The Home Wishlist

The Home Wishlist

Words by Ren Alcantara

While my wife and I don’t have a particularly large home, it nonetheless remains our castle. Home for us is a condo with a dog, a cat, and all the things that make living there quite comfortable. Still, there are a few things I personally feel would allow condo life to be a little more convenient, because with the traffic, work, and everything else going on, who doesn’t want an easier job keeping house?

A robot vacuum

I get it. This is such a stereotypical modern home appliance to want to have. Still, with two fluffy residents sharing our space, there’s no end to the fur that accumulates on the floor. Sweeping daily only barely keeps the mess at bay, and really, who has time to do that? A robot vacuum such as the Roomba or Xiaomi’s own offering is something that a solo condo-dweller or a couple living in a small space should consider. It’s smart, convenient, and actually does free up a significant amount of time that would otherwise be spent sweeping.

A Mean Vacuum Cleaner

Autonomous vacuum cleaners are great, but for some jobs, a powerful hand-held vacuum cleaner is necessary. We’ve long needed to replace our old-style bagged machine for something a little more modern and compact, and while it’s a little pricey, we have been toying with the idea of buying something like the Dyson V-11 handheld cordless vacuum. Reasonably compact, with great runtime and superb performance, it’s something that can be used for both spot cleaning, or the more general top-down, all-around type cleaning my wife loves to randomly do without warning. If you’re going to have to suddenly clean the entire place, you might as well have good tools for it.

Smart Switches

Despite living in a relatively small space, we have a lot of lights with their accompanying switches. Late at night, when everyone is sleepy and dog/cat combination has us trapped under the duvet, switching off the lights can be a challenge. Smart switches, meant to replace your standard light switches, can be controlled by either your phone or home voice assistant, allowing you to switch off without getting out of bed, or even lifting a finger. If you really want to future it up, you can set timers or triggers so the whole process of switching off lights can happen automatically. It’s like having a personal assistant make sure you’re cozy and comfortable, without having to deal with social security or worker demands! This costs less than a smart lights which have to be bought and installed singly, though it does require a competent electrician to wire up.

A Smart Lock

This is actually something we’d just gotten and installed, though there are a few upgrades I am looking at. I finally bit the bullet and purchased a Bluetooth Smart lock from August, and installed it myself in all of 10 minutes. The lock keeps us from having to fish for our keys every time we get home, and can be programmed to automatically unlock as we approach the door. It’s not perfect—sometimes it fails to recognize our presence automatically, requiring that we launch the app and unlock the door manually from there, but on the whole, it’s been great. What I’ve been looking to do, however, is purchase the Wi-Fi bridge that will allow authorized users to lock and inlock the door remotely, regardless of where we are, as long as there’s a wireless connection available. This is helpful for then the cleaning people come around, or if we have guests, or possibly some emergencies.

Low and Slow

The final thing I want to add to my list of home devices is a simple appliance: a slow cooker. Yes, it might not be as fancy or smart as literally anything else on this list, but it makes the often tedious job of cooking meals a lot easier. Toss the ingredients in, turn the heat up, go to sleep, and in the morning, you have enough food for a few days. It’s decidedly low-tech, but that’s a lot of reward for very little effort.

Air Purifiers

Pet fur, pollution, pollen and a whole other host of things cause respiratory problems, and with my wife’s asthma, it can be a real issue when we’re stuck at home for extended periods of time. Along with a few other things, we’ve been looking at air purifiers to help keep the dust, dander, and other small, floaty particles from bothering us. We haven’t decided on a particular one yet, but something with a washable filter, or at least something that isn’t immediately disposable is definitely on our list. There isn’t a shortage of brands that offer such ones, and many are even available online. Coupled with smart plugs and scheduled hours, the intention is to run the purifiers for a few hours a day while we’re out to keep the air in our home clean, without any additional input from us.

Smartify Everything

A quick tip that might be of use to anyone who wants to make their home a bit smarter: smart plugs. These look like simple plug adapters, but have circuitry that allows them to connect to the wireless network. Combined with an app, you can switch the plugged device on or off remotely, or set power-up and power-down schedules. You can even group plugs together to act in concert with a single command. Just be aware that this only works with the simplest of devices, so anything with a remote won’t be compatible.

That’s about it for my home wishlist this year. Hopefully, you’ve picked up a few ideas for tech-inclined friends and family as well.