Insights + interviews
Decluttering Gadgets at Home
Less is more – space that is. As tech advances, they tend to get smaller, and more importantly, they converge with other devices to reflect our evolving needs.
In this instalment of our Decluttering series , we look at some devices and appliances that can help to keep your house uncluttered, by streamlining the number of devices that you have, or by streamlining your routines. Check out Decluttering: the Basics and Decluttering Your Home if you haven’t already.
Cleaning
Why get a handheld vacuum cleaner when your regular vacuum cleaner can double up as one? The LG CordZero Handstick is a dual purpose vacuum that works just as well doing both tasks. With nice little touches such as LED lights to see better in dark areas, as well as an attachment to hold a spare replaceable battery, one elegant vacuum is all that you need in the house.
Perhaps you may not need the handheld feature, but I think you would appreciate doing away with the bucket and pail – the Bissell Symphony All-in-One Vacuum and Steam Mop takes care of both vacuuming and steaming – at the same time. The steam feature uses just water and will eliminate up to 99.9% of germs and bacteria.
If you prefer to declutter your list of tasks at home, the iRobot family of cleaners will take one off for you – the Roomba vacuums, the Scooba scrubs, and the Braava mops up. These diminutive, autonomous will hide themselves away in some discreet corner in the house, only to come to life at designated moments to clean the house on their own. No one will be the wiser to the fact that you’ve been spending your newfound time on Netflix…
Living Room
Speaking of TVs, we know that familiar score: it starts off with trying to fix the problem of underwhelming TV speakers and ends off with a calamity of speakers, wires, and a painful bout of cleaning once a year at least. Every single time. Well, if your TV speakers were good to begin, with you wouldn’t have a problem to fix, wouldn’t you? The Sony X94C and X93C sport fancy-sounding Magnetic Fluid speaker tech that also happens to be magnificent-sounding, and the visual quality is great.
But if you really must have some form of surround sound without having to wire up the house and send the significant other into a tizzy, then an Atmos-enabled soundbar is your best bet. The Yamaha YSP 5600 (7.1.2-channel), as well as the upcoming Philips Fidelio Soundbar (5.1.2-channel) will fit the bill, requiring only the base unit and a subwoofer to deliver the goods by cleverly bouncing the sound off the ceiling to achieve the effect.
Too many Blu-Ray discs and DVDs making your cleaning a nightmare? With Netflix in town, there might not be any need for you to keep them any more. The service offers on-demand viewing with an extensive catalogue of movies and TV shows; all you need is a subscription and a fast internet connection. The same goes for CDs – with streaming services of the likes of Spotify, Deezer, Tidal, Guevara, and even Apple Music, you’ll have plenty of options where music sources are concerned.
What you then need, is something like the Bluesound Vault 2, which lets you rip your existing CDs and stream to its family of players like the Pulse 2 anywhere in your house. You’ll also be to connect to your streaming services as well – all this in a little box.
Kitchen
Kitchen tech has been stepping up in recent years. Many appliances have dual features – even simple rice cookers can be used to make congee, and even bake bread. So with a judicious choice of appliances you can make a great variety of dishes. Take for example the Europace 5-in-1 Air Fryer with built-in Rotisserie, a very flexible Air Fryer that you can use to air fry, bake, grill, roast or for skewers. If you like to keep your kitchen tight, this handy appliance covers a lot of ground.
Of course, that’s not your only option. Smart microwave ovens like the LG MJ3283BC and the Samsung MC28H5135, can offer you the same flexibility, albeit in a different way, thanks to a variety of cooking modes that are practical and at the same time can help you exercise your creative freedom without breaking a sweat.
Find that making your morning coffee is a little more trouble than its worth? Pack away your grinders and sacks of coffee beans, just get a small Nespresso Pixie machine – it’s small, the pods aren’t too expensive (about a dollar each), and the coffee isn’t half bad either.
Computing
These days computers need not be big, hulking brutes that require a carefully considered space to reside in. For a cleaner workspace, an All-in-One desktop, or AiO for short, fits the bill perfectly. It’s just like having only the monitor on your table, coupled with a wireless keyboard and mouse. The ASUS Zen AiO Pro is a good example.
Or you can save even more space and be more mobile by using laptops around the house; or even better, get a hybrid laptop like the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, which is the size of a tablet, but with the processing power of of laptop.You can revel in the comfort of your couch while using it like a tablet if you want to watch videos, or you can knuckle down at a desk to do some serious work by attaching a physical keyboard that doubles up as a tablet cover.
If you don’t really do much work on your computer apart from emails and web browsing then perhaps even a PC on a stick like the Intel Compute Stick will do the job. It looks like an oversized thumb drive, and attaches to any display or TV that has a HDMI input. Hook up a wireless keyboard and mouse and you’re good to go!
