As you can tell from the About Us section of our website, I have a big family. What you may not glean from our site is that (unfortunately) farming is not my full-time job. Nor is it my only pass-time. I also am involved with my church, SCUBA dive, weld, attend college courses, and at some point I need to relax. So how do I do all of this? Well, the best thing in to ease all of my burdens is the blessings I have received from God and He has placed the support of a wonderful woman in my life. But it is ultimately up to me to automate things so that I actually have time to do all of this. Prime Big Deal Days are coming up on October 10th and 11th and so I wanted to share some of the things that make my life easier.
The fist is my Amazon Echo Devices. These are the base stations for all of our home automation. It has been so easy to just call out to Alexa to ask what the weather will be or to turn off lights so I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to go flip a switch. To do the latter, we use Kasa Smart Switches. After a hard day pulling weeds or dealing with tractor issues, sometimes I just don’t want to get out of bed to turn off the lights so I can just ask Alexa to do it. I also have them set on Routines so if I forget to turn off the front porch light when I go to sleep, they’ll cut off automatically. You could also link your Ring Home Security devices to arm and lock your deadbolts, such as a eufy Smart Door Lock, at a certain time so you can keep your family safe at night.
In order to keep the house clean, I LOVE my little ‘DJ Roomba’ from iRobot to sweep up after dinner when my young’uns have swept through like a tornado. Then once a week while we’re at church, the Braava Jet Mop form iRobot mops our floors. Do you have time to mop your floors once a week? I don’t! The easy setup let me schedule the cleanings so I don’t have to remember and it runs while we’re gone so the floors are dry when we get home. If I ever need to have the floors swept or mopped before the scheduled time, I can just ask alexa.
The last is an absolute gamechanger. We have an older model, but a smart thermostat is just a necessity these days. When we upgrade, I am looking at the Amazon Smart Thermostat. A smart thermostat is awesome because you can control it from ANYWHERE on your phone. And remember the Routines I talked about earlier? Setting the perfect temp is now an automatic thing for my thermostat. If I am working out on the farm, my old truck probably won’t cool me off enough before I get home so walking into a warm house is a non-starter. I can hop on my phone before I start the drive home and set the temp. You can also set a schedule so if you work a 9-5, it’ll start cooling (or heating) your house before you get there.
In the spirit of openness, the links in this post are specific to our business and if you purchase one of these devices, I get a small portion of the profit. But in all sincerity, these things have made my life easier. I genuinely don’t have enough time in my day to do everything I want or need to do, so if I can save some time or reduce how much I’m sweating during the day, I am only setting myself up for success the next day.
