By

Jordan McMahon,

a technology and gadgets writer at the Strategist.

He’s been covering technology since 2017 and previously wrote for Wired, Wirecutter, and Reviewed.com.

With five dogs trotting around my house every day, I’m constantly battling to keep my floors as squeaky clean as my neuroses desire. That’s mostly doable thanks to the rotating arsenal of robot vacuums I’m always testing, but they’re not the right tool for every job. For instance, sometimes I want to spot-clean where the new pup’s been trying to mark his territory, or I just want to do things by hand to make sure everything’s cleaned to my standards.