On Connecting and My Happy Place

The wise John Lennon once said, “All you need is love,” but that was before the advent of the Internet. Now more accurate lyrics might be, “All you need is love…and a good Wi-Fi signal.”

Sometimes I wonder what we ever did before the Internet? I mean, I suppose I do remember, but sometimes it seems like such a distant memory in our current era of information at our fingertips and lighting fast technology. The fact that I can stream music all throughout my house, while my kids stream a show on a tablet and I edit and share photos to the Internet through my phone. It’s like our very own version of modern day magic.

One thing that is sometimes a bit less magical is slow Wi-Fi speeds when all of these devices compete with each other for Wi-Fi. This has been a common occurrence at our house in the past. Because of the unique U-shape configuration of our house, certain spots throughout the house have always been “Wi-Fi dead zones”.

Our bedroom/my office has been a notoriously terrible spot for retrieving a Wi-Fi signal as it is at one end of the U-shape. Obviously this is less than ideal since my office is the place where I’m supposed to work and my work requires the use of the Internet, because: blogging.

On top of that our bedroom is often our place of “escape”. When my husband is watching all-day football on a Sunday, I can sneak off to our room to catch up on Netflix and when it’s my turn to host girl’s night at our house he can do the same. But catching up on binge watching is infinitely less enjoyable with the constant buffering of video. Not cool Wi-Fi. Not cool.

Once after having a bunch of girlfriends over, I came back to our room (after hours of my husband being camped out in there in avoidance of overhearing our girl talk) only to find him reading a random user manual, because he couldn’t get a solid Wi-Fi signal to watch anything and there wasn’t any other available reading material! He didn’t want to come out and disrupt us, which gave me a good laugh, though it was rather sweet.

That’s where Google Wifi comes in to save the day (and my husband…from dry reading material)!

Because of the shape of our house (i.e. ” the U-shaped Wi-Fi dead zone”) one router just wasn’t going to cut it. With Google Wifi, we can have multiple contact points (3 to be exact – one for each section of the “U”) in order to help us reach every part of our home.

We keep one in the back bedroom/my office to increase signal strength where I work the most and need reliable, fast Internet speeds. We keep another Google Wifi in our family room since it’s where we hang out most and is where we stream our shows and music most often. The third connection point is kept in our front entry room/kitchen, which connects the two ends of the house.

No more slow buffering and bugging my husband to “fix the Wi-Fi” incessantly, not only because our connection is better and faster now, but because Google Wifi also has an app where I can easily manage everything. Through the Google Wifi app I can test Wi-Fi speeds, get Wi-Fi care support, set up a special guest Wi-Fi network and access one of the coolest features – Family Wifi Pause – which allows me to pause specific devices or groups of devices during certain times of day. 

This could prove highly useful in the years to come when my kids are a bit older and more tied to their devices. I love the idea of being able to “press pause” on technology during dinner time, bedtime or any other family time deemed important. It’s also useful for tech-addicted grown-ups (myself included) to set good boundaries as well.

The other cool thing about Google Wifi is that it’s super easy to transport, so if you decide that you want to shuffle your routers around to different spots to optimize your Wi-Fi you can do it without hassle, which was the case when we moved one of our connection points out to our brew shed/office.

My husband is a talented home brewer. He loves making beer and we actually have six taps that come right in through our house in our coffee bar. See Exhibit A:

He does all of said beer-making out in his designated “brew shed”. The place is filled with all kind of complex equipment and things that he created to optimize the beers he creates (which includes this electrical-panel-thing on the wall that he programmed and made from scratch and that does something important that I do not understand even remotely).

Recently he remodeled the brew shed to be a more comfortable place to hang out and one that could double as a second office for me when not in-use for brewing. Since the two Google Wifi points we had on each end of our house were working well on their own, we decided to move our third router out to the brew shed for good measure.

Now I pretty much want to live out there. This place has EVERYTHING! Pretty floors, heat and my own personal barista just down the path. It’s pretty much my new favorite place and so much quieter than my home office where I can still hear screaming children.

Even though we could still access our Wi-Fi without the router out there, it’s a nice addition since now we have great Wi-Fi coverage even outside which is super great for my husband when he’s doing projects outside and needs to watch a quick YouTube video to figure something out or so he can monitor his brewing process remotely from his phone.

So basically, what I’m saying is that Google Wifi is the bee’s knees. Easy to use, pretty to look at and incredibly functional. So if you’re in need of a less janky Wi-Fi connection, Google Wifi has you covered. Peace out Wi-Fi dead zones! You won’t be missed.

xo

Lauren

*This post was created in partnership with Google Wifi. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own. Thank you so much for checking out and supporting the companies that I truly love!