Robot vacuums sold

The Costco-and-Roomba household is, statistically speaking, more common than the United States seems willing to admit, and between 2010 and 2022 the two companies' fortunes climbed side by side (r = 0.960) with the camaraderie of two brands that understand their customer. The pallet of toilet paper arrives; the vacuum rolls toward it. The couch remains, for the duration of a weekend, unoccupied.

Both track the same suburban American decade: the Costco membership base grew from about 60 million to over 120 million, with $1.50 hot dogs subsidized by everything else, while global robot vacuum sales climbed from around 1 million units annually to over 25 million, led by iRobot and increasingly by Chinese entrants like Roborock and Ecovacs. The connection is less mechanical than attitudinal: the same household that buys in bulk to minimize trips also buys a robot to minimize cleaning. Both are applied laziness done cheerfully, which may be the most American consumer philosophy of the century.

We bought toilet paper in tons; we bought the vacuum; we watched the vacuum work. This was the good life.