As most mums will testify, our smartphone is never far from our hand, whether it’s checking-in on social media or snapping a cute photo of our offspring having fun and exploring their environment. So when I was asked to trial the new Hive active heating thermostat from Bord Gáis Energy, I was happy to add remote control flexibility to our household’s energy consumption and another app to my smartphone.

I’m a busy mum of two, who works three days in an office and four days in the home. I am semi-professional juggler of all things parenting and work-related but I have been known to drop a ball on occasion. This is especially true when it comes to leaving the heating or worse still, the immersion, practically the worst crime an Irish person can commit – well according to our mothers’ era!

I’d like to think that I am a savvy mum when it comes to shopping and keeping on top of our household finances, which the hubby happily leaves to me. Our energy bills, in particular our heating bill was a struggle when we moved house a couple of years ago, so we’ve made some strategic investments of late, that we hope to start to reap the rewards from this winter. First, there were some heavily lined curtains for the patio doors, then some thermostatic valves for the radiators and now our new Hive active heating thermostat from Bord Gáis Energy.

My Hive smart technology thermostat control is really starting to come in to its own now is becoming even more unpredictable in nature. The cold winter evenings combined with children's unpredictable schedule has meant that I'm now using the scheduling function to have heat and hot water come on for one hour a day in the early morning and early evening.

The rest the time I'm using the smart technology Hive App on my iPhone or iPad to control the heat in my remotely. For example, this week my children were attending two birthday parties on afternoons so it meant that there was absolutely no need for the heat to be on in the house even though the afternoons were noticeably cooler.

Both of these parties occurred on days I was working in the office, so when my childminder texted me to let me know she was on her way home with the children, I could very simply tap the Boost function within my Hive App and set the to come on for an hour. I'm starting to wonder how I lived without this handy little App :-)

Smart technology in the home really is the way forward; I'm thinking a robotic vacuum cleaner might be on my Santa list this Christmas! Speaking of which, the dinner dates and nights out are already being block booked in my diary for the weeks ahead.

This is where my Hive App will save me both in terms of worry and money when leaving my babysitter for a few hours on a Saturday night to meet with friends. We have a stove fire in our main sitting room and I never feel comfortable leaving a real fire as the only heat source on a cold winter evening.

I would worry that my babysitter would be too nervous to top up the solid fuel in the stove and get cold waiting for us to get home. Thankfully now I can check the temperature in my house using the Hive App and turn on the heat if the temperature drops. I can also set the App to send me a notification if it drops below a certain level and in case I get distracted while enjoying the Christmas cheer! My husband is working hard to lose a few pounds in the gym before his overindulgence over the festive season, so he's enjoying the fact that he can boost our hot water remotely for a power shower when he gets home from the gym. We're much more sensible about our energy use since we've had the Hive active thermostat installed; now I hope to reap the rewards when my next bill comes in too!