In the fifth century B.C., the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea proposed a series of paradoxes designed to demonstrate that motion is impossible. In one of the better known examples, a rock is thrown at a tree from a distance of eight feet. Before the rock can hit the tree, it must cover half the distance, or four feet. Then it must cover half of that distance, or two feet. Then one foot. Then half a foot. Then a quarter of a foot. Then an eighth of a foot. Then a sixteenth of a foot. The intervals get smaller, but they go on forever, and the rock never actually hits the tree.

All you have to do is throw a rock at a tree to understand that Zeno, like many ancient philosophers, was full of it. All of Zeno's paradoxes are easily solved with basic calculus. In fact, I solved one in my own kitchen.

If you've ever swept a floor, and you probably have, you've performed an infinite series of movements to try to get an ever-decreasing number of particles into that damn dust pan. You sweep, you move the dust pan back. You sweep again, and move back again. It takes a dozen iterations to get those last few grains of dirt into the pan, but you can do it if you're persistent. Or, if you're like me, you can just kick them back under the table. Pulling out the mop only makes matters worse. If you didn't do a good job sweeping up all the dirt, as I usually don't, you wind up spreading wet, pine-scented dirt around the floor. There's got to be an easier way.

Enter the Hoover FloorMate. Imagine a single, candy-colored, magical machine capable of replacing every step in your floor-cleaning routine. It sucks up your dirt. It mops the floor. It dries the floor. Would you pay $170 for such a machine? With a 3000 square foot house that's mostly hard floors, I considered the FloorMate a bargain.

In addition to the FloorMate, I bought full size bottles of Lysol Floor Cleaning Concentrate ($6) and Old English FloorMate Cleaner ($6), the only cleaners that can be used with the FloorMate. The Old English Cleaner is for sealed wood; the Lysol stuff is for all other hard floors. The FloorMate comes with sample sizes of both products.

Assembling the FloorMate is fairly simple. All you need is a Phillips head screwdriver and some common sense. Lacking the enough of the latter, I managed to assemble it incorrectly, and it leaked all over the floor the first time I used it. After my S.O. took it apart and put it back together correctly (thanks, S-Dogg) it was good to go.

The first step is to lift all the dry debris from the floor. A "Wet/Dry Pedal" lowers and raises the machine's squeegee. With the squeegee up out of the way, the FloorMate should work like any other vacuum. It does, only not particularly well. Here's why:

Poor Suction- the FloorMate does not lift dirt as well as a standard vacuum.
High Profile Brush Assembly- does not allow the FloorMate's head to get into corners.
No Tools- forget about cleaning in crevices, corners, etc.

In other words, if you want to thoroughly clean the floor, you will probably still need to use a standard vacuum or (shudder) broom.

Once your floor is free of loose dirt, it's time to mop. You load the machine with the appropriate cleaning solution for the type of floor you want to clean, and set the machine for "Wet Scrub." A trigger on the handle releases cleaning solution, which is then scrubbed and lifted by the brushes and squeegee, and sucked up into the machine's recovery tank.

To remove more liquid, or to simply clean up a spill, you can raise the squeegee and set the machine for wet pickup. Unfortunately, I wasn't impressed with the FloorMate's wet cleaning performance, either. Here's why: Uneven Surfaces- floors are rarely completely even. The FloorMate did a decent job on my relatively even wood floors, but it was disastrous on tile, where cleaning solution kept pooling in the grout. I had to go over the floors with a mop.

Clean up is relatively simple, especially if you remember to clean the dry dirt out of the recovery tank before you start wet cleaning.

I spent $182 for the FloorMate and two bottles of cleaning solution in hopes that I could ditch my broom and mop, but when I used the FloorMate, I needed both of those torture sticks to finish the job.

Bummed, I took it back to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Before I returned it, I talked to the manager about it to make sure that we'd put the machine together correctly the second time. She confirmed that Sundogg had done a good job with it, and she told me that her FloorMate had the same "issues" but that she loved it anyway.

The Hoover FloorMate certainly takes some of the work out of cleaning your floors, but not enough to justify the price or the commitment to Hoover's expensive cleaning solutions.

Hello, dust pan.

Recommended: No

Amount Paid (US$): 169