Our home is our safe haven, the place where we spend the majority of our time and feel completely at ease. Hence, we’re always taking the utmost care of our home, putting in all our efforts to maintain it, and not to mention to improve it! However, ensuring that ones home is in top-notch condition is no easy task, the chores are endless and the timespan to actually complete them seems tiny in comparison! Handy home improvement gadgets and appliances come to our rescue in such situations, they help make our daily tasks just a little easier, and support us in maintaining our home in an efficient manner. YD recommends some brilliant home gadgets that are sure to make your every day life simpler, and leave your home in impeccable condition!
The Briiv is a household terrarium, but more importantly, it’s a fresh take on air-filtration that ditches those HEPA filters and UV lights for something more natural. With the design that looks like a cross between a terrarium and an Apple Homepod, the Briiv is a modern-looking air purifier that adds a touch of green to your apartment. The filter comes with a special, sustainably-grown, dried moss on the inside that naturally purifies the air by trapping harmful particles, killing microorganisms, and releasing clean, fresh air. Sitting underneath the moss are multiple bio-filters, including one made from loosely woven coconut fibers, another filter comprising carbon-infused hemp, and a woolen microfiber filter that together combines to filter particles as small as PM 0.3 while also trapping and neutralizing bacteria, molds, and other volatile organic compounds to give you air that’s been freshened naturally, in a filter that’s designed to be the equivalent of as many as 3000 house plants in one device.
The Circle Zero from PLUTO is a smart litter box that takes care of your cat’s business. Designed to be fully automated, fully enclosed, and exceptionally silent, the litter box comes with a completely enclosed design to provide a private experience. Sensors on the box detect the presence of the cat and wait for a full 7 minutes after they’re done to automatically (and silently) scoop the waste from the litter and store it separately while completely containing and eliminating any odor too. Once the waste compartment is full, you can use any bag or liner to collect it and throw it away. The Circle Zero works with any brand of kitty litter and comes with two types of scoop-designs. Sensors within the box (although it’s technically a sphere) keep track of your cat’s routines and can notify you via an app if any irregularities are spotted. The litter box monitors your cat(s) to give you information that may be of relevance to your veterinarian, and yes, the Circle Zero does support (and can individually track) multiple cats.
Powered by the kind of AI you’d find in autonomous vehicles (with 4K cameras and sensors that can accurately identify objects in her path), the Toadi is practically the Tesla of lawnmowers. Designed to work less like a robot and more like a living organism, the Toadi reinvents a category that hasn’t seen a significant tech upgrade… and yes, Toadi is a ‘her’. The Toadi uses 4K cameras to ‘see’ the way humans do. She accurately differentiates between grass, gravel, cemented paths, and even identifies and avoids objects like animals, toys, flower-beds, and fences. Using a sensing and tracking system that’s much more superior to the LiDAR sensors and GPS chips found in home-cleaning robots, the Toadi effortlessly moves around the lawn on her own, mowing in straight lines, crossing over to other parts of the lawn if need be, avoiding flower-beds, objects, or pets (and other garden animals), and staying clear of fences.
Meet the Morus, a tiny, tabletop vacuum dryer that works with stunning efficiency to completely dry and de-wrinkle your clothes in mere minutes. Rather than relying on centrifugal force to dry your clothes, Morus uses a combination of heat and a vacuum to extract every drop of water from your clothes giving you perfectly dry garments you can immediately take out and wear! The technology is a little new-fangled, but to uncomplicate how it works – the Morus uses heat to turn water into vapor (not steam), and generates a vacuum to reduce the pressure to just below the vapor pressure of water (0.0313 atm). This basically accelerates the drying process, extracting every bit of water from your clothes so that they’re 100% dry when they come out. A spinning drum on the Morus ensures that every corner of the clothes you put in is exposed to the heat and the vacuum for the highest efficiency, and a reverse-tumble feature makes sure your clothes don’t get crumpled or wrinkled in the process.
Robotic vacuums are not new news but Everybot Edge is a home appliance that works for both wet and dry cleaning of hard floors. And if you want to feel like you’ve put in some work then simply switch to the handheld mode and get into the crevices. One of the most interesting features is that this vacuum maneuvers without wheels. It runs on two round, rotating microfibre pads, which are driven by two separate motors; so the robot cleans the floor while moving – similar to when I stepped on two kitchen towels and walked around the space-eating snacks while telling my mom I was cleaning. The best part is you don’t need a dry pad and a wet pad (like Swiffers) because the two containers in the vacuum constantly supply the pads with water.
Traditional laundry machine cycles can potentially damage clothes (how many of us even know the right settings for our loads?) and ever since the pandemic took over our lives we are doing laundry more often to stay safe – this is bound to wear them out 5x faster than usual. The Samsung AirDresser is here to save the day! Its sleek build is similar to a tall, thin fridge and can seamlessly blend in any room. The AirDresser uses a combination of steaming and heat-pump powered drying, and you won’t even have to plumb it in says Samsung. “That’s because, rather than a water connection like a traditional washer would require, the AirDresser relies on a refillable water tank at the bottom of the cabinet. It means it can be installed pretty much anywhere with a regular 120V outlet,” explains the team.
CareAlert is a brilliant example of a design that’s extremely aware of its target audience. This night-light helps you monitor and take care of the elderly, but it does so in a way that doesn’t require the elderly to be tech-literate, and it doesn’t use cameras either. The CareAlert and its wide host of sensors help you be aware of the wellbeing of your elderly loved ones. The sensors do a multitude of things, from tracking temperature, air quality, and humidity, to sensing motion, light, and vibrations. Without using cameras or microphones, invading privacy, or capturing any actionable data, the CareAlert gives you a comprehensive overview of your elderly relatives through its smartphone app. Helping you understand if they slept alright, woke up on time, or if and when they went outdoors to run basic errands.
If your house is populated by kids and pets (or clumsy adults), you know that your precious home is prone to spills, spots, and messes. Marinara sauce on your favorite rag, pet food scattered on the floor, juice dripping off a table corner – these maybe common sights in your household. In such a scenario, Black+Decker Spillbuster is a blessing in disguise! The nifty appliance is perfect for cleaning and picking up messes, whether they’re dry or wet! It soaks up any wet spills, whether it’s food or drinks, as well as any dry spillages, owing to its powerful suction and wide nozzle. Once it picks up any mess, it sprays the area and scrubs it away using its handy little scrub bush, getting rid of any stains that may have been left behind. The battery-powered device is a wireless boon to keep your house neat, tidy, and spill-free!
Are you one of those scatterbrained souls who almost always manages to lose their house keys? Well, then Bekey’s app-enabled smart door lock is perfect for you! You can lock and unlock your main door by simply using an app, via Bluetooth. The door lock will automatically update you when someone comes home, so if you’re at work, you’ll know exactly when your kids get home. Whew! The app also enables you to grant and delete access to anyone you please. You can set access for certain days, and even specify it down to particular timings. Once the allowed period is over, their access is immediately deleted. This is perfect to let in your housekeepers, maids, and maintenance men into your home whenever required, even if you’re not at home yourself.
The Bloomengine is what you’d get if you combined the green thumb with the concept of the Tamagotchi. A completely self-contained, self-sustaining planter, the Bloomengine can grow and monitor your plant while guiding you through the process, informing you of the plant’s progress and needs. Place the compressed soil tablet in the center of the planter, and the seeds on top. Then add a few drops of fertilizer on the grill around the planter and pour water to fill the reservoir up. Connect the Bloomengine to a power source and it then gets to work. A 10k-25K lux LED gives the plant the artificial sunlight it needs to enable photosynthesis, while the water is guided to the top of the planter and is precipitated down like artificial rain, simulating everything the plant needs to grow. There’s even a micro ventilation fan that allows for air circulation that helps flowers bloom. While all this happens, the planter sends you plant-health related data to your phone, allowing you to keep tabs on the plant’s growth.
