A little help from Alexa

If you're anything like us, we have Amazon Echo devices throughout our home.  We've been working on making our home smart one room at a time, one light at a time, one TV at a time...
One of my favorite ways to make Alexa work for me is in my child's room.  I'm so tired of the daily argument about bath time and bed time, and this RR mama will take all the help she can get.  She currently has a kids echo in her room which comes in very handy.  Here are a few of the things I use my Alexa devices for to help run this Railroad family's home!

1. Announcements!

If you're not already using this feature, you are missing out.  My house isn't big, but I do not enjoy walking from one end of it to the other to tell my kid to come to dinner.  So I use this announcement feature to call my family to dinner!

Here's how it works: 

Tell Alexa - Alexa, Announce DINNER'S READY!  

And she will announce it to all of the other Alexa devices on the account, including phones that have the Alexa app connected to the account, and Fire TV devices!  

So if your Railroader travels with a Firestick device, you may want to exclude it from these notifications, otherwise if he falls asleep with his firestick on and plugged into the hotel TV you may end up waking him up.  Here's how you do it:

Go into your Alexa App, tap devices, tap Echo and Alexa, then find the device you'd like to exclude. tap on it, then tap communications and Announcements.  Then toggle to Disabled.  

  

 

2. Routines for Reminders

Alexa has reminders and Alarms built in, but I like to use Routines.  These routines are great for announcing when it's time to get ready for a bath, time for bedtime, and have been especially helpful for Virtual School at home.  I'm able to set a routine for letting my little one know when lunch is over, or when her class is starting, or when recess is over.  An Alarm will just sound an alarm, but I can make a routine say a message which I think is really cool.  

Go into your Alexa App, tap More, tap Routines, then tap the plus sign at the top right. Tap on Enter Routine Name and name it.  Then tap When this happens and tap schedule, then At time and set the time.  Then tap Add Action, and tap Alexa Says, then tap Customized and type what you want her to say.  Like "(name), Lunch is over.  Please go back to your desk for zoom." It will also ask what device you'd like for this to come from (kitchen?). 

        

3. LISTS!!!

I absolutely love using the Lists function in Alexa.  I really only use it for shopping, but I love how I can remember something anywhere in the house, and just say, "Alexa, add toilet paper to the Shopping List."  I don't have to get out my phone and type it somewhere, I can just speak it. Hands free.  Then while I'm at the store, I just take out my phone, open up my Alexa app and WA-LA!  As I find my items, I just check them off the list as I go. It also says who added the item.  I believe that it only works if you've registered your voices with Alexa. When you check something off your list, it then gets moved to Completed. If you ever needed to, you could go look at items that were checked off.

Go into your Alexa App, tap More, tap Lists & Notes, then tap Create List. Enter the name of the list, tap enter and you're ready to start adding!  

Side track, if you ever need to share your list, juck tap on Share at the top right while inside the list, and it will give you the option to Create Link.  Then you can copy it and paste it to a message to someone.  

         

4. Guard

Being home alone quite a bit, I'm always thinking about our safety.  I love that Amazon has built this function into Alexa.  You can tell Alexa on your way out the door that you're leaving, and she will Enable Away mode.  You will get Smart Alerts about activity and other potential emergencies in your home (depending on if you have smart fire alarms, etc.) and it can deter potential intruders with lights, sounds and other things while you're away.  This all depends on the smart devices you have in your home, but if you already have them, might as well let them work for you!

Tap Devices, then tap Guard.  Tap on the Gear in the top right corner to look at the settings.  It will let you enable settings based on the devices you have.  Not a bad idea for a RR wife at home all the time!

        

I hope you love these Alexa features as much as I do!  I'm always on the lookout for ways to make life a little easier. I'll take all the help I can get!