If your 2019 New Year’s resolution is anywhere in the realm of “stressing less,” then you’re not alone! We’re here to help—starting in the kitchen!
The new year is here! Are you ready to rock your 2019 dinner parties, birthday bashes, and everything in between? Whether you’re meal prepping, getting lunches ready for the kids, trying out that tasty recipe that you saw online, or feeding an entire dinner party, wouldn’t it be nice if your kitchen could help ease some of the stress? We’ve gathered a few things from Control4 that can help reduce the stress the kitchen brings for 2019.
Voice assistants, such as the Amazon Alexa family, make it easy to stay on task while you handle something else simultaneously. Just ask Alexa to start a timer, play a song, ask for measuring comparisons, lower the thermostat, and so much more all while you continue your current task. Look at that, you never even had to look up from the cutting board, which you should never do anyway to ensure you keep all of your digits in tact! But that’s not all; Amazon Alexa devices are capable of so much more than just setting timers when incorporated into a smart home system. Commands like “Alexa, turn on cooking” can simultaneously bring up the kitchen lights to 100%, turn the TV on to Food Network or start up your favorite playlist on the speakers in the kitchen, and turn the thermostat down to make your cooking routine as easy as pie.
Connected appliances, such as stoves, refrigerators, slow cookers, etc. are time-savers, and sometimes sanity-savers! We can’t be the only ones that have left the grocery list sitting on the counter, only to realize it while parking at the grocery store. Enter smart refrigerators. With futuristic features like cameras so you can actually look inside your fridge while you’re at the store, screens so you can create and add to shopping lists every time you open the refrigerator, and remote access to be able to send those lists directly to your phone, you’ll never have to hand-write a list again. And with connected stoves, multitasking has never been easier. Stepping away to check more off of your to-do list while something simmers used to be a dangerous game. But now you can just tell the app to turn the temperature down while you’re in the other room! Not today stove-top disasters, not today.
Probably one of the last things you’re thinking about while you’re cooking is having a touch screen in the kitchen. But trust us, once you’ve experienced the ease of touch screens, you can’t live without them…or, at least, you won’t want to live without them! Notify the entire house that it’s time for dinner, video chat with your partner while they’re still at the store, communicate with a visitor at the door, all without putting that spatula down. A CONTROL4 TOUCH SCREEN with the Intercom Anywhere app in the kitchen works as a video chat device, an intercom system, and a smart doorbell station. This means distractions, like someone at the door or the kids not coming down when you’ve called, take up less of your time so you can focus on that gorgeous meal you’ve been working so hard on.
Interested in learning more about connected devices and our favorite kitchen tech?
Head to Twitter on January 9, starting at 2 p.m. ET and search for the #KBTribeChat hashtag, or add #KBTribeChat to your tweets to join the conversation! And don’t forget to follow @Control4.
Check out our KBtribechat questions:
Q. Have you ever used smart home technology in your own home or in your designs?
Q. What smart home technology have you been wanting to learn more about? Or, what smart home technology have you recently learned about that you love?
Q. What is an issue/struggle in the kitchen that you would love for technology to solve?
Q. What is one must-have piece of technology you want (or already have) in the kitchen. Why?
Q. What are the must-haves when it comes to lighting in a kitchen?
Q. What are accessibility issues you try to solve when designing a kitchen?
Q. How, as a designer, would you define the term “smart home” to your clients?
Q. What would you consider to be an ideal “smart home” environment?
Join the conversation on Twitter
Wednesday, January 9
from 2 to 3 pm eastern
by adding #KBtribechat to your tweets!
Here’s a link to view the transcript for this KBtribechat.
