I have always had at least one dog and I'm used to coping with some dog hair, but I've never allowed dogs on the furniture and I also think that my dogs all had hair that was fairly easy to remove.
Fast forward to 2012, and I am in a second marriage with 3 kids. The last "not on furniture" dog died and we got a new dog named Zara. Hubs grew up in a house that allowed dogs on the furniture so when we saw that that Zara was able to jump on the furniture we had to make a decision. We did it the good ol' American way and put it to a vote. Hubs and all three girls voted to let the dog on the furniture, much to my dismay. Worse, Zara's hair is like nothing I've seen before... once it gets onto cloth, most of the time it clings to the point that the hairs have to be pulled out individually. Vacuuming, tape-style lint rollers, a Gleener depiller, velcro balls in the washer/dryer, Bounce pet hair dryer sheets ... they all leave a lot behind.
Fast forward to 2020 and not only am I at my wits' end with the dog hair, but all three kids are grown women and none of us likes that we can't sit on the furniture without having to get out a hand-held vacuum and vacuum the dog hair off the back of each others' pants.
Fast forward one last time to last week when I finally decided to get this Chom Chom gadget. I am ASTOUNDED at how well it works. I think the secret is with the little squeegee on the roller. I've tried using a squeegee on carpet before and it really does work, but it is unwieldy, cannot easily be done in more than one direction, and it must be done with a vacuum nearby to gather whatever gets pulled up. Also, then the squeegee ends up with pet hair on it so it needs to be cleaned before it gets put back into service for cleaning glass. With the Chom Chom, you get the benefit of the squeegee, but since it is on the roller, it is easier to do back/forth strokes. And then as for how the dog hair gets off the roller and into the hair collection chamber... maybe it is sorcery? I have no idea how that works but IT DOES!!
In full honesty, I still have to do extra strokes to get all of Zara's hair (it gets our other dog's "easy hair" on the first swipe), but the amount that the Chom Chom picks up relative to the number of passes I have to make over the fabric is unbelievable!
Once the chamber is full, I use a handheld vac to remove the hair and then it is ready to go again!
The only downsides that I can see are:
- Some dog hair gets trapped in the side hinges of the door to the collection chamber and has to be pulled out with the fingers. It is possible that if I cleaned it before it got SO FULL, that problem would go away, but we just have SO MUCH dog hair and the gadget is so effective that I would be emptying every couple of minutes.
- The button to open the collection chamber door is right where I place my thumb for strength so I tend to pop it open when I am doing the actual rolling task (I seem to have this problem with a lot of products that have a button in the center, so that might be a "me" problem.)
- The chom chom is 7.5" wide which is excellent for cleaning furniture, but a narrower version would be better for clothing, especially when the dog hair gets on the clothes while they're being worn and it would be impractical to remove the clothes (e.g., if you get dog hair on your black pants when you ride in your co-worker's car to lunch during the workday.)
BOTTOM LINE: I have had this little gadget for less than a week and have already recommended it to several people and wrote this review while I was looking to see if they had a narrower model for my car/office/coat closet. I wish I had owned this years ago, and I would 100% buy it again.
Contains at least 50% recycled material.
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