with all the modern features on washers, how essential is separating garments by lights, colors, and darks? According to laundry experts on this National Laundry Day, (April 15), this is an outdated rule you should stop doing right now.

Saying goodbye to this archaic practice won't magically do your laundry for you. But it will make the process far quicker and easier.

Why Experts Say It's Time to Stop Separating Your Laundry by Color

If you hate sorting clothes for laundry, you'll be delighted to know that, according to Stacee Parker, a leading laundry pro for Poplin, doing so is actually an outdated laundry rule you can break.

'It's the never-ending dread that laundry instills in most people that causes the stress, so the key is to stay on top of it and manage it – before it becomes a daunting task,' she says.

The easiest way to do this? 'Stop stressing about sorting,' she advises. 'Most modern detergents and cool-water cycles can handle mixed loads just fine. Ditch the darks and lights and keep it simple!'

A recent study Poplin conducted of 600 Americans over 25 years old found that 54 per cent of Americans consider laundry to be one of their top stressors or annoyances.

More than 40 per cent of people indicated that doing laundry or the thought of doing laundry makes them anxious or unhappy, with 21 per cent of respondents saying that if they could never do one chore again, it would be laundry, with only toilet scrubbing receiving marginally more votes.

It's so maligned as a household chore that over half of those surveyed said they would happily pay $10 per week to never do laundry again.

Head of Solved, Punteha van Terheyden, has been mixing her laundry for years. She says, 'The only time I wash anything separately is very pigmented red, blue, or purple clothes, or jeans, for the first few washes after purchasing. After that, they go straight in with whichever low-heat load I'm running. I've never had an accidental pink or gray sock.'

So this National Laundry Day, forget about sorting for a laundry hack to save you both time and stress. It's a surefire way to make laundry easier, and it won't cost you a penny to adopt. It will also save you money on energy bills as you can combine washing and drying sessions instead of needing up to three separate loads.

What to Shop

Whether you're ready to take the plunge on mixing your laundry loads or are a staunch sorter, the right products and accessories guarantee a perfect result. Below, you can shop my edit of the essentials that have been recommended to me by laundry experts time and time again.

All prices were correct at the time of publication.

Meet the Expert

So now you know – forgetting about sorting is an easy way to do less laundry.

Seasoning your cast-iron pan is the key to ensuring it's longevity, but if you select an oil for the job that has a low smoke point, you risk burnt food, flaking coatings, and uneven heating.

No matter how much you spend on the best cast iron cookware, if you don't use a high smoke-point oil, you'll find your food and pan ruined.

That is why professional chefs urge caution when selecting an oil for the task. Here's what you need to avoid, why it's detrimental to your cookware, and how to choose the right oil for an immaculate sear.

The Oils You Should Avoid for Seasoning Cast Iron

Seasoning cast iron is not a complicated process: Clean, apply oil, remove excess, and bake. Superior results come not from the technique (although this is still important for maintaining an iron cast pan), but the products you use.

In essence, you need to avoid oils with a low smoke point and opt for an oil with a high smoke point, or you risk your pan flaking and food burning.

According to Dylan Clay, founder and recipe developer at Barbecue FAQ, this means avoiding products such as butter, olive oil, and extra virgin olive oil and instead opting for oils such as grapeseed, vegetable, or refined avocado oil.

'I prefer grapeseed [available at Walmart], as it's affordable and neutral,' he adds, meaning it will not impart any flavor into your food. 'I use this for everything from prepping pans for pizza, to tortillas, to searing steak.'

'Smoke point' refers to the temperature at which the oil starts to smoke when heated. Every oil has a different smoke point, and heating it beyond that point will result in a burnt flavor, with some studies suggesting that overheating oil can produce carcinogens, risking your health and negatively impacting your efforts to create a non-toxic home by using non-toxic cookware.

Choosing an oil with a high smoke point for seasoning means you can safely bake the oil onto the surface of the cast iron, forming a protective low-stick barrier across the metal, without it burning.

A high smoke point oil is 400°F (200°C) or higher. Refined avocado oil, available at Amazon, for example, has a smoke point around 520°F (271°C), while extra virgin olive oil smokes at around 305°F (175°C), meaning it will burn onto the pan and serve no purpose in cooking.

It is a simple replacement that has no impact on your existing routine when cleaning and caring for cookware, but it does have an instantaneous effect on your cooking experience and your health.

What to Shop

Selecting the correct oil for seasoning is only one part of the care puzzle when cooking with a natural material like cast iron. To help you maintain your cookware for decades to come, I’ve selected six oils and tools to add to your arsenal.

Meet the Expert

With summer approaching, you're unlikely to want to be standing over a searing hot pan for hours. Luckily, there are some cool cast iron cookware uses you can try this summer for hosting guests that don't involve cooking, helping you make the most of your cookware.

There are few pans better for golden sears than cast iron. With excellent heat retention and rugged durability, these pans are hardwearing and perform time and time again.

However, those new to using the best cast iron cookware might mistake this endurance for immunity to common cookware mistakes, such as overheating. The result can be a “heat ring” – a hot spot that makes cooking uneven, causes sticking, and can gradually damage your hardworking pan.

Luckily, there is a simple fix experts recommend that reduces sticking, improves searing, and prevents the need to aggressively scrub your pan after every use. Here’s how.

How to Avoid a Cast Iron 'Heat Ring' for Even Searing

You can usually spot a heat ring on a cast-iron pan; it appears as a 'ring' or circle of discoloration, usually in the centre of a pan, where the burner or stove ring sits beneath the pan.

This discoloration is a result of the essential seasoning having been burned away, exposing the bare metal for food to stick and burn onto.

Laura Ascher, founder and recipe developer at Cast Iron Skillet Cooking, adds that 'In more extreme cases, or when the seasoning is getting thin, you’ll get flaking, which is where the seasoning actually lifts off the skillet. However, that is not quite as common.'

This is a direct result of overheating your skillet, Laura explains. No matter how well you maintain a cast-iron pan, using too high a heat when cooking will degrade the surface.

'Usually, this happens while preheating, but I have seen cases of people drying their skillets on the stovetop and forgetting about them, which leads to overheating,' Laura says. 'Regardless, the center of the skillet gets significantly hotter than the rest. Cast iron holds heat well, but it doesn’t distribute it instantly.'

The result is seasoning in the center breaks down first, leading to uneven cooking.

To avoid this, patience is key. Rather than putting your pan straight onto a ripping hot stove, preheat the skillet or pan slowly on a medium heat, allowing the heat to travel evenly through the metal. Not only will you protect your seasoning layer, but you will ensure more even sears, too.

'The second thing I would suggest is to add a little oil to your skillet during the preheat,' Laura adds. 'This helps keep the surface smooth and, in my opinion, protects the seasoning. I know a lot of people say you shouldn’t preheat skillets with oil. However, in my experience, as long as the oil you are using has a high smoke point, you will be fine.'

Refined avocado oil, available at Walmart, is one of the best options for this.

How to Fix an Existing Heat Ring

If you already have a heat ring on your pan, do not fret. There is a simple fix.

Laura recommends, 'If you find yourself with the burn rings or flaking, it’s actually a pretty easy fix. Before cleaning cast iron, make sure your skillet is cool, then scrub with coarse salt or a chainmail scrubber [available at Walmart] until all the loose seasoning is removed.

'Next, season your cast iron again. Lightly coat the skillet in seasoning oil, wipe off any excess, and place it upside down in the oven at 400°F for one hour. Make sure you place a cookie sheet on the oven rack below it to catch any oil drips.

'You might notice the surface of the skillet is a little uneven because of the pieces that have flaked off,' she adds, 'but over time, as you cook with it, it will even out.'

What to Shop

When taken care of correctly, a cast-iron pan can last for decades. However, understanding how to clean and care for your cookware goes beyond simply avoiding soap and heating gently.

I have rounded up six essential cast iron tools and accessories to help you make the most of this ‘do-everything’ cookware for years – and generations – to come.

Meet the Expert

Cast iron may be a cooked breakfast staple, but there are some cool cast iron cookware uses you can try this summer for hosting guests that don't involve cooking, helping you make the most of your cookware.

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The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal robot vacuum uses unique technology to show you just how dirty your floors really are. It's the dream for anybody passionate about immaculate floors.

It has many of the same capabilities as the best robot vacuums available, but the added UV light helps identify and clean even the toughest stains, and ones you might not have known were lingering on your floor.

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is certainly one of the more expensive options out there, but its unique features are genuinely useful, and its cleaning power is outstanding. It’s certainly not without its flaws, however.

One-Minute Summary

The Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal is designed for those who have an extra passion for clean floors. Most robot vacuums will clean the floors well, but the PowerDetect UV Reveal will actually show you the dirt and stains you can’t see as it cleans them.

Like most high-end robot vacuum cleaners, it will both vacuum and mop your floors, but I particularly appreciate how the mop actually scrubs the floor instead of simply dragging the mop pad around, as many less expensive robots do. The mop pad on the PowerDetect UV Reveal vibrates back and forth and can even extend out to the sides for robust corner cleaning.

The docking station empties the dustbin and washes the mop automatically, and I enjoy the included odor neutralizer that keeps the dirty mop water from smelling too strong when it’s time to empty.

It navigates the house well after the initial mapping run, and I was impressed with how high the body lifts up to overcome obstacles like moving from my hardwood living room to the tile kitchen. Shark’s 'NeverStuck Technology' certainly lives up to its name.

It’s not perfect, though. It’s a bit noisier than other robot vacuums I’ve tested, and its performance on carpet is less than spectacular. It also can’t map more than one floor, so if you want a multi-level cleaner, I'd recommend the Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller.

It’s also expensive. $1,299 is a high price for a robot vacuum when there are plenty of other models, such as the eufy X10 Pro Omni, that will clean your floors well for much less. Features like the UV detection and NeverStuck are good for pet owners or young families with lots of spills, but you’ll have to decide if it's worth the investment.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Specifications

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Setup

The setup process is similar to that of almost every robot vacuum. You take everything out of the box, assemble it all, and connect everything through the app.

The box was well packaged, but I was a bit disappointed in the lack of extra parts. Shark includes one bottle of cleaning solution, which is good for one water tank, and an extra side brush, but every other robot vacuum I’ve tested has come with several spare parts.

Setting up the app took a bit longer than I expected. It took three tries for it to find my Wi-Fi and connect to it, and I was quite close to the router during setup. The process is thankfully quite simple, with only a few screens to go through, and that was the only issue I experienced during setup, but it wasn’t quite as seamless as I’ve seen previously when adding a robot vacuum to my smart home setup.

Mapping my house was fairly straightforward, and I was impressed with how well it detected my furniture. Once it has a map, you can split or merge rooms, but I couldn’t find a way to manually adjust the borders once they're set, something I appreciate about the Roborock Saros Z70. Oddly, it did ask me to remove the mop pad before doing the initial mapping, but it’s easy to reattach, so it wasn't an issue.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Design and Features

As the name suggests, the flagship feature of the PowerDetect UV Reveal is the UV light included in the front sensors. This is the first robot vacuum in the industry we've seen with a built-in UV light and is the stark upgrade from the Shark PowerDetect 2-in-1 that we tested and loved last year.

The PowerDetect UV Reveal is a little taller than some others to accommodate the UV light. There are three touch buttons on top for sending it to vacuum, mop, or return to the dock, along with the housing for the mapping sensors.

The front is where the UV light, cameras, and other sensors live that help it detect stains and navigate the house. The back is where it docks to the station to self-empty water tank and dust bin.

Underneath the vacuum lies everything you’d expect – the brushes, wheels, and mop pad – and something you might not: LED lights. The PowerDetect UV Reveal has a set of LED lights underneath that change colors depending on what it’s doing. A blue light indicates that it’s detected a stain, purple means it’s increasing suction to pick up extra dirt, and white means it's operating as normal.

You can turn both the UV light and the colored light modes off if you want, change how frequently it washes the mop pad, and set how long the mop pad should dry between uses.

While cleaning, the PowerDetect UV Reveal did an outstanding job of avoiding obstacles and cleaning the floors quickly and efficiently. It moves a bit faster than some other vacuums I’ve tested, but I didn’t notice it leaving behind dust.

The stain targeting features on the PowerDetect UV Reveal are quite impressive. When cleaning stains, it will ramp up the mopping power and circle around to target the stain area head-on. It essentially draws a box around the stain and traverses back and forth across it to make sure it’s thoroughly cleaned. The only downside is that it has to return to the dock before it comes to target the stain, but it still does a great job of it.

While vacuuming, the DecibelX app showed 66 decibels and when cleaning in the dock it showed 72 – a similar noise level to standing on a quiet street. I recommend running it during the day when everyone is out of the house.

The Shark Clean app is fairly straightforward and easy to use. You can start and end cleans across the whole house, specific rooms, or even individual stains. You can create schedules and edit the map, too.

I do wish it gave you more options for editing the map of your home, for instance, you can’t identify furniture or curtains or even adjust the room boundaries once they're set, but it still works well.

I also didn’t see anything in the app to indicate water levels or conditions of the brushes, which is a little disappointing. Even trying to purchase extra accessories through the app can be frustrating because the Shop tab takes you to the Shark homepage. I struggled to find any of the accessories, like an extra cleaning solution, anywhere on the site.

The app is also lacking some key features, such as forcing a cleaning of the vacuum or manually checking for software updates. I never experienced any issues with the app, but it's a little light on features. The Dreame Aqua10 Ultra Roller, however, provides more customization in comparison.

The docking station houses the two water tanks, along with the air freshener capsule, which is a welcome touch to reduce odors that emanate from the dirty tank.

As with most high-end robot vacuums, the dock handles emptying and cleaning the vacuum, so you shouldn’t have to interact with it until it's time for any robot vacuum maintenance.

Speaking of the dock, another unique feature of the PowerDetect UV Reveal is that, unlike most other self-cleaning robot vacuums, it does not use bags to collect the dust and dirt. There's just a large bin on the side of the dock where all the grime collects that you empty straight into the trash can. I appreciate it because while you might have to rinse it out every so often, it's one less extra accessory you have to buy.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Vacuuming

I ran our standardized vacuuming tests on the PowerDetect UV Reveal to try to get a good feel for its vacuuming capabilities. I ran the tests on hardwood and thick rugs. I tested the vacuuming capabilities using sugar, lentils, and cereal to represent fine, medium, and large debris.

The PowerDetect UV Reveal had no problems picking up the sugar, although there was some left over in the grooves of my tile floors, however every robot vacuum I've tested has had the same issue.

When I went back over it on a higher suction mode, it picked it up. Sadly, there is no option to choose a higher suction mode for spot cleanings; you can only do so for room or whole-home cleanings.

The lentils were picked up just as easily as the sugar. And, of course, since they are larger, they didn't get stuck in the grooves of the tile. The PowerDetect UV Reveal was able to pick up all the lentils along the edge of the wall with no problems as well.

The cereal was the hardest one to get, but it still performed better than I expected. It missed a few on the first pass, but picked up the rest on a second pass. It did also drop a small bunch of crushed up cereal in front of the dock as it was returning, but picked it up as it went for the second pass.

Vacuuming the same materials on soft flooring demonstrated similarly strong performance. I was impressed with how easily it picked up all three materials. It picked up the sugar on the first pass with no issues.

The lentils were picked up easily on the first pass, too. None were pushed around or spread out as it vacuumed, and it only took a couple of minutes to clean the whole area. For cleaning carpets daily, this is outstanding performance.

The PowerDetect UV Reveal also did an impressive job with the cereal. I was expecting it to push more of them around and leave quite a few more on the first pass than it did. It still took two passes to get all of it, but for smaller messes or just a few pieces it will do quite well.

In my two weeks of testing, I never had to manually clean the rollers due to pet hair or human hair being stuck in them and it certainly cut my need to manually vacuum by 80-90%.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Mopping

I used our standardized ketchup and mustard tests to vet the PowerDetect UV Reveal's mopping abilities across messes with different properties.

I used the spot cleaning mode for both messes, and the first thing I noticed was that there is no option to increase the intensity of the mopping during spot cleaning. When the vacuum first got to the stain, it seemed to evaluate the mess, then began cleaning very methodically.

It would roll over part of the mess, then stop and proceed to scrub the mop pad back and forth over where it sat to ensure the ketchup was cleaned up. It repeated this process across the entire area where the ketchup was.

It took about 20 minutes to clean the entire area, but it was done incredibly thoroughly. There was no ketchup or smears anywhere in the area.

The mustard was a bit tougher. Mustard is a thicker and oilier substance than ketchup, and it took two attempts to get it fully cleaned.

One thing to note is that sometimes the dock may not automatically wash the mop pad after a clean, particularly if it was a spot clean. The dock doesn't seem to be able to detect if the pad is dirty enough to require cleaning; it seems to judge it based on the time spent mopping.

In order to force the dock to wash the mop pad, I had to send it to mop an entire room and refill the clean water tank to full. As of publish time, an option to force the mop to the dock to clean it in the app was not available, although there may be software updates to allow that option in the future.

Overall, this is a thorough solution to mopping your floors daily, without having to do so yourself.

Shark PowerDetect UV Reveal: Maintenance

One of the benefits of paying for a higher-end robot vacuum is that they come with self-cleaning features that minimize your maintenance effort.

After each clean, the PowerDetect UV Reveal returns to the dock where it empties the dustbin and thoroughly cleans the mop pad. You can even customize how often the mop pad gets washed during a cleaning cycle and how long you want it to dry between cleans.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t automatically sense when the mop needs cleaning, which is why you need to set those cleaning cycles yourself, but that’s not a deal breaker for me. The default interval is 15 minutes, and I found that to be adequate during my testing.

The tanks are easy to empty and fill, and it manages water use well. When emptying the mop water and the dust bin, the integrated odor neutralizer was very welcome as it kept them from ever acquiring foul smells from all the dirt and grime.