There is so much that smart home devices can offer. But people probably don’t think of them as disciplinarians. Okay, maybe I’m stretching a bit, but I’ve found ways to utilize my smart home gadgets to help normalize routines in my home, especially when it comes to setting strict time limits. This is probably not a surprise, as people have used automation in their homes to make them run more smoothly since they’ve been around.
It’s one of the best things about smart home devices. The ability to have them turn on when you want without having to physically be there is great. For one action to trigger another one from a different device makes life easier. You can set yourself up for success if you’re setting up your smart home in a planned way. As the father of a toddler, I’ve used smart home devices to my advantage and tried to cut down on the extra time it takes for my daughter to go to bed.
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I’ve tested out a few smart plugs over the years and the one that I have come back to is the Kasa Matter Smart Plug. I’ve found success using this all over my house. I’ve used it in different areas to do things, such as having the lights turn on when the sun rises (which wasn’t always a sure-fire hit because the light sensor I had didn’t always work) and turn a fan on when the smart home thermostat reaches a certain degree.
While a lot of times, you can set schedules within the smart device itself, smart plugs can turn almost any device into a smart one. For example, the light bulb in my daughter’s room is not a smart bulb. While I could get a smart bulb, because I have a smart plug, I don’t need one. That’s one of the beauties of smart home devices. They keep evolving, so when you are using a “dumb” device, there’s a smart one eventually waiting to replace it and you can use something like a smart plug to help another device.
Anyway, I’ve chosen not to buy a new smart bulb because the smart plug is working well and I’m able to keep an eye on the energy usage through the Kasa app. I don’t see a reason to spend more money to change it currently. That might be the case when I want to opt for a dimmable bulb or get a dimmable smart plug. But the smart plug I have right now works well and helps set up bedtime.
We tend to do bathtime at a specific time each night to keep bedtime at a reasonable hour. I have a schedule set on the smart plug to turn on the light at that time. This avoids having to walk up the stairs to a dark hallway and having to yell at my Alexa speaker to turn on her light. It’s already on when we come up for bathtime, so we can get her pajamas laid out and ready to go. This helps in the prep portion of the night, but smart plugs also help during the wind down and bedtime portion.
The smart plug works well at night
It’s a great assistant for parents
Credit:Â Chris Hachey / MakeUseOf
Plugging the lamp into the smart plug lets you control when the lamp turns on and off without having to physically turn the buttons. This lets us get my daughter ready for bed and tucked in to read her a story. Part of the bedtime routine is reading until the light turns off. Once the light turns off, then it’s time to lie in bed and try to go to sleep.
As anyone with a toddler knows, they don’t always fall right asleep, so we had to adjust it a bit. Her room went from light to dark immediately, so we had to adapt the schedule slightly. We now have a second smart plug in a different outlet in her room that turns her small night light on when the other light goes off. It’s the kind of switch that she finds fun and almost triggers her that it is time to start thinking about bed.
That’s one of the beauties of smart home devices. They keep evolving…
When the lamp shuts off, the books go away and our final good night hugs and kisses take place. That’s made easier with the presence of the night light being turned on. This has helped her adjust into the bedtime routine, especially since she’s transitioned from her crib to a bed.
So many other uses for smart plugs in the house
I can imagine using this more for parenting
Credit:Â Chris Hachey / MakeUseOf
As using the dual smart plugs in her room has gone pretty well so far, I’ve been thinking about the other ways I can use them for parenting. As she gets older and does more things on her own, we can still use the lights as signals for when it’s time to go to bed. It’s an easy way to incorporate low-tech gadgets into the home.
Whether this is reading on her own, using her Yoto Mini Player, or some type of device with a screen (as much as we’ve tried to avoid screens, they’re hard to avoid when both your parents work from home), smart plugs can be used to help signal changes in the daily. It wouldn’t shock me if she got into video games, as I do a bit of gaming myself. We might have to use the smart plug to turn off a system in the future.
Using the smart plug to only allow a set amount of time with something like video games is also a smart way to use the schedules. Of course, I can control all of this through the smart plug app, making it a nice control to have.
Smart plugs have helped me as a parent
Using a smart plug has become a staple part of the daily routine in my house. We use it to help my toddler wind down each day and get ready for bed. We ended up using two lights with two different smart plugs to automate part of her bedtime. It has become something that we don’t have to think about and makes it easier at her nighttime and ours each day.
