In part one of To Build a Home, inspired and powered by Samsung, Kelly gets to grips with the invisible to-do list that runs every household, and the tech that finally took some of it off her hands. Here’s an introduction to SmartThings, how to use it, and how to make your house a help rather than a hindrance.
Ok so I’ve learnt a few things in my few months or so of home ownership – when you do buy your first home, one, it never feels less than a miracle (thank you, Auckland house prices!). But two, you also take unconditional possession of a second, invisible property, with no address and no floor plan, but, somewhat ironically, it lives rent-free in your head. It’s The List.
You’ve got one too, I’m positive – that running inventory of everything that keeps a household upright (ie, the mental load). Is there washing in the machine going slowly gross? Did I turn the heater off? When did I last vacuum under the couch, and do I want to know what’s under there? What is that noise? Ah Christ, is it the hot water cylinder and will it be expensive?
Selfies in a dryer is *very* millennial homeowner, surely
As a renter The List existed, of course, but it had a foolproof escape plan: if something broke, it was fundamentally Someone Else’s Problem (I guess that’s when you’re grateful for landlords! But now the broken thing is my broken thing, the mystery noise is my mystery noise.
And, look, I know the mental load isn’t news to any woman reading this. We’ve been carrying the family admin, the social calendar, the “we’re nearly out of dishwashing tablets” alerts since time seemingly started (I bet there’s cave paintings somewhere in the world of women folding loin cloths).
But home ownership added a whole new element to mine, and after a month or two I realised I needed help – like, 21st century help. It was time to embrace the smart home, and as a Samsung girlie, that meant coming to grips with SmartThings.
OK, so what actually is SmartThings?
Let me explain it properly, because “smart home platform” is a phrase that can make your eyes glaze and look, fair enough.
SmartThings is Samsung’s free app that acts as one central brain for your home. Every compatible device you own appears on one screen, and from that screen you can control them, check on them, automate them and monitor them – think of it as a group chat for your house, except everyone in it is actually useful and interesting.
Here’s what the homepage of SmartThings looks like
The obvious members of ours are the Samsung crew: the TV, the washing machine, the dryer, my computer monitor and the Music Frame all connected within minutes. But here’s what surprised, and also delighted, me: SmartThings isn’t a Samsung-only club. Our Ring doorbell camera lives in the app too, so I can see who’s at the front door from the same place I check the washing. My headphones and other Amazon bits and pieces, like my Echo Show 11 and 8, link in, as do our Philips Hue lights which I can sync up – which means the lighting, the laundry and the front door are all answering to one app instead of five. My house is HUMMING.
And then there’s the clever layer on top: routines. You can tell SmartThings that when one thing happens, other things should follow, for example, music on and lights warm at dinner time, or everything off when we leave. Once you’ve set a routine up, you never think about it again, which is rather the point – and the application of someone (someTHING, I really must stop calling my AI “people”) monitoring this means you’ll save energy, both literally in terms of power bills and physically in terms of mental load. Win.
A day in the life of a SmartThings house
Yeah cool but what does this all actually look like on a normal day? Here’s how it all combines on a random Tuesday, because “smart home” can sound like something for men who own drones and I promise you it’s SO much more than that.
6.02am: Mustard the 20-week-old puppy wakes us up because even though everything else in my house is now smart and automated, there is no corgi setting and yes I WILL be taking this up with Samsung in the near future. I turn our ‘Feel Good Morning Mix’ playlist on from my phone to the Music Frame, the speaker that sits on the bar cart pretending to be a picture, while my husband takes the dog out for the first shift. I answer emails from my tablet in bed, and I also turn on the washing machine from my phone (I loaded it last night) so by the time I head to the shower, I can shove it in the dryer. (A note on this one, Samsung actually have other fancier washing machines that automatically dispense detergent, so you don’t even have to worry about chucking that in. WILD).
8.30am: I’m at my desk in the study (the monitor is part of the same happy Samsung whānau). Mid-email, my phone pings: the dryer cycle is done – I didn’t hear the machine stop because I have in my noise-cancelling earbuds because of the incessant townhouse construction across the road. This notification has single-handedly ended the great tragedy of my twenties and early thirties, which was discovering a forgotten load two days later and having to wash it again out of shame (it also pops up on the Smart TV, which I love and is so handy if your laundry is in the garage or downstairs!). The dryer also chose the right kind of cycle for me through AI, so I know that it’s operating on the most energy efficient method.
10.15am: A courier appears on the Ring doorbell. I see him and assure him the barking is coming from a nine kilo fluffball and it’s fine to come in the gate, all without leaving my desk, from the same app.
11.40am: And now my favourite SmartThings moment of all time. I’m halfway down the street ready to run errands, when I realise I forgot to leave the TV on for Mustard. (Yes, our dog watches TV when we’re out because I don’t want him to get lonely and yes, it’s always Bluey, what else are dogs supposed to watch?) The old me would have turned the car around, but the new me opened SmartThings and turned the TV on from down the street. Dog: entertained. Mother: absolved. Errands: run.
You can control everything from the TV, too!
(There’s also an automated version of exactly this, which is Samsung’s Pet Care function, and it’s worth understanding how it works before you get excited. Once you’ve switched the sound sensor on in SmartThings, the TV listens through its built-in microphone while it’s switched off, and if it hears your dog barking it sends you a notification and can start playing your pet’s favourite content to settle them. It’s also only supported on certain models so check yours before you plan your whole dog-parenting strategy around it!)
6.15pm: Dinner prep. One tap runs the evening routine: the Music Frame starts the Cooking Mix playlist and the Hue lights shift to warm and flattering (actually I think they should be on warm and flattering all the time as a mid-30’s gal?).
8.30pm: Couch time, and the TV picks up exactly where we left off. At some point I check the app, see everything’s off or finished or where it should be, and put my phone down with the smugness of a woman whose house pretty much runs itself.
The bit where I talk about money, because mortgage
Here’s the part of SmartThings I didn’t expect to care about but now care about enormously: it monitors and manages energy use. The app shows you what your appliances are actually consuming, which, when you’ve just signed up to life-long debt, is genuinely soothing information to have.
But it goes further than watching. Within the SmartThings app, I’ve switched both the washing machine and the dryer onto AI Energy Mode, which means they actively adjust how they run to use less power without me lifting a finger or sacrificing clean towels. Turns out I LOVE data and all the motivation I need to save money is to essentially turn my life into a Tamagotchi.
Getting the most out of it: my quick-start notes
If you’re setting up SmartThings for the first time, learn from my month of trial and error. Add everything, not just the Samsung devices, because the magic multiplies with every gadget in the group chat (start with your doorbell and your lights). Set up two or three routines for the moments you repeat daily, like a dinner mode and a leaving-the-house mode, rather than trying to automate your entire life on day one. Turn the notifications on for laundry and off for almost everything else, because a smart home should lower the noise in your head, not add to it. And visit the energy tab once, switch what you can to AI Energy Mode, then let it do its thing.
A screenshot of a typical Sunday washing marathon
And if you’re renting: this is all yours too
Of course, Capsule has never been a homeowners-only club and never will be! Almost nothing in this story requires owning the walls around you. The washing machine, the dryer, the Music Frame, the TV, the doorbell camera, the smart bulbs: they all plug in, they all connect, and crucially, they all come with you when you leave. If anything, the smart stuff is even more valuable in a rental, because it lets you upgrade how your home works and feels when you can’t change a single thing about the beige on the walls.
The house made me a homeowner, but honestly, it’s the small daily stuff, the washing started from bed, the TV switched on for the dog from down the street, the list that finally lives somewhere other than my head, that’s making it a home. And if a little AI wants to carry some of the mental load women have been lugging around solo for generations, I am DELIGHTED to let it.
To Build a Home is a Capsule series created in partnership with Samsung. Watch the reel to see Kelly’s SmartThings setup in action!
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