Simplify WAHM Life with an Amazon Connected Home

Thanks to Best Buy for sponsoring this post. 

Do you dream of having a connected home? As a work at home mom, I’m always looking for ways that technology can help make my life easier. I was so excited to test out the Amazon Echo Show and Arlo Pro cameras and see how having a more connected home can help simplify the things I do everyday.

Working from home presents some major challenges, especially when you have young kids at home. With twin toddlers plus a kindergartner at my house right now, trying to get any work done while they are all awake can be tricky.

My office is on the main floor but it can still be hard to keep an eye on them while I work. I loved the idea of using the Arlo Pro cameras to give me “eyes on the back of my head”. Too often I’ve come out of my office to find that they have wallpapered the wall with craft glue and magazine clippings or discovered how to get the paint off the highest shelf in my kitchen.

Not only was it a safety hazard (hello little monkey children) but I don’t have the time to clean up gigantic messes every time I emerge from my office.

I was excited to see how the Amazon Echo Show and the Arlo Pro cameras could help me out.

To solve this problem, I put the Amazon Echo Show on my desk. The large screen makes it easy to see what the Arlo Pro cameras are seeing.

The Amazon Echo Show is also amazing as a work at home mom. I use it to set reminders, turn on timers to keep me on task, play audio books when I have projects that don’t require my complete focus, and play music.

I’ve been surprised at how quickly I’ve gotten used to having it there. It’s become my little digital personal assistant.

The Arlo Pro cameras intrigued me.

Originally I thought they would be fun to put on my front porch to protect my home but then I realized two things:

1. I’ve always been curious about what my dog does when we leave him home alone.
2. There are so many times I need to peek at my kids in the family room while I’m working in my office. I loved the idea of cutting out the distractions by being able to peek at them without leaving my office.

So we set up the Arlo Pro cameras in my family room.

I loved that we could view the cameras mobily through the Arlo app. That let me keep an eye on my dog while we were gone (It turns out he waits for us to pull out of the driveway and then lounges out on the couch that he isn’t allowed on).

It also meant that I could keep an eye on my girls while I worked. Check out what happened when I left them on their own so I could get some work done:

We love the flexibility that the combination of the Amazon Echo Show and Arlo Pro cameras gives us. We’ve even used the Amazon Echo Show to connect with other smart elements in our home and it really is like having a personal assistant on hand.

If you work at home, or just feel like you need an extra set of hands (who doesn’t, right?), then having a connected home is such a huge help.

You can buy both the Amazon Echo Show and the Arlo Pro cameras at Best Buy.