Making My Home Smart

The apartment we moved into in December is finally getting unpacked and organized enough for me to start seeing opportunities to make it smart. 🤓

Since our furniture got here, for example, I've used my one smart outlet to control a lamp in the living room. I paired those two devices together in the NYC apartment because the lamp's switch was hard to reach where we had it set up.

But in LA, it really wasn't as much of a problem. We were just automating that lamp as a leftover default of the old place.

On the other hand, for some reason my bedroom TV won't power the Roku I use it with anymore. With it plugged into the wall instead, the Roku never turns off. That means when I fall asleep 20 minutes into a 25 minute sitcom episode, instead of turning off afterwards it keeps playing til morning, streaming a ton of data and messing up my spot in the series.

So today I moved the smart outlet into the bedroom and plugged the Roku into it, then set up an automation to turn the outlet off and on every day at 4am, ultimately resetting the device and stopping the current stream.

Why didn't I think of this sooner?!

I also finally got around to setting up a few of the NFC tag stickers I bought when I got a compatible phone last month.

Now, when I tap my phone to my mindset journal, it:

I'm so excited to put stickers on everything and order more smart outlets. 🤓