This Forgetful Mama Needs an Alarm System

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I’m the worst mom in the universe when it comes to securing my home.  I’m so busy that I forget to do very basic things, like make sure the front and back door are locked.  Windows?  Fugghetaboutit!  I rarely open the windows, but when I do, I generally leave them hanging wide open before I go to bed.

The Workaholic thinks it’s hilarious to come home from work at 2am, creep up the stairs and into our bedroom, then shout at the top of his lungs, “BANG!  YOU’RE DEAD!”  It scares the pajamas off of me, but his crazy habit isn’t enough to scare me into remembering to lock the door.

You know what’s really absurd? (This is really ridiculous, y’all), there is no middle ground with me in regards to my doors, especially when I’m leaving the house.  This is what I do:

1. lock the keys inside the house before checking my purse to see if they are there, and slamming the door, or,
2. leave all of the doors unlocked for hours while I’m out and about.

It’s insane.  In an effort to remember to lock my doors, I leave my keys inside, and in an effort to remember my keys, I leave the house completely vulnerable.

There was one day I went to the Y with the kids at about 9am.  We left The Workaholic sleeping upstairs and loaded into the van so that I could get to my toning class on time.  When class was over, I had a slew of nasty messages from The Workaholic about how I left the door hanging wide open.  I thought for sure he had to be making stuff up, but when I got home he regaled me with a tale of how the neighbor had to come over and yell into the house about the door being wide open.  Kyle got up in his skivvies and met our neighbor in the entry way of our house to thank her for letting us know.

Whoops.

Our front door doesn’t close very well, even when the bottom lock is locked, so if you don’t slam the door, it will come back open.

So I’ve been talking to the Workaholic lately about either getting an alarm system, or a big, viscious dog.  The dog would do double duty by licking my floors clean, but our lease says “no pets” so we totally can’t go that route.  And seriously?  Who knows?  The dog could be a face-licking puffball with not a viscious bone in its body.

SO instead of looking for puppies, I was checking out Alarm.com and was completely blown away by the options that you can get in an alarm system nowadays.  Alarm.com has the most phenomenal and well-thought out website of any of their competitors, and their options are mind-blowing.

Check this out:

Let’s say I’m at Target and I’m trying on a new high-impact sports bra, OK?  The Stinky has a dirty diaper, and I suddenly remember that I left the wipes in the house, but because I intended on going back inside to get them, I didn’t lock the front door.  CRAP!  It’s OK, it’s OK.  I’m at Target so I can buy more wipes, and because I have Alarm.com, I can remotely lock my front door from my phone!  Isn’t that the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?

Now, let’s say I’ve just locked my keys inside the house, the babies are in the car all warm and screaming in their carseats, and The Nerd is blasting my eardrums about Spartan Ops and the game that never dies, OK?  I’m going insane realizing that I have to call the locksmith….again….to come let me into my house with his little ice scraper thing, then charging me $83 for it.  (I’m in the wrong business)  Never fear, Summer!  Alarm.com is here!  I put the keypad on my phone away because I’ve just remembered that for free, I can unlock the door from my phone, walk inside to get my keys, then lock the door from my phone as I’m backing out.

This is also a great feature for you parents with slow kids, like The Nerd.  Now you can get in the car before they do, and instead of trusting them to lock the door, you can do it yourself from your very own handheld device.

Can you believe this?  I know, it’s difficult to fathom.

However, my favorite feature is that Alarm.com’s alarms also have the option to have energy-saving features too.  I’m a stay at home mom, right?  And I spent my formidable years in Alaska.  Although I’ve been in the south for 14 years, there’s just this part of me that cannot and will not acclimate to the weather.  THAT part of me, likes it to be about 68* in the winter time.  The Workaholic likes it closer to 73* in the winter time.  This is an on-going argument with us, but it totally does’t make any sense.  Here’s how it plays out:

• I go to bed at 1030pm, the thermostat is set to 69*
• The Workaholic comes home at 3am, he swears he can see his breath, and has condensation icicles hanging from his nose and upper lip
• He turns the thermostat up to 73* and goes to bed around 4am.
• I wake up at 430, sweating like a horse on a fox chase
• I get out of bed at 630 to start my day
• I go downstairs, do my thaaang, go to the gym, come home, etc…
• 1030am, The Workaholic gets up, comes downstairs, and asks me why it’s so hot in the house.  He then saunters over to the thermostat and asks me why it’s 73* in the house.
• To which I reply, “Um…didn’t you turn it up last night?  I have too much to do in the morning to remember to turn it down.”
• 3 weeks later when the electric bill arrives all inflated, he says we need to start conserving energy and I remind him of our constant thermostat battle.
• It changes nothing.

Alarm.com has a smart system so that even when it’s doing this outside…

…it regulates the temperatures in your home to optimize performance.  It is also remotely programmable so that if The Workaholic wants it to be 73 when he gets home, he can program it from the comfort of his car, from his cell phone, and it will be boiling lava hot when he gets home.  Then, because the system is so smart, it will know that I prefer it cooler in the morning, and set itself accordingly.

My mom was visiting us from out of town when I was doing some serious research on Alarm.com.  I put together  a photo album with tons of information on the Alarm.com system.  I woke up the next morning, and she was surfing the site trying to pick out which features are most important to her.  This is a TRUE STORY.  She is a long haul truck driver and is gone for extended periods of time.  This sytstem would be phenomenal for her.  Especially when she needs to let a handyman in her house in Ocoee, FL when she’s in Butte, MT.  If I can get my mama interested?  You should be interested too.  Truly.

I’ve done a lot of research and I can honestly tell you that Alarm.com trumps every other alarm system out there.  The best part?  Their cutting edge technology comes at a price comprable to the other alarm systems.  You get SO much more, at virtually the same price.  And with your energy savings, you could actually be saving money.  It sounds like a win/win to me!

I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community.  This content has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ #CBias #SocialFabric