Top 7 Ways Our Family Uses Amazon's Alexa
After being gifted an Amazon Echo Dot in 2017, it has become a super helpful tool in our household. We now use it 6 connected devices throughout different rooms in the house (a few more of the Echo Dots + we have one with a screen as well as the kids one). Here are some of my favorite ways we are using it.
Timers - this is the most frequently-used skill in our home. I love being able to, without having to grab a physical timer, say, "Alexa, set a 5-minute timer". We use it for food, for reminding us to move laundry to the dryer, or for letting kids know when it is time to go upstairs for bedtime. I love how you can set multiple timers at once and name them. For example, "Alexa, set a 40-minute broccoli timer. Alexa, set a 10-minute pasta timer."
Music - this is another skill used daily around our house. When our son was a toddler, he would stand in the kitchen pointing at Alexa saying, "Eee-eye-oh?" repeatedly until we ask Alexa to play Old MacDonald Had a Farm, which would then be immediately rewarded with a huge smile and dancing from him. We also have it connected to our Pandora and Spotify accounts, so we can play stations and playlists that way. Sonos is also integrated, so we love also using it to play music and stories throughout the house. The kids have a playlist of songs they love, and they often get it going while they’re building LEGOs by asking Alexa to play the kid playlist.
Grocery and Other Lists - We use Amazon Fresh for grocery delivery. We use up the last bit of shredded cheddar cheese or cumin or bananas and just ask Alexa to add more to the cart. The next time we are putting in our grocery order, those things are already there and will not be forgotten. Even without purchasing your groceries from Amazon Fresh, you can build a grocery list with Alexa that will sync with your phone for next time you're at the store. It makes other lists, too - for example, we keep a list of movie night ideas for our Friday movie night tradition that all four of us add to when we hear of an interesting movie we’d like to see.
News - If you say, "Alexa, what's the news?", you'll get a few minutes of a flash briefing of the big stuff going on in the country/world. I often use this while I’m warming up my lunch or putting dishes in the dishwasher at the end of the day.
Time and Weather - Sometimes I have my hands full with kids and my phone is not nearby, and so I've found myself lately using it a few times a week just for, "Alexa, what time is it?". It's also a great tool for finding out the forecast when you are busy doing something away from your smartphone that might normally be your go-to for that information. Our 6-year-old can be heard in the morning asking Alexa for the weather when she is getting dressed for the day.
Intercom - If you have more than one Alexa device, you can use them to talk to each other like an in-home intercom system. Since we have an upstairs and downstairs, we have found this useful to talk with each other across the house without screaming. We use this to let everyone know when dinner is ready, and yesterday morning our kids somehow locked themselves in their room and let us know by using this feature, haha. Just say, “Alexa, Announce <the thing you want to announce>”.
Smart Plugs - We enjoy having Alexa coordinate with smart plugs in our house. We use an air purifier that is hooked up to a smart plug so that it turns itself on at 7:30pm and off again at 7:30am (so that it stays on while we are sleeping, which also provides additional white noise for our kids). Sometimes we want it turned on at other times, so we just say, "Alexa, turn on the air filter," and it is so. We have other smart plugs that do things like turn space heaters on and off by voice, create a scene in our living room to watch TV (all at once it turns on the TV and dims the lights).
We use it many other ways, too - this morning my daughter asked about why marshmallows are called marshmallows (it’s because of a particular tree whose sap was used in early versions), and it controls most lights in our home too via the Hue bulbs.
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