These home automation gift ideas are designed to boost productivity and help people get some time back in a busy day. By minimizing the amount of time, it takes to complete boring chores and mundane tasks people can spend more time doing the things they enjoy most.
Finding the right gift can be a challenge, especially if you’re on a budget. One thing in common as Americans is that we’re all short on time and could use a little productivity boost. Automating small tasks around the house doesn’t have to cost a fortune and can have an outsized impact.
By automating small tasks that only take a short period of time, it frees you up from having to think about it or take time from bigger more important tasks at hand.
Let’s take a look!
Automatic Dog Feeder
Automatic Timed Dog and Cat Feeder
As much as we love our pets, we can’t guarantee that we’ll always get home on time to feed them at a regular time. With an Automatic dog and cat feeder, you can load pet food in, lock the bin so petes can’t get into it and set a regular time interval for the feeder to automatically dispense food for your pet.
Automatic dog and cat feeders come in multiple sizes for small, medium, or large pets. Most models require a Wi-Fi connection, but some like this can be found that don’t require an app or internet connection.
Automatic Plant Waterer
Clear Glass Self Watering Plant Spikes
Self-watering plant spikes are a cost-effective way to set it and forget it for a period of time. Fill the glass bulbs with water and water will slowly drip into the dirt next to the plat’s roots allowing it to soak up water as needed. The bulbs come in a number of different sizes allowing you to control the amount of time in between having to fill them up again.
They’re perfect if you only want to remember to water plants on a weekly basis, or if you often find yourself thinking about watering the plants when you go away from the house for a long weekend or a vacation.
Timed Wall Plugs
BN-LINK Indoor 24-Hour Outlet Timer
Timed wall plugs are one of the most versatile home automation devices that you can purchase. They’re unassuming and cost effective. These timers let you plug any device you want into them, and you can set a start and end time for the device.
Some ideas of items you can plug into these timed plugs are:
- Space Heaters
- Table Lamps
- Holiday Lights
- Humidifier/Dehumidifier
- Fans
They can also save you money. For example, a space heater that turns on 30 minutes before your alarm goes off can heat up a room and make it easier to get out of bed if you don’t have the luxury of central air and a smart thermostat.
Automatic Robot Vacuum Cleaner
Robot vacuum cleaners have come down dramatically in price over the last several years making them increasingly approachable for a wider range of people. The vacuums connect to an app on your phone making it easy to schedule how frequently it runs and some models even allow you to setup different schedules for different rooms of your house.
The real luxury of robot vacuums comes through when you schedule it to run every day before you normally come home from work. If you have carpet, you’ll see the fresh lines where the vacuum ran over it and cleaned it. Robot vacuums don’t pick up as much dirt as you get with a typical stick vacuum but they run 7 times more often if you normally vacuum on a weekly basis.
Automatic Shower and Tile Scrubber
Cordless Electric Tile Scrubber with Extension Arm
Power tools aren’t just for the garage anymore! This cordless electric tile scrubber makes short of shower stains, mildew or dirty grout on floor tiles. Spray one of your favorite cleaners onto a shower wall, push a button and let the rotating brush head do the scrubbing for you.
Cordless Electric tile scrubbers like this one come with a number of different brush heads that let you get into corners, crevices and those hard-to-reach spots where wall tile meets the bathtub. Outside of the bathroom the telescoping scrubber can extend to clean hard to reach places all over the house.
Shirt Folding Board
We’ll admit that shirt folding board’s don’t quite fall under the automation category, they’re a massive time saver. You lay a shirt or article of clothing on the folding shirt board and it will turn a shirt into a perfect square. They’re often used at clothing retailers and they’re the secret behind getting nice neat piles of clothes without spending a lot of time on it.
Laundry day will go a lot faster if you give the gift of a shirt folding board. You may even find extra room in your dresser once everything is neatly folded.
Automatic Coffee Maker
Keurig K-Supreme Single Serve Automatic Coffee Maker
Keuring machines have become common place in homes and workplaces around the world and for good reason. It’s impossible to beat the convenience of placing a pod of your favorite coffee into a Keurig machine and let it brew a fresh cup of coffee in moments.
Coffee makers are a work from home essential. Some people have concerns about the cost of the replacement pods which can be purchased at reasonable prices from your local Costco or you can purchase re-usable pods that can be filled with ground coffee of your choice.
Lawn Sprinkler and Garden Watering Timer
Rainpoint Programmable Garden Hose Watering Timer
Water times are a great gift idea for people who are into gardening or having a lush green lawn year-round. The timers work by attaching to the house outlet of your house, and they can be set to come up for set periods of time and specific times of day.
They’re especially useful when attached to a drip hose to irrigate garden or lawn plants, or you can attach a sprinkler to ensure that the lawn gets the proper amount of water at the right time of day without putting any thought into it.
Personal Item Trackers
For people who frequently find themselves losing or misplacing items, AirTags help you keep track of them and find them right away. The tags connect to your phone and locate them on your behalf. While AirTags are specifically designed for working with Apple iPhones, other brands are compatible with Android devices.
Tags are a great way to spend less time looking for commonly misplaced items, and actually doing the things you enjoy.
Smart Home Assistant
Smart home assistants are a staple of home automation. They’re incredibly useful for simple things like answering questions, playing music, or making phone calls. Smart assistants become exponentially more useful when you start connecting them to other services or components of a home automation system.
Try combining an Amazon Echo with Alexa compatible thermostats, light bulbs, and plugs to let you control your entire house by voice command.
Clap Activated Wall Plugins
The Clapper is the ultimate home automation gift. The Clapper was originally released in the 1980s and while it seems dated by today’s smart home standards, millennials and Gen Z’ers might get a kick out of watching you clap twice to turn on lamp or clapping three times to turn on the radio.
On the other hand, the clapper is a quick way to introduce some home automation without having to mess around with phone apps or setting up connections between devices. The Clapper even works when your home internet goes out!
Automatic Beer Bottle Opener
Pop the Top Beer Bottle Opener
For the beer lover in your friend group or family who always has a gadget or some new home automation device, check out Pop the Top. It’s a fun and novel way to take the bottle cap off of a beer bottle with a push. Pop a Top pops up and prevents your beer bottlecap from getting damaged for the beer cap collector.
Conclusion
Everybody could use a little bit more time. With these gifts, the recipient will find themselves getting a few minutes to a few hours back out of each day. When you combine small productivity wins over time they add up to some great results. Not only do you save time on a specific task but you free up mental capacity by not having tasks hang over your head.
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