I agree some devices save money (nest thermostat, automated lights etc) and some are just convenient when your hands are full or dirty (auto-door locks, auto-faucet, etc), but none of this stuff saves me TIME.
The only stuff that actually saves time is stuff like robot vacuums and robot lawn mowers.
Things that would actually save me time:
- work from home. Not having to commute every day (which isn’t going to happen for where I work)
- Automatic grocery delivery. Not having to go buy groceries every week. (which can’t happen because my grocery trips are small orders and require too much fresh produce aka I don’t trust the pickers)
- a robot that mows the lawn and picks up the dog poop first. But what would really be life-changing is a robot that can pick up all the leaves in the fall and eat them or stash them somewhere for me. I am surrounded by massive tree leaf-producers.
- a robot vacuum that actually picks up pet hair really well and doesn’t get stuck and can fit into all the corners. I currently have a roomba i7+ and it’s “OK” at pet fur on carpet, but still leaves some behind. I’ve been eyeing the roomba s9+ and reading reviews and wondering if it would do a better job with pet fur on carpet.
- something that lets you wash clothes, bed sheets, towels all at once. What’s time-consuming is having to do multiple loads to fit everything. high capacity washer and dryer with the obvious feature that warns you its about to finish.
- something that would keep the bathtub/shower and toilet automatically clean.
- something that would automatically cook for you. Meal delivery kits are too expensive and still require cooking of those prepped ingredients they mail you. Meals that are already cooked and delivered are even more expensive and even less food/filling. No restaurant serves anything healthy because they cover everything in animal products or huge amounts of oil. Huel is the only answer I’ve found, but its boring to eat that way.
Things that eat up my time every week are:
- sleeping
- eating
- taking a shower, shaving, drying hair.
- mowing the lawn and picking up dog poop (or raking massive amount of leaves in the Fall)
- commuting to work
- buying groceries
- cooking (if I want more food variety than Huel or plain fruit or microwaved soup can)
- doing the laundry (clothes, towels, bedsheets)
- running the sweeper to pick up dog fur the robot vacuum didn’t get
I could care less if my kitchen faucet or lights turn on automatically. What we actually need are solutions that cut down on daily and weekly chores. This is the beauty of the creation of the stove, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine, dryer, fridge, lawn mower etc. Those things REDUCE time spend on chores. Whereas most of the smart home stuff is gimmicky and tries to save energy or serve you more ads or music/media content and does nothing to reduce time spend on chores.
What consumes your time? What are your solutions, or solutions you wish existed?
I think you need a butler!
Smart homes are about taking the thought and manual actions out of the every day. Currently, at least.
The really hard stuff that you talk about is currently infeasible. But it’s being worked on. Self driving cars, washing machines do smarter load detection these days, etc. You can buy ready meals and put them in the microwave already, no need to prepare and cook from scratch. They just taste shit and will give you colon cancer if you eat too many.
It takes about thirty seconds of my time to boot up my computers and logon to work. That happens automatically now for me, that’s about the only time saving I’ve made 😄