A couple of weeks ago I visited the Interior Design Show in Toronto and was struck by all the technology that is being integrated into home products.
From refrigerators that can send you a photo of what’s inside to sensors that turn your lights on when you walk into the room, the smart home is quickly becoming the norm.
I’m not sure I’m ready to go full Jetsons over here, but we have added a few smart additions have made day to day life around the home easier.
This post is sponsored by ecobee who provided us with the thermostat and sensors featured in this post.
Google Home
Our Google Home lives in the kitchen and acts primarily as a speaker for music while cooking, setting a timer, giving us the news in the morning and answering important questions during dinner conversations “hey google, how tall is Jason Momoa?”. I know we’re not using this too it’s full potential (yet) but it is a lot of fun.
ecobee Smart Thermostat
The folks at ecobee sent us one of their ecobee 4 thermostats to try out and I’m so impressed with it. A smart thermostat can help to reduce your energy bills and make your home more efficient.
Our thermostat is set up with a schedule that keeps our house comfortable during the day, and drops the temperature at night when we’re asleep. It also adjusts the schedule when it knows we’re away so that we’re not heating (or cooling) a house when no one is home.
But, my favourite part are the sensors! While I work from home, I’m usually on a different floor from our thermostat – while the first floor can be nice and warm my office on the second floor can be super cold. The ecobee sensors can sense when I’m in my office and adjust the temperature.
Robot Vacuum
This was our Christmas gift to each other in 2017 and after a full year of use I don’t think we could go back to life without one. Since we moved in together 11 years ago Chris has pretty much done all the vacuuming in our home – and with four cats that’s lot of vacuuming!
Our model, a Xiaomi Mi Robot Vacuum, is quite clever and keeps track of all the places it’s already vacuumed, so it doesn’t hit the same spot twice (keeping the run time down). You can start it remotely from your phone and it gets to all those hard to reach places like under the sofa.
Air Purifier
My mum has some pretty bad allergies and wanted to find a way to remove some dust and allergens from the air. She added a Dyson Pure Hot + Cool Link to her living room in the basement and has seen a big improvement in her air quality and health. She loves that she can see the quality of the air on her phone and use it as a heater on extra cold evenings.
Have you embraced smart home technology?
What are your favourite smart home devices?
