When I hurt my back last month, I suddenly realized how many tiny, repetitive tasks fill my day, and how painful they can be when the body’s not cooperating. That got me thinking about home automation: smart devices, shortcuts, and everyday hacks that could make life a little easier.
So I started digging. Over the weeks, I’ve collected and sifted through hundreds of automation ideas shared in online communities and I built a small database of the automations people with disabilities and chronic fatigue actually find useful.
When I say automation, I don’t just mean expensive smart gadgets. This guide includes shortcuts and hacks that make daily routines run smoother. Buying only one type of sock for everyone in the family? That’s automation. Sticking an NFC tag on your washer to start a laundry timer? Also automation.
This is a snapshot of what real people are doing to reclaim time, energy, reduce pain, and take back a bit of control over their days.
How to Read This Guide
Each automation is tagged with:
• Ease:
Easy setup | Medium setup | Hard setup
•Estimated Cost:
$ (under $20) | $$ ($20–50) | $$$ ($50–150) | $$$$ ($150–500) | $$$$$ ($500+)
I’ve grouped automations by category, so you can go directly to the areas of home automations that interest you most.
Kitchen & Meal Prep
Cooking and tasks associated with cooking are consistently mentioned as one of the biggest energy and time drains: never ending decisions (what’s for dinner??), shopping, chopping up ingredients, washing dishes.
These automations hopefully can give you ideas on how to cut down on effort or decision fatigue.
Turning regular appliances “smart” appliances
Smart plugs make this easy and they’re also affordable.
Popular uses were:
• Start coffee brewing automatically at wake up time — Easy | $
• Have appliances send a notification when they’re done so they’re not forgotten (most popular was the dishwasher) — Medium | $
• Turn off appliances remotely or after a certain time has elapsed (e.g. slow cooker to turn off after six hours) — Easy | $
• Sensor to notify if the fridge or freezer door has been left open. If you have an older stand alone freezer this can save you hundreds in food costs. An accidentally forgotten open freezer door is an expensive mistake that happens way too often (ask me how I know) — Medium | $
Shopping
It’s time consuming, tiring and many people dread it with a passion. These were the most commonly used ways to ease the pain of shopping.
• Using voice assistants like Alexa or Siri to add items to the shopping list before forgetting — Easy | $
• Shared shopping lists by the whole family so any time someone runs out of an item they simply add it to the list which then gets purchased once a week — Easy | $
• Non perishable items like toilet paper on repeat subscription purchase, gets delivered automatically each week/month etc — Easy | $
• Home delivery or car boot pickup after ordering online — Easy | $
• Location based reminders (e.g. notification to buy item when walking past shop) — Easy | $
Cooking and meal planning
Mobility issues can make standing by the stove difficult, dexterity issues make chopping hard. Fatigue, lack of motivation or just not having the time or spoons can make it even harder to get things done. These are some automations and shortcuts people are using to make cooking a little easier.
• Veg chopper, useful especially for onions (Quality matters here) — Easy | $$
• Having the same monthly meal plan on rotation complete with shopping list — Medium | $
• Themed week night dinners (eg Friday is pizza night) — Easy | $
• Meal box delivery (eg HelloFresh) — Easy | $$ to $$$
• Appliances that cook unsupervised (eg air fryers, slow cookers, rice cookers) — Easy | $$ to $$$
• Nuts or cereal dispensers so kids can help themselves in the morning without waking a parent — Medium | $$
• ChatGPT or other AI to help with meal planning — Easy | $
Cleaning, chores, laundry
The never ending piles of laundry, pet hair, dust — let’s not kid ourselves we could all use some help in this department.
Laundry
• Washer dryer combos were mentioned as most life changing, so that clothes no longer get forgotten wet in the machine — Medium | $$$$
• The next best thing was using a smart plug on a regular washing machine so it can notify when the cycle is finished — Easy | $
• Delaying the washing until early morning so clothes can be dried first thing as part of a morning routine — Easy | $
• Buying the same color / type of sock for each family member was also popular to cut down on sorting, matching, lost halves — Easy | $
• Washing each family member’s laundry on a separate day — Easy | $
• Outsourcing the laundry or ironing to someone else — Easy | $$$
Cleaning
• Robot vacuum and mop combos were most often mentioned as life changing. Especially if they self empty — Medium | $$$ to $$$$$
• Robot window cleaners. Particularly if you have a lot of windows or upstairs windows — Medium | $$$$
• Automatic faucets. Turn water on and off without having to turn the tap — Medium | $$
• Outsourcing. Even just twice a month, some paid help can make all the difference — Easy | $$ to $$$
• Cordless vacuum – so much easier to carry around and means the car can be cleaned easier too. Again quality matters here, I have had several cheap useless ones before I finally bought a good one which was worth every dollar — Easy | $$$
• Replacing bulky food blenders with a stick blender for easier washing up — Easy | $$
Pets
Their love language is to be given food at 5 am it seems, and automating taking care of some of their needs can really take the pressure off.
• Automatic pet feeders, waterers and cat litter boxes. Can be pricey but worth it — Medium | $$ to $$$$
• Automated pet doors that respond to collars — Medium | $$ to $$$
• Automated recurring purchase of pet food shipped to your door — Easy | $
• If you keep backyard chickens, an automatic chicken door to let them out in the morning and keep them safe at night, makes life much easier — Medium | $$
Health
It’s not negotiable — looking after yourself is vital. Some of these make this a little easier to do every day.
• Pill dispenser that blinks, notifies and beeps to make sure you take your meds — Medium | $$
• Putting the medication next to the bed. This is more of a nudge than an automation but visual reminders are powerful! — Easy | $
• Pill bottle timer. It’s a bottle lid that tells you the last time the bottle was opened. Great if you can’t remember if you have already taken your meds that day, or what time — Easy | $
• Insulin pump and/or Continuous glucose monitor for those with diabetes — Medium | $$$$ to $$$$$
• App that messages a chosen person if a phone has not been used in a certain time frame. They can check in on you and make sure you’re safe — Easy | $
• Wearable devices that can notify of health issues or falls. Great for peace of mind — Easy | $$ to $$$
Lighting
Lighting was mentioned a lot, not just as lighting but a way to help serve as reminders as well and reduce forgetfulness.
• Smart lights that turn on gradually in the morning for a gentler wake up — Medium | $$
• Curtain openers to help with waking up with natural light and automatic privacy at night — Medium to Hard | $$ to $$$
• Smart lights that change color after a reminder until the task is done, so that it is not forgotten — Medium | $$
• Light bulb color change while cooking so the stove isn’t forgotten on — Easy | $$
• Motion sensor for lights, especially helpful in dark pantries or when getting up at night to use the bathroom — Easy | $$
• Alexa to turn on Christmas lights on a particular date — Easy | $
Reminders, Scheduling, other voice assisted tasks
These are just some of the many ways people are using voice assistants like Alexa, Siri or Google
• You can make Alexa smarter and more conversational by enabling the ChatGPT skill — Easy | $
• Make announcements to other family members in the house through multiple smart speakers rather than shouting — Easy | $$
• Voice assistant in the car to jot down notes or ideas while driving — Easy | $
• Creating an Alexa routine like “time to start housework” which then plays favourite music, changes lighting etc to encourage housework — Easy | $
• Regular recurring reminders (e.g. every Tuesday “it’s rubbish night”, or “time to leave for the bus stop” on weekdays etc) — Easy | $
• Skylight calendar or app shared by the family for chores and schedules — Easy | $$$$
• Speakers start playing music in the kids’ rooms to wake them up on weekdays — Easy | $
• Battery chargers that turn off when charged (using a smart plug) — Easy | $
Other Accessibility & Daily Life
Miscellaneous useful things
• Kindle page turner for hands free reading — Easy | $
• AI wearable that transcribes everything you hear all day and summarises the day (I want one!) — Medium | $$ to $$$
• AirTags to avoid losing the car in the car park — Easy | $
• NFC tags for task automations. I can’t say I fully understand why people use these but here’s a discussion on what people use them for to get some ideas— Medium | $
• Smart Thermostats — Medium to Hard | $$ to $$$$
• Simple fans or space heaters turned on automatically when triggered by temp, manually but remotely, or on a timer, through smart plugs — Easy | $
• Smart locks unlock doors automatically when they detect your arrival home — Medium | $$ to $$$
• Plugging hair straighteners, the iron or anything that can be a fire hazard into a smart plug so they can be turned off remotely if forgotten on — Easy | $
I hope you enjoyed this list of automations, if you have any favorites please leave a comment.
Leave a Reply