My family likes to get away on the weekends.
We usually drive a few hours away to the nearest lake or we go explore something new.
It’s something we started implementing years ago when we felt like we never got to do anything fun and it’s been one of the best decisions we made. In the past, on the weekends where we went away, I lowered the temperature of the furnace by several degrees so that our house wasn’t being heated while we were away. This was fine, but I always dreaded coming home to a cold house. I would steadily raise the temperature in order to not overwhelm my furnace, but this only prolonged the cold in the air. After hearing me complain about the first world issue for far too long, my husband decided to do something about it. For my birthday, he surprised me with a smart thermostat. I didn’t know anything about smart thermostats so when I opened it, I thought he had gotten me a gift for himself. When he saw my look of confusion, he began explaining the purpose behind it. The smart thermostat could connect to the WIFI and there was a corresponding app that I could download to my phone. Once everything was connected, I could change the thermostat settings at any time from anywhere I was. This meant that I could change the temperature of our house before we arrived home from one of our weekend getaways. The smart thermostat was the best gift ever!