Our Home Just Keeps Getting Smarter

Who says you can’t teach an old home new tricks?! A few months ago, I told you all about our new Hive Home System, and how it allowed us to bring our decade old house into the smart home generation without any overly complicated updates or high upfront device costs.

After living with our Hive smart home ecosystem throughout the summer and into the fall, we’ve continued to discover new ways that it can make our home a smarter, safer, and an even more fun place to live. I told you I’d keep you updated as I came up with additional solutions to make our home work harder for us, rather than the other way around, so today I’m back to chat about four more reasons that I’ve fallen in love with our Hive Home System this fall! Thank you to Hive for sponsoring this post. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.

WHAT IS HIVE, AGAIN?

Let me back up and give you a quick reminder of what Hive is all about. Back in June, the UK’s most popular smart home brand launched in the US and Canada with their Hive Welcome Home Plan that allowed us an easy way to make our home tech savvy – including the ability to adjust heating and air conditioning, lighting, and appliances from anywhere, and to have each of these components work together to create one cohesive smart home ecosystem, all for one affordable monthly subscription rate!

In the early summer, we installed:

Hive Active Thermostats to control the temperature from anywhere and cut our energy bill
a Hive Door Sensor and Hive Motion Sensor, which integrate to automatically turn on the lights when we enter our detached garage, and to alert us of any uninvited guests in the garage
Hive Active Light™ bulbs to set schedules and control lights throughout our home
Hive Active Plugs to control additional lights in our house that don’t use standard size light bulbs
the Hive Hub, which is the brains of the operation that allows us to control all the other devices through our smart phones, tablets and laptops.

I was initially intimated by the idea of setting this system up on my own while Scott was out of town, but I was shocked by how simple and intuitive it was. You can learn more about the setup process, and details on how we integrated each component in my Smart Home 101 post.

Since each family and each home has unique needs, Hive has recently introduced three additional subscription plans, including the Hive Starter Plan {$9.99/month}, the Hive Heating & Cooling Plan {$12.99/month}, and the Hive Home Check Plan {$19.99/month}, each of which includes a smart thermostat and a mix of other products, all of which are controlled by the Hive mobile app. You can read more about these plans on the Hive website.

Ok, now let’s talk about the new ways that we are using Hive to make the school year run a little smoother, to free up time for the things we love, and even to make our home more fun!

GETTING OUT THE DOOR

IN THE MORNING WITH LESS STRESS

With school back in session, things get pretty hectic. Between driving carpool in the mornings, heading to client meetings, soccer practice, PTA meetings, and a million other commitments, I’m always on my way out the door to somewhere.

Getting ready to go usually looks something like this… start to get dressed, run down the stairs to help the kids locate a missing shirt or sock, run back up the stairs to brush teeth, run down the stairs to put breakfast on the table, run back up the stairs to do my hair and throw on makeup, run down the stairs to pack school lunches and run out the door.

Then, as I’m driving away, I too often have a moment of panic where I can’t remember if I unplugged the curling iron.

What to do?! If I pull back up to the house, I’m going to have to unstrap two kids from their car seats and drag them back inside because I can’t leave them in the car alone while I run up two flights of stairs to the master bathroom. Ugh! Mama ain’t got time for that!

After going through this same routine one too many times in recent weeks, Scott pointed out to me the most obvious of solutions that I’d somehow been overlooking.

Smart Home System Control Plug In from App

Hive to the rescue! I plugged a Hive Active Plug into the outlet by my bathroom sink that I now use for my curling iron.

Smart Home System Control Plug In From iPhone App

Now if I leave the house and question whether I remembered to turn off or unplug the curling iron, all I have to do is open the Hive app and tap on the orange circle to switch the Hive Active Plug off.

If I leave the curling iron plugged in, I can even use the Hive app to turn the Hive Active Plug on in the morning when I’m ready to heat up my curling iron, even if I’m busy downstairs getting the kids prepped for the day. Sometimes just saving those few minutes makes a huge difference on a busy morning.

HIVE IS LIKE AN EXTRA
PAIR OF HANDS IN THE EVENING

Once we’re back home for the evening, the juggling act continues. I’m sure any parent can relate to the feeling that you need to clone yourself so you can be in two place as once {or three, or four…}. There’s always dinner to be cooked and laundry to put away when I’d rather be playing with the kids, reading library books with them, or enjoying a family dance party.

The boys are old enough now that they will play pretty independently when I have chores around the house that have to be done, but as the days get shorter and the sun continues to set earlier each evening, they boys don’t want to go up or downstairs alone if the lights aren’t on.

When we first set up our Hive Home System, we added a Hive Active Light bulb in the boys’ bedroom, and set a schedule for it to come on at the time they normally start getting into their pajamas. We then have the light automatically set to dim to a softer night-light setting as bedtime approaches.

Smart Home System light bulb timer schedule

This automatic schedule is perfect for our nightly bedtime routine, but if the boys want to go upstairs to play or read earlier in the evening, I can easily use the Hive app to turn on their bedroom lamp right from my phone rather than having to run up the stairs.

Better yet, we recently purchased an Amazon Echo, which integrates with our Hive eco-system. So now, if I’m in the middle of cooking dinner and my hands are wet or messy, I simply ask Alexa to turn on the light in the boys’ room.

Hive Smart Home Integrates with Amazon Echo Alexa

Hive is that extra pair of hands that I need to make life easier during the day-to-day routine of the school year. It makes my mom-heart so full to be able to encourage their independence and love of books rather than always having to say “I’ll be there in a minute”!

Back to School Schedule Smart Home System Light Bulbs

CONTROL THE TEMPERATURE FROM ANYWHERE

The Colorado weather is always pretty unpredictable, and especially in the fall, the temperatures tend to swing from one extreme to the other, often within days. The volatile temperatures used to make it hard to know what temperature to set the thermostat to when we go out of town.

But now, thanks to our Hive Active Thermostat, we are always in control, even when we’re away from home. Last weekend, we were up the mountains enjoy a little mini-vacation. I checked the weather back in Denver and saw that it was going to get a lot colder than I expected, so I was able use the Hive app to adjust the temperature back home.

Control your home while traveling with a Smart Home App

It gave me such peace of mind to not have to worry about the house getting too cold and the pipes freezing. And then when the weather warmed right back up the next day, I was able to adjust the thermostat again to not pay to heat the house more than necessary.

MAKING HOLIDAY DREAMS COME TRUE

My boys absolutely love helping me decorate for each holiday, and this year, they asked if we could add some Halloween decoration to the front porch.

They were so excited to see all of our cute Jack o’Lanterns on the porch, but when the sun went down, I had a big surprise for them!

Hive recently introduced some exciting new products that you can “add on” to your Hive home smart plan, including color-changing Hive Active Lights that can be set to 16 million colors on a spectrum!

I swapped out the regular bulbs in the light fixture on our covered porch for two Hive Active Light Color-Changing bulbs. I took the boys out to the porch to capture their reaction:

When they saw the colored light, they were so excited… when the saw they could use the Hive app to pick any color they wanted, they were in heaven!

These are just four of the new ways that we’ve been using our Hive Home System to make our lives a little easier this fall, not to mention a heck of a lot more fun! If you missed my original post about Hive, be sure to head over there now to get more background info and to read about some of the additional ways that Hive has made our home not only smarter, but also safer.

Are you ready to turn your house into a smart home ecosystem with Hive? Then you’re in luck, because you can save 10% of your Hive plan when you use this link and enter discount code HIVEANGELA10 at checkout.

I’m happy to answer any questions you might have, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Hive. The opinions and text are all mine. Comments submitted may be displayed on other websites owned by the sponsoring brand.

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Our Home Just Keeps Getting Smarter

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