When you are a busy parent who is always on the go, ironically, your home could be the biggest bottleneck to getting it all done. Successful parenting on the go like everything else, begins at home. If you don’t start well, it is very difficult to catch up and feel successful at the end of the day.
Before you decide to hack your home, it is worth taking a moment to decide whether moving to a new one would be a better investment. If your house is too small to manage everything you need to do, there are only so many ways to make more space. If you are considering adding a room, do your research. That can be very expensive and hide unexpected challenges.
You will also want to check out the real estate market in places you think might be better for raising your family. You can find excellent resources to learn about homes for sale in Santa Ana, Chicago, Denver, and other great places good for people with small children. If moving is a few years off for you, consider these simple home hacks that will also make parenting a little easier:
1. Ethernet
Wifi is great when it works. But the moment you have kids watching movies, playing games, and video chatting with friends, you might find your work meeting gets choppy and hard to manage. The solution to keeping everyone happy and productive is not to get more internet service, but wired ethernet to every computer and set-top box.
2. Home Assistant in Every Room
Devices with Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are dirt cheap. You don’t have to have one per home. You can now have one in every room in the house. That means that anyone can start or stop music, set or stop a timer, or look up words and spelling anywhere they happen to be. This will make your job easier in the long run.
3. LED Lights
Don’t hesitate! Get rid of those incandescent bulbs right now and replace them with LED bulbs. You don’t have to worry about cost or longevity. LED bulbs are inexpensive enough to put all over the house. And they will always cost less to run than comparable incandescent bulbs. You are doing yourself a terrible disservice by not making the switch.
4. Dimmers
While we’re on the subject of lights, dimmers are one of the best home hacks you can do because they save you money without even trying. Kids love dimmers because their fun. Every time they turn on the light halfway, you save money. For added savings, install motion sensors that turn out the lights whenever there is no one in the room. With these hacks, you never have to worry about lights that are accidentally left on. Any nagging you don’t have to do is a win-win.
5. Smart Locks and Doorbells
Smart locks are among the best inventions in the last decade. It is about more than unlocking the door with a smartphone or watch. It is about always knowing that the door is locked when someone leaves the house. Did the kids lock the door when they got home? It doesn’t matter if you have smart locks.
They are usually coupled with a smart doorbell. You can see who is at the door. You can press the panic button if it looks suspicious. You have the tools you need to protect your family in a device you can install yourself.
6. Low Flow Faucets
Your kids are water-wasting machines. They will happily run a gallon of water to fill an 8 oz. cup. Putting low flow faucets on everything will lower your water bill. Best of all, they probably won’t even notice the difference.
7. Air Purifier
Get a good air purifier and watch those unexplained sniffles and sneezes disappear. The air everyone breathes will be free of pet dander, allergens, and whatever the cat and kids dragged in. Help everyone breathe easier and cut down on unnecessary cough medicine.
It is often the simple things that can make a world of difference. The necessary thing might be to move into a better house for your needs. But if that isn’t in the cards right now, go with simple hacks like LED lights, smart locks, and digital assistants to make parenting a little easier.
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