Handy Home Upgrades To Save You Time Every Day
Smart Technology That Saves Your Time
In the last years and decades, our indoor environments have advanced so much, helping to make everyday tasks so much easier and allowing us to concentrate on other things in life. Many of us are very busy with other commitments, so these handy upgrades can prove to be invaluable. If you are feeling like your own home needs a technical touch-up or two, here are a few ideas of what you can do.
1. Electric Garage Door Opener
If you still have a manual garage door opener, this can be a pain in the neck when you are coming and going from your house every day. With an electric garage door opener, you don’t even have to worry about getting out of your car, which is perfect for the days when the temperature starts dropping! Upgrade to a smart option and you can take care of this task using your smartphone, which is certainly an attractive prospect to many people. Electric garage door openers also help to add a bit of extra security to your home and make sure that your car – or your pride and joy – is properly protected!
2. Personal Assistant
Many smart homes are centered around a ‘home assistant’ such as an Amazon Alexa or Google Home device. In their most basic function, they allow you to do verbal internet searches and put on music by request. But they also allow you to hook up your other devices and control other functions of your home by voice. Some of them are listed below. If you put one of these in the key rooms of your home, you have maximum control of everything going on around the place. While they are not very expensive items, the benefits that they can bring around the home are significant. As for the quality of the speakers and the functionality, this can increase depending on which level of device you decide to invest in.
3. Smart Home Alarm System
Home security systems have advanced immeasurably over recent years. You can now connect a host of gadgets to the internet including door locks, sensors, cameras, sirens, and motion sensors. Some manufacturers offer these kits in a bundle, while you also have the option of buying them all separately if you like. Everything will be hooked up to an app, which will permit certain functions such as receiving alerts, viewing video camera footage, and even controlling features of your home such as the appliances, lighting, and heating. Alternatively, you could go for something simpler like a smart video doorbell, which gives you video access to whoever is knocking at your door. As well as being useful for home security, this also allows you to speak to legitimate visitors such as people coming to deliver parcels.
4. Smart Plugs
Smart plugs may be small and affordable, but they form an integral part of any smart home. Essentially, they allow you to turn any appliance on and off from a remote distance using your smartphone. All you have to do is plug one into your socket and make any appliance smart. One of the top advantages is convenience. You can get your coffee machine started from the comfort of your bed, so a fresh pot is ready to go once you get to the kitchen! You can also schedule certain parts of your home – such as the lighting – to only come on when you need it. This can help you to cut back on your energy bills around the house. Ultimately, they are the best way of making your home smart with minimal effort.
5. Smart Heating
Next up, you can upgrade your home by putting in a smart heating system. You hook up your heating system to the internet and you can adjust the temperature or switch your heating off from a remote device. They are particularly useful for people who come home at different times during the day as they allow you to turn on the heating before you arrive, so you have a nice, warm house to come back to. You can also connect them to your personal assistant to give you the option of voice controlling your heating in the home.
6. Smart Safety Devices
You can also add smart devices around the home to make it even safer than it is already. For example, a sensor in your water system will shut it off automatically if a pipe has been detected to have burst. You can also get smart smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors that send an alert to your phone if they detect anything unusual going on in the home. As well as providing safety, these devices also add an extra sense of peace of mind, which is invaluable for many people.
7. Smart Cleaning
Another time-consuming aspect of running the home is keeping everything clean and tidy. Thankfully, there are smart devices out there that can help out with this task as well. One option is to get a smart trashcan that has sensors on the top, taking away the need for you to touch the bin lid. Some of them even have a suction feature on the bottom which allows you to sweep things in directly without having to go through the awkward effort of gathering them up in a dustpan and depositing them in the bin. You could also invest in a smart vacuum cleaner, which moves around the home sweeping up dust and debris without you needing to lift a finger!
The process of upgrading your home to make it smarter can be done with big, wholesale changes, but it can also be achieved with just a few simple upgrades. For example, the system of smart plugs listed above means that you can quickly and easily make any device ‘smart’. Essentially, there is an option for everyone, no matter what budget they are currently on. And with so much time saved, there are all sorts of options for what you can do with it!