Tools We Use

Behind the Scenes

Here's a peek at the exact tools and devices we use in our own home and workflows. Everything on this list has been tested for at least a month before making the cut. Some things we tried and abandoned — we'll be honest about those too.

This isn't a generic recommendation list. It's what we actually use, every day.

Our Smart Home Setup

Our home runs on a combination of Home Assistant (for advanced automations) and Amazon Alexa (for voice control). Here's the hardware:

• Hub: Home Assistant running on a Raspberry Pi 4 with a Zigbee dongle. This is the brain of our smart home.
• Voice control: Amazon Echo devices in the kitchen, living room, and bedrooms. We use Alexa for quick commands and timers.
• Lighting: Philips Hue throughout the house for ambiance and automation. Lutron Caseta switches in the kitchen and bathrooms where we just want reliable on/off control. Govee LED strips behind the TV for bias lighting.
• Thermostat: Ecobee with room sensors in the living room, master bedroom, and kids' rooms. Saves us money and keeps every room comfortable.
• Security: Ring Video Doorbell at the front door. Wyze Cams for indoor monitoring and the garage. Aqara door/window sensors on all entry points.
• Other: TP-Link Kasa smart plugs on the coffee maker and a couple of lamps. A myQ garage door controller. Smart water leak sensors near the water heater and washing machine.

Read our Smart Home guides →

Our Automation Stack

Here's how we automate our digital workflows:

• Zapier — Our primary workflow builder for connecting apps. We run about 15 active Zaps covering email organization, social media, content publishing, and family notifications.
• Apple Shortcuts — Used for personal iPhone automations: bedtime routines, driving mode, workout logging, and quick actions like sharing Wi-Fi passwords.
• Make (Integromat) — We use this for more complex, visual workflows that involve conditional logic or lots of data transformation. Better value than Zapier for complex workflows.
• Google Apps Script — For automating Google Sheets (budget tracking, content planning) and Gmail (auto-labeling, sending scheduled digests).
• Hazel (Mac) — Automatically organizes our Downloads and Documents folders. Screenshots go to one folder, PDFs to another, photos to iCloud — all without thinking about it.

Read our Software Automation guides →

Family Organization Tools

These are the apps that keep our family running smoothly:

• Notion — Our family command center. We use it for meal planning, a shared household wiki (where we keep account info, maintenance schedules, etc.), and project tracking for home improvement.
• Google Calendar — The shared family calendar. Everyone sees the same schedule. Morning automation sends a daily digest to the family group chat.
• Todoist — Our task manager for one-off and recurring tasks. Groceries, errands, and household to-dos all live here.
• Mealime — Meal planning and recipe discovery. It generates a grocery list from the meal plan, which we transfer to Todoist via automation.
• YNAB — Our budgeting app. We tried Mint first (it was fine for tracking but didn't change our behavior). YNAB's approach of assigning every dollar a job made a real difference for us.
• OurHome — Chore management for the kids. The point system and rewards keep them motivated (most of the time).

What we tried and didn't stick with

• Cozi: Good concept, but the interface felt dated. Google Calendar ended up being simpler for us.
• Trello: We used it for a while for family projects but migrated everything to Notion, which does the same thing plus much more.
• Any.do: Clean app, but Todoist's recurring tasks and integrations won us over.

Read our Productivity guides →

Full Recommendation List

For our complete recommendation list organized by category — including products we recommend but don't personally use — visit our Resources page.