Hi, my name is ricochin. I'm a working mother who lives in Hiroshima and works at a web production company.

As you can see here, a lot of useful tools have been born as baby tech recently, but even if they are not released as baby tech, there are many tools and services that can be used for housework and childcare with a little ingenuity and ideas.

This time, I'd like to share with you a story of how I'm actually using smart speakers and free web services to streamline this and that in my home. I'd be very happy if you read this and think, "I could do that at home too! I'll be very happy if you can do it at home.

Family structure and self-introduction

	Husband: I'm a salesman with children.
	Son: almost 4 years old. Very cute.
	Me: I am a working mother working for a web production company. I recently returned to work full time. I used to write PHP in the past (more than 10 years ago...), but now I'm completely away from creating.

Here are some examples of our family's use of technology.

Number 1 - Efficiency with smart speakers

Smart speakers in our home

Google Home mini (Click here for the product website )

I think it was 3000 yen.

Because I bought it without deciding the use, I made it mini, but because the main difference between Google Home and Google Home mini is size and sound quality, mini is enough if it is the content like introducing this time.

Hereafter, it is described as Google Home for convenience.

What's so great about smart speakers?

Smart speakers allow you to call out in a specific way (OK, Google in the case of Google Home) and then go straight to doing various things with your voice. You can listen to the weather, listen to the radio, listen to the news. It can also tell you traffic information, tell you when 10 minutes have passed, and as the name suggests, it's a smart speaker.

But you can do that with your smartphone.

All of the things I'm about to show you can be done with a smartphone.

But with smartphones, when you look at the screen to do something, notifications come in, and you tend to spend time on things that you don't want to do because you can do so many things.

...That's what parenting is like, isn't it?

In the field of childcare, a smart speaker with simple functions can be used with just one voice, even if both hands are full or hands are dirty.

Here are two ways to make use of these useful speakers.

1. Time to brush your teeth with a magic spell

Google Home plays music when you call out to it with a song title.

When I bring a toothbrush and play "Hagaki Jozuka na", my son brushes his teeth very obediently.

Of course, it depends on the individual, but it's nice to have a smart speaker that can easily play music to trigger action.

2. Share shopping memos

Google Home has a feature called Shopping List.

With the Google Home app, you can create a shopping list and share it with your family to visualize what you need to buy and the tasks you need to complete.

As a preliminary step, create and share a list to share within the Google Home app and set it as the "main" list for everyone you share with. If you don't set it as main, you won't be able to add them by voice.

Once you've done this, all you have to do is talk to the speaker.

This will add it to the list for sharing.

When I notice that I need to buy something, I can quickly add it with a voice command, and buy it when I notice it. This is surprisingly convenient, because when I'm cooking and I'm low on soy sauce, or when I'm cleaning and I need to buy detergent, I can add it right away, so I don't have to say, "I was going to buy that.

No.2 - Notify LINE of your Google Calendar events

I keep track of daycare and family schedules in my Google Calendar.

That's how I figure it out, but if you think about it from the perspective of running a household, it's important to share.

Of course, if you use Google Calendar, that's fine, but my husband isn't in the habit of using Google Calendar much, so it's been hard for him to see our schedule. I do tell him verbally or write it on a paper calendar, but I need to be more efficient!

So I wanted to somehow notify my Google Calendar appointments to LINE, since LINE would use them.

IFTTT IS A SERVICE THAT CAN BE USED HERE.

IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/ )

It's a convenient service that links web services together. Anyway, it's fun just to look at the linked services because they are linked with various services.

I'll leave the details of how to use it to another Blog or something like that, but you can set this to the state of the service you want to trigger and that to the service you want to run.

REMIND YOUR CHILDCARE AND FAMILY SCHEDULE ON LINE

The timing of the reminder should be the day before.

Then why don't we do this? You think so, don't you? At least that's what I thought.

Actually, when you use IFTTT to trigger Google Calendar, you can only set it from 60 minutes before the appointment. Too bad.

So here's what I'm going to do.

Add "Email 1 day in advance" notification when adding an appointment in Google Calendar app.

The notification email will be automatically labeled as "Google Calendar" when it is received on Gmail.

Here's how to do it in the Gmail app.

ONCE YOU'VE DONE THIS, YOU'RE READY TO GO. NOW IT'S TIME TO FLY IT TO LINE WITH IFTTT.

HERE'S HOW IFTTT IS SET UP

BY THE WAY, IN ORDER TO LINK LINE AND IFTTT

Enter the email address and password you have set up for LINE on IFTTT and proceed to add LINE Notify to your LINE friends. Set this LINE Notify to the talk room you want to be notified in. In our house, we have a talk room for my husband, myself and LINE Notify, and we send notifications there.

If you do this, you will receive notifications like this on LINE at the timing you set in Google Calendar.

In addition, if the child is to attend preschool in uniform or gym clothes, or if the child is to attend preschool on a pool day or on any other day that is related to preparations for attending preschool, we will notify the child on the morning of that day as well, as a schedule that includes specific keywords.

AS LONG AS YOU CHECK YOUR LINE BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE IN THE MORNING, YOU WON'T FORGET. THIS ONE IS EASY.

Select a family calendar in Google Calendar as the trigger side, put the name of the appointment (or part of it), choose how many minutes before you want to be notified, choose the talk room you want to send it to, and put the message you want to send.

At my son's preschool, we have a general morning meeting at the beginning of the month where we listen to a talk by the principal, and this is because we have to wear our uniforms to school on that day.

I set this schedule earlier than the first day of school, so I usually get the notification when I'm getting up and getting ready in the morning.

That's it for this time!

Actually, Google Home is super powerful when it works with IFTTT.

In the next article, I'll show you how I'm using those areas to activate communication in the home using a combination of Google Home, IFTTT and LINE. Look forward to it.

It is very important to share information to reduce the number of things that only you know as much as possible. I believe that if information is shared, the handover can be seamless.

In order to avoid frustration over what is said and not said, how can we share and access information without inconvenience to each other? I believe that by thinking about this, we can find the right efficiency for each family.

I would be happy if you would like to imitate any one of them.

Thank you for reading to the end.