Sense appeals to the data nerd in all of us, but the Sense app is designed for anyone who can benefit from deeper home insights — and, well, that means everyone, but especially parents. For Mother’s Day, we’ve compiled five important ways Sense makes life better for moms everywhere.
1. Keep your home safe.
How many times have you left your home and thought, “Did I leave the oven on?” or “Did I turn off my flat iron?” With Sense, you get the answer. Better yet, with Sense, you can nip that type of anxiety in the bud by setting device alerts to tell you, for instance, if you forgot to shut those devices off. For the mom who’s suffered that helpless feeling when the basement floods, Sense can even alert the family if the sump pump suddenly shuts down or is running a long time.
Customers tell us a lot of stories about Sense detecting problems — especially ones that carry safety concerns. Sometimes we hear about downright dangerous situations, like one Sense customer who discovered a live wire pumping electricity “into the dirt,” near where her grandchildren played in the yard.
Sense can even help you avoid that toughest of parent traps: your child’s disappointment. For example, one customer shared an account he dubbed, “Sense Saves Lives” — turtle lives, that is. With Sense, he found a broken heater cable in the turtle aquarium and fixed it to keep the family’s pet at the right temperature.
2. Teach the kids what sustainability means.
One of our users shared her story about a teachable moment:
With Sense, I can start to teach my kids about the choices we make, and their consequences. Turning on a light. Leaving the TV on. Using the Sense app so they can see how power usage immediately going up when they turn on an incandescent light bulb makes this invisible thing called “energy” real.
Sense, for her, has been a way to show her kids that they can “control how much power they use and, by extension, how energy is a global issue they can influence.”
3. Make energy discovery a game.
Some of our most successful Sense customers start their journey towards greater energy awareness in the Sense app, looking at their household baseline energy usage in the Power Meter view. Then they have one of the kids turn on an appliance — a microwave, the garbage disposal, an electric toothbrush — showing them the spikes and dips and the differences across devices.
Parents can make energy awareness fun, interactive, and purposeful with Sense.
4. Keep tabs on household activities.
For moms and dads, Sense makes “dumb” devices smart. Sometimes, that information can offer parents the comfort of knowing their child got home from school and put a snack in the microwave, or closed the garage door at night when they came home (hopefully by their curfew). One Sense customer, a dad, phoned his wife and asked, “Didn’t you ask our son to vacuum the house?” Mom replied, “Yes, I did.” Husband sends a screenshot from the Sense app showing how the vacuum had, indeed, been turned on…for one-and-a-half minutes.
Many parents care for their own parents as well as their household. How can Sense help give a mom comfort about her mother or father’s well-being? With Sense installed in the parent’s home, a daughter could check if the coffee maker turned on in the morning, part of their parent’s usual routine. Or a family member can track the essentials of home comfort: Is the heat running during a cold winter night in Minnesota, where a parent lives? Is the AC running throughout a hot summer day in Florida?
Have a vacation get-away? Through Sense, one customer saw her TV and microwave turn on in her vacation house one day, after she and her husband had returned to their primary residence. Time for a home check! Another Sense customer noticed his vacation rental’s spa tub turning on one night when the property was not rented. The culprit: a service worker who decided to enjoy the amenities for the evening!
5. Reduce household energy.
Finally, the big kahuna: Savings. The average home electricity bill is $1,248 annually — a major expense that can be reduced in nearly every home with the right steps. In a recent survey, we found that the #1 request from our customers was to learn about real cost savings successes by other Sense customers. In many homes, moms are in charge of the home budget and want simple solutions that can help them stay informed about their family’s energy consumption, moment-by-moment instead of being surprised at the end of a billing cycle. They seek trends and patterns, and comparisons to clarify specific actions to reduce their spending. They want to make sure their utility bill is right. While device detection is a great tool towards energy savings, you can always use the Power Meter to see how much energy they consume just by turning them on and off and watching the in real time — even before Sense has detected them. Check this video to learn more.
Many of our customers have been wildly successful in achieving cost savings and you can find their stories at Sense Saves. We want every customer to experience that type of success!
Do you have a story to share? Has Sense helped you to better manage your home or achieve significant cost savings? Share your story at sensesaves.sense.com.