Geek Home Archive

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Self-Emptying Robot Vacuums are a Game Changer

Over the past decade, I’ve had a few versions of the robot vacuum. I’ve never been very impressed with them. They got stuck, they’d stop because the bin was full, they never seemed to get the carpets and rugs clean. But I’d see one on Woot and think, maybe this time will

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Watching: Tidying Up with Marie Kondo

Before Marie Kondo’s show Tidying Up debuted on Netflix on January 1st, the only awareness I had of the KonMari method was watching Emily Gilmore declare her dining room chairs no longer brought her joy. One of my favorite scenes from the Gilmore Girls revival, but not really something that would get

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Creating a Functional Guest Room

Having a guest room has always been something I have mixed feelings on. On one hand, I want to open my home up to friends and family. On the other, I don’t want to sink money into a room that we won’t use. A common idea I’ve seen around the web is the home

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Nerd Cave v1.5: Why You Should Always Measure

It’s been just under two years since I unveiled the Nerd Cave version 1.0. And while I’ve made several little decor changes since then, I still have one big project to really push it over to version 2.0. But, in the meantime, I thought I’d show you a little side project that

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I Made: Nesting End Tables

Back in August I wrote about the beginner woodworking class I took at the Indianapolis Art Center over the summer. At the time, I had already registered for the intermediate woodworking class in the fall. The class has come and gone and once again I am incredibly happy with my experience. In the beginner

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Home Automation: 1 Year Later

A year ago I posted about how my husband and I were going to start automating our home using the SmartThings platform. At that time, we just had two lights automated. We honestly didn’t do much with it most of the year (which is good, since Samsung didn’t provide the best upgrade

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I love my ridiculous remote.

Update 12/20/2018: Logitech has disabled local APIs for their Harmony remote. I can no longer recommend this product. In the recent past, I scoffed at expensive remotes. I remember about five years ago, scoffing at my husband when he bought at $90 smart remote during a Woot Off (to be fair, it was

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Nest Thermostat: Its Not For Techies

Note: This is about the second generation Nest. Google announced a newer one earlier this month with bigger screen and a more sensitive light sensor. As far as I can tell, those are the only differences. We bought a Nest thermostat on Black Friday last year, and now that I’ve had it

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Migrating to SmartThings 2.0

About a year ago I wrote about how we started our home automation project by buying a SmartThings hub. Samsung has just now released the new version of the of the hub, and we decided to pre-order. I just finished the migration process and thought I’d let you know how it went.

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Building My Woodworking Skills

As I’ve been working on more and more creative projects around the house, I’ve come to realize how much I don’t know about basic woodworking skills. While there are plenty of YouTube videos out there that show you how to do these sorts of things, I can’t learn from videos. I really