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Hello there Forbes a couple of days ago had an article called Design and Remodeling Industry Bullish On Voice Control In The Home. I just wanted to talk about that real quick. So this article talks about how one in three homes have a smart speaker and I thought that number was actually kind of low. It meant 100 million homes in the US would have a smart speaker. I thought it’d be much higher than that to be totally honest.

I’m curious how people enjoy using those. 86% of the people who have them said they enjoyed their use and they made life more convenient. And one of the trade organizations the article was talking about, talked about how tech is being included in the kitchen as a necessity. I’m curious about that because we have a lot of tech in our house and specifically in our kitchen. Our dishwasher I made sure when we thought it could hook up to Wi Fi and notify us when it was done. Our fridge it’s connected, our washer and dryer are connected through wifi. While some of the notifications are nice and stuff, it hasn’t really fulfilled like everything that I think it could possibly be in the future.

So while it does make some some things more more enjoyable. So another thing that they said is that tech is being included in the home as a necessity. As millennials and digital natives as they like term them are shopping more and buying homes more and more they want to see tech included at home.

Now I totally get that. I’m a tech nerd through and through. We’ve got our security system, lights and cameras and all sorts of stuff that I love. You know, I can set the mood with our lights by simply saying a command. Set the alarm system and do all kinds of things. It’s awesome. But I thought it was interesting that they’re looking at it as being a necessity and something that younger buyers need to have or expect to see.

The flip side of that I thought was really cool is that older people are using technology as a way to have more independence. Being able to live independently more conveniently and longer. The voice control mechanisms in these technologies are helping older people to age in place in their homes by using the technology as they kind of dip their toes in and get to get used to it a little bit and get a little bit comfortable. It’s giving people who are looking to age in place the ability to do so much more comfortably and for a prolonged period of time. I think that’s super cool. It’s a promise of technology. I don’t think that we’ve always embraced or thought about. A lot of times we do think that older people might be less inclined to embrace technology. But I think this shows that there’s a big part of the population that sees the benefit of it and if we come alongside and teach them and help them use it that they can benefit from it.

So another interesting thing as I’m looking at this article it says that only one in ten people use voice control in the kitchen. I thought that was interesting and that it would be much higher. One of the biggest uses of it is for setting timers in our house, setting timers looking at recipes. A lot of people use it for that. And of course controlling appliances which I don’t know how much people use it…we don’t do that in our house very much but I also think that some of this stuff has a long way to go.

My daughter, her name is Saylor, and she’s nine months old. So she’s still fairly new to us but I can not figure out how my devices are constantly going off because of Siri constantly being triggered when I’m talking to my daughter. I’m not the clearest speaker. So that’s probably why but that was interesting. And something I look forward to them fixing or improving that sort of stuff.

So check out the article. I’ll link it so you can look at it but really what I want to know is from you guys, what types of home technologies are super useful to you? What’s the most beneficial and useful technology that you use? And how do you like to use it?

I’m curious…maybe I’m because I’m a nerd on one side, and I use it much more than anybody else, or much more regularly than a lot of people. And so I would like to know what most people use it for and what their experiences of it are because I can get frustrated. And I wonder if other people get frustrated and then don’t use it. So just curious, shoot me a message or better yet comment on social the social media post where you’re seeing this.