All posts tagged: cleaning

6 Habits Kids Have As Adults When They Grow Up In Homes Where Tidiness Is Overly Important

6 Habits Kids Have As Adults When They Grow Up In Homes Where Tidiness Is Overly Important

The environment in which children grow up is critical to their emotional development. Doing something as simple as household chores helps kids become confident and self-efficient. But sometimes, even the cleanest homes put kids at risk. That’s especially true for children raised in households where tidiness is much more important than just being a kid. When kids are raised in homes where tidiness is more important than having fun, they carry these habits into adulthood 1. They tend to clean obsessively SHVETS production | Pexels Children who are raised in environments where tidiness is held in higher regard than having fun come to learn that cleaning is the most important thing, even into adulthood. As adults, those tendencies can evolve into a compulsive need to clean. Perhaps as children they viewed cleanliness as a way to please their parents. And while cleaning is a good habit to have, doing so compulsively is not. In fact, compulsive cleaning is often a sign of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It doesn’t mean a person who grew up like this actually …

Meet Dyson’s New Robot Vacuum Line: The Dyson Nurovi Line (2026)

Meet Dyson’s New Robot Vacuum Line: The Dyson Nurovi Line (2026)

Around this time of year, new products launch left and right. I wrote similar words just yesterday ahead of Boox launching its latest devices. And now, Dyson, one of the big names in vacuum cleaners, just launched three innovative products. Dyson already announced several new products earlier in September, from vacuums to an electric toothbrush with a built-in camera. Some of those vacuums are now available to buy, specifically the three robot vacuums in the new Dyson Nurovi line: the Dyson R1 Nurovi Dry ($550), the Dyson R2 Nurovi Wash + Dry ($700), and the Dyson R3 Nurovi Spot+Scrub UV ($1,200). This robot vacuum line has a new look, but the technology has changed too. All three Nurovi models share a light gray color scheme that makes the base station and vacuum easy to distinguish from the Dyson Spot+Scrub Ai, but the base stations keep the canister-style compartments that make these vacuums look and feel distinctly Dyson. They also feature lidar laser-precision navigation—Dyson’s last robot vacuum relied on an HD camera—and the most expensive model now …

Roborock Qrevo 2 Review (2026): A New Budget Vacuum King?

Roborock Qrevo 2 Review (2026): A New Budget Vacuum King?

Roborock’s been a favorite of the robot vacuum game for a while. Here at WIRED, our reviewers are longtime fans of the affordable Qrevo line, but it was left without updates for for years. The company has been more focused on more unique designs, such as the Saros Z70, which has an entire arm attached to it to grab your socks. These have a way to go before they’re actually useful. But this year, the Qrevo line is finally getting some love again. The Qrevo Curv line got a new model that we reviewed back in January, and there’s now the Qrevo 2 Pro that just launched at the end of August. After a living with it for the better part of two weeks, it’s easily one of my favorite sub-$1,000 robot vacuums, especially for its corner cleaning, and has the power to rival my current budget pick, the Eufy Omni C28. My only complaint is little things. I mean that literally: this robot is great at spotting furniture and navigating large obstacles, but it …

20 questions with Queen Elizabeth II’s former head housekeeper

20 questions with Queen Elizabeth II’s former head housekeeper

Was there one surprisingly simple trick used in the palace that made things feel instantly more polished? Jay, West Midlands Making sure you have a routine is the best way for everything to feel polished. At the palace, the team is trained, and everyone has the right tools and time to do their job… They learned how to lift things safely and how to be confident when they were around the Royal Collection. When you’re cleaning historic areas such as palaces and castles, you have to make sure you don’t overdo it. We had a daily routine that ensured we didn’t over-clean everything. What is the royal protocol for dealing with ironing and maintaining perfectly crisp sheets without using harsh, eco-unfriendly chemicals? Saleem, London Much of what would be classed as royal protocol are things we would do in our own homes. For linen, you need to treat it well and look after it by not washing it at too high a temperature or using too much detergent. Make sure the products you’re using are …

Dyson’s Next Act Is an Electric Toothbrush With a Camera

Dyson’s Next Act Is an Electric Toothbrush With a Camera

Whenever Dyson enters a new product category, a ripple effect usually follows, with the buzz growing so loud that competitors are forced to react. The company did this with stick vacuums and premium hair dryers. Now it’s aspiring to upend the oral care business. On Tuesday, Dyson announced the CameraJet, a two-in-one electric toothbrush and flosser, to help you clean those pearly whites. It’s not the company’s first hybrid experiment (that would be the short-lived Dyson Zone air-purifying headphones), but as a pairing of two technologies, this makes far more practical sense—even if the word camera isn’t one you’d typically expect in the name of an oral device. The CameraJet is an electric toothbrush with an embedded flosser that shoots liquid into the gaps between your teeth as you brush. How does the device know when the brush head is right above a gap that needs blasting? A built-in endoscope camera analyzes 28 images per second, shooting bursts of rinse as you move the device over your teeth. Dyson calls this the Gap Optical Targeting …

The Best Label Makers (2026): Brother, Niimbot, Dymo

The Best Label Makers (2026): Brother, Niimbot, Dymo

If what you value in a label maker is a result that looks polished, professional, and decidedly not homemade, the P-touch Cube Plus is calling your name. It allows for great versatility in its labels, printing on tape as narrow as 6 mm and as wide as 24 mm, meaning you can use it to organize the small jars on your spice rack and large boxes in your storage unit. The Cube Plus also supports a huge selection of designs, with hundreds of fonts, borders, and graphics, available via your choice of three design apps and platforms accessible via Bluetooth connection: Brother Design&Print 2 (also compatible with the Brother PT-n25bt), iPrint&Label, and P-touch Editor software that you can use with a desktop, the latter of which I did not test. Like the Brother Design&Print 2 app, discussed above, the iPrint&Label is seamless to use. Its templates are less ornate, but on this upscale device, I found this simple quality to be nice, eliminating the time-suck of customization flourishes but still producing a professional-quality label. You …

Labor Day 2026 Deals Got Me a Complete Starter Tool Kit for Under 5

Labor Day 2026 Deals Got Me a Complete Starter Tool Kit for Under $375

Most people know that Labor Day is one of the best times of the year to buy tools (get it? Labor?), but if you’re a newly minted homeowner or DIY-er, the landscape can be intimidating. When I bought my first home, I owned only two screwdrivers, a pair of pliers, and a hammer; I had no clue what I was in for. Now that I’ve been a homeowner for 17 years, I agree with WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson that unless you’re a professional tradesperson or really love large projects, you don’t need a garage full of specialty tools. Just the basics will do: a drill, saw, set of manual screwdrivers, and a stud finder, for example. Luckily, early Labor Day deals are pretty decent this year. In fact, after examining all the major sales, I was able to find a rather encyclopedic house-repair kit for any new homeowner or DIY-er for under $375 (minus tax and shipping) with deals from Home Depot, Lowe’s, and Walmart. Any of these would also be great to stash away …

Poolease X1 Pool Robot Review: How Bad Can It Be?

Poolease X1 Pool Robot Review: How Bad Can It Be?

Results were not particularly impressive. With both organic and synthetic debris, the Poolease X1 was only typically able to collect 70 to 80 percent of leaves and other matter on the floor of my pool, leaving material scattered randomly all around. That’s better than I expected, but worse than it sounds. If your gardener left 20 percent of your lawn unmowed, you’d notice. With minimal clearance between the bottom of the robot and the floor, I also noticed several times that the robot was prone to getting stuck, namely on the circular floor drain, which has less than an inch of rise over the floor surface. Apparently it’s the perfect size for the X1 to beach itself, so its wheels are just shy of touching the ground. The robot was successful in freeing itself eventually, but it spent several minutes doing so. Photograph: Christopher Null The X1 must be retrieved with a pole and hook (the hook is included) when it’s finished running. I described the simple cleanout process above. Here, debris regularly got stuck …

I Tried a Window-Cleaning Robot: Do Not Recommend

I Tried a Window-Cleaning Robot: Do Not Recommend

OK, so window-cleaning robots cannot deal with traditional windows. I know textured glass interferes with the suction and, predictably, handles and fixtures interfere with the movement, but it also struggles with astragals that aren’t thick or solid enough. I wouldn’t risk using it with any that aren’t finished in hard plastic or something else durable. I figured I’d give it one last chance on the upstairs bay window, as it’s a PVC replacement that was put in before we moved in, so it has thicker astragals finished in hard plastic. Using it one story up gave me serious anxiety. After an alarming five minutes or so of watching it loudly and squeakily navigate the window, it began to sound an alarm and flash a red light, with a stern voice informing me it was stuck and I should check the app for solutions. Where was it stuck? You guessed it, right at the top of the window where I had no hope of reaching it. I’m not ashamed to say I panicked. I worried that …

Expert Tips for Cleaning and Care

Expert Tips for Cleaning and Care

We don’t always have the answers, but we have some people on speed dial who do — which is why we present to you our series FYI where we have experts explain if lip balm is actually bad, how often you should wash your hair and more. Summer has a way of putting your jean shorts through the ringer. Between the sweat, the sunscreen, the grass stains from picnics and the sand that somehow ends up in every pocket, your favorite cutoffs earn their keep. And because they’re basically a warm-weather uniform — worn on repeat from the first hot day in May until the leaves start turning — they need a little more love (and likely washes) than their full-length denim cousins. The good news? Washing jean shorts isn’t all that different from washing regular jeans. Same fabric, same care principles, same instinct to protect that perfect fade and fit. The main difference is frequency: where a pair of jeans might go weeks between washes, your shorts are working overtime in the heat and …