Homes are the newest thing we’ve shoehorned into the “smart” label, but so far, that’s mostly meant thermostats that finally don’t suck and refrigerators that inexplicably let you update your Twitter status.
We need real smart home products — the kind that will actually be useful. Like…
1. A floor that automatically vaporizes all of your family’s crap at the end of the day
Goodbye, blackened-bottom socks. Good bye, stray shoe. See ya, pile of razor Legos. It’ll teach those slobs real quick, but if it doesn’t, who cares? Your floor will be all clean.
2. Walls that change colors at the touch of a button
Painting sucks. That’s why my walls are the same color they were when we moved in. We call it “Grotesque Visible Innards of a Raccoon That Someone Hit Three Weeks Ago Red.”
3. A kitchen gadget that searches the food you have on hand
And then tells you how to make a delicious meal out of stale Pirate’s Booty, a wrinkly green pepper and a few dubious eggs.
4. An alarm clock that can tell the future
Forget traffic reports or weather or headlines. I want a little thing that sits on my nightstand and when I wake up in the morning is capable of telling me, “Don’t bother, honey.”
More: How to transform your house into a smart home — one room at a time
5. A doorbell that can sense whether or not it’s being pressed by solicitors or missionaries
And then either shuts itself off, lets off a small electric pulse or slimes them, Nickelodeon style.
6. Windows that can filter your image from the outside world
Basically, these bad boys would make you invisible, so when those annoying neighbors from across the street want to come “borrow some beer” (what, like they’ll give it back when they’re finished?), they can creepily peek inside your house and it will just look empty, even though you’re standing there giving them a two-finger salute.
7. Hovering laundry baskets
These don’t serve too much of a purpose. I just feel like something should hover in the future, you know? We were promised hovering things.
More: How Apple (maybe) plans to take over your home…and why you’ll love it
8. An entire bedroom that gently wakes you up using the scent of bacon, slow-illuminating lights that replicate your natural circadian rhythms and Vivaldi’s La Primavera
This is how we all deserve to wake up. Not in the freezing dark to the ear-assaulting screech of your partner’s alarm — which they just sleep through anyway — and the scent of last night’s dinner hanging in the air.
9. A couch that sprays animals with water that try to pee on it
Scram, you little pee demon! Scram!
10. A dishwasher that recognizes people who only take one dish without putting the clean ones away and locks them out
And then if they want a dish they have to enter a verbal promise to put the rest away and if they don’t, the dishwasher will snap a photo of them and upload it online to publicly shame the little jerks.
More:This interactive kitchen will make you hate your kitchen
11. A trashcan that changes the molecular structure of raw chicken
Sometimes you’re cutting up chicken and you throw out the icky bits and then you forget and then the next morning your kitchen smells like a fart died. This trashcan would change its scent structure to something like rich chocolate or beautiful peonies or a cupcakery.
12. A garbage disposal that can sense whether that’s food or your hand
Or a shot glass, or a wedding ring, or a child’s pacifier, or for some weird reason, a pinecone that your kid shoved in there when you weren’t looking.
13. A self-affirming mirror
Body positive and softly lit.
14. Lights that scream if you forget to turn them off when you leave a room
You could set them to scream, “Money doesn’t grow on trees, young lady!” or “Waste not, want not, mister!”
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