When I find myself doing the really icky chores around the house, like scrubbing the floor under my kids’ breakfast chairs, or getting on my hands and knees around the toilet, I think: In this enlightened age, shouldn’t there be a button I can push to take care of these things?

Ahhh, yes, there is such a button, and I should know: I already push the one on my iRobot Roomba almost daily to take care of all the vacuuming in my house. But while iRobot has been making robotic floor washers for quite a while, I’m excited about the latest and greatest version which promises to be even better, if not bigger, than it was before.

The soon-to-market next generation of Scooba robotic floor washers, the Scooba 230, takes all the really neat things that I’ve loved about its big brother Scooba and made it all more compact.

This is big news for those of us whose bathrooms are, well, bathroom-sized and not huge expanses of open space. Because as neat as the original Scooba is, it’s just too big to fit in the space around most people’s toilets. And, if I’m going to spring for a robotic floor washer, the number one area I want it to clean for me is the floor around the toilet. If you have boys, you probably understand.

And it’s not just about the tile and linoleum of my bathrooms: the Scooba can do all my hardwoods on the first floor too, like that icky area under my kids’ kitchen chairs. It even avoids the area rugs and won’t fall down stairs, though for our home, it’d be an extravagant purchase given the amount of wall-to-wall carpeting we have.

But if I had light-colored hardwood or tile floors that show every bit of dirt throughout most of my house? Yeah, I’d be hoping for a nice tax return so I could grab this little baby when it comes out. -Christina

The new Scooba 230 will release later this spring. Visit iRobot for updates and for more details on how the Scooba 230 works.