Time savers also add convenience

Want to save time at home while adding convenience? Choose gadgets and appliances that do more for you. Consumer Reports suggests doing the following four things.

1. Get a dishwasher that makes a difference. A creaky old dishwasher that doesn’t work well is almost as bad as no dishwasher at all. If cereal bowls and dinner plates keep coming out flecked with bits of food, plastic containers never quite dry and you have to shout to make yourself heard when the machine kicks into high gear, it might be time to consider an upgrade.

2. Pump up your Wi-Fi. Is your house bigger than your Wi-Fi network? It’s a common technology challenge: The signal doesn’t reach your home’s far recesses -say, the basement or one of the kids’ rooms. To solve it, consider one of a new generation of routers from Eero, Luma, Google and others, all of which employ mesh networking. Simply place multiple routers around the house, and the system will create a single network that extends Wi-Fi coverage without clipping bandwidth. A set of three Eeros is claimed to cover up to 4,000 square feet, well over the size of the average American house. You can buy the units individually, but if you want the benefits of a mesh network, you’ll need more than one.

3. Create the perfect laundry room. If your washer and dryer are still parked in your basement, it’s time to bring them out of the shadows and into your main living space. Position the laundry area near a kitchen or bathroom, and you should be able to share

plumbing lines. For electric dryers, you’ll need to put in an outlet with a dedicated 30-amp, three- or fourwire circuit. Gas dryers will need to be supplied with a gas connection and vented outdoors. The project might set you back a few hundred dollars, but in addition to making life much more convenient, the investment could pay for itself if and when you sell your home. In a 2016 survey of homebuyers by the National Association of Home Builders, a dedicated laundry room was No. 1 on the list of most-desired home features, considered essential or desirable by 92 percent of respondents.

Of course, a laundry room is only as good as the

appliances you put into it. Consumer Reports says the mark of a top dryer is its ability to dry items without overcooking them, plus convenience features such as easy loading and unloading.

4. Banish dust bunnies. There’s something cool about coming home to a spotless floor. A robotic vacuum will help create that sense of well-being by scooting throughout your home sucking up dirt and other surface debris while you’re out living your life. Consumer Reports notes that you’ll still need a full-sized vacuum for deep carpet cleaning, but today’s top robotic vacuums are more powerful than ever and better at navigating your home than in the past.