Remember what summer used to feel like?
No alarm clocks.
Popsicles before noon.
The whole afternoon smelled like sunscreen and cut grass.
The biggest decision of the day was whether to ride bikes to the pool or run through the sprinkler in the front yard. Somewhere between mortgages and grocery lists and vacuuming the living room for the third time this week, I seem to have lost that feeling.
But here’s the thing: it doesn’t have to be like this. As I was washing dishes, it came to me that the secret to reclaiming the summer you remember isn’t to abandon your responsibilities. It’s to stop doing them yourself. The smartest summer upgrade you can make is outsourcing the drudgery, automating the boring stuff, and building rituals that let you actually live in the season. Think of these ten swaps as a permission slip to enjoy summer the way you did when you were ten.
1. Let a Robot Clean Your Pool Floor, Walls, and Surface All at Once
If you’ve been spending your weekend mornings wrestling a vacuum hose across the pool floor, stop. The Beatbot Sora 70 is the pool robot that does it all in one pass: floor, walls, waterline scrubbing, and even the water surface. No struggling with those long poles with nets, no follow-up, no getting back in the water to check corners. Its industry-first JetPulse system uses dual converging jets to actively pull floating debris inward, so leaves and sunscreen film don’t stand a chance. Powered by ultrasonic obstacle sensors, it navigates around drains and ladders without getting stuck. When the cleaning cycle is done, it floats itself to the pool edge and waits for you (with an update to your phone), no fishing it out of the deep end. I’ve had a Beatbot for a few years, but this new version is lighter, doesn’t have the bulky charger, and has made life easier (and less expensive, because when I was having someone come do a big cleaning every week). So, Sunday mornings just got a lot more poolside.
2. Stop Babysitting the Water Level
Every pool owner knows the mid-July panic: you’ve been running the hose for twenty minutes and still can’t remember if you turned it off. The Top-Up Turtle is the fix to sitting and staring, or leaving the house and then running back to see if you turned it off (true story, I once left the water running for over 24 hours and got a water bill of over $400 that month). This is an automatic pool water leveler that connects to a standard garden hose and maintains your pool’s water level without any monitoring on your part. It’s fully adjustable, works with pools, spas, and ponds, and even adds a gentle cascading water effect as it fills. Install it once and forget it exists. That’s the summer ritual right there: set it and go back to your lounger.
3. Automate Doing Your Floors with a Vacuum AND Mop
Wet sandy feet. Grass tracked in from the backyard. Ice cream drips on the kitchen tile. Summer floors are ruthless, and dragging out a mop every time someone walks in the door (ahem, I’m the slob of the family, so I may be talking about myself) is nobody’s idea of a good time. The Narwal Freo Z10 Turbo handles vacuuming and mopping in a single run, with 25,000 Pa of suction, smart room mapping, automatic mop lifting on carpets, and an edge-cleaning system that actually reaches baseboards, the spot most robots give up on. It self-empties (when I saw that there was a vacuum BAG that it empties into instead of pulling out that little piece like my old one did, I was ecstatic, because I used to drop half of the dust back onto the floor as I pulled it out each time), self-cleans its mop pads, and self-dries between sessions. Schedule it every night before bed and wake up to clean floors every morning without lifting a finger. At around $899 (check for sales, as I’ve seen it for lower), it’s the kind of investment that pays for itself in reclaimed fun times.
**Narwal is offering a special limited-time launch discount that will bring the price down to just $599.99 (MSRP: $899.99) from May 18 to May 31**
4. Order Groceries Without Leaving the House or Paying Extra for It
Walmart Grocery Delivery is genuinely one of the most underrated summer rituals because, unlike some competitors, Walmart doesn’t upcharge for delivery on the actual grocery items. You pay the delivery fee (I subscribe to Walmart+ to get free deliveries), and everything in your cart costs the same as it would in the store. I happened to get it free from Amex (so check your credit card benefits to see if you get any grocery or food delivery services free from them). Order Saturday morning from the pool deck. Have it show up at your door in the afternoon. Never push a cart through a sweltering parking lot in August again. Pair it with a recurring grocery list and your summer entertaining staples practically reorder themselves.
5. Put Your Lawn on Autopilot
A robot lawn mower is the outdoor equivalent of the Narwal; it just handles it. I had a Husqvarna Automower, and I’ve also seen the EcoFlow Blade operate on schedules you set, quietly trimming your grass during off-hours so your yard always looks maintained without you touching a mower. Most modern models are GPS-guided, quiet enough to run at night, and can be controlled from an app. The summer ritual: set the schedule at the start of June and enjoy a perfectly trimmed yard all season without once pulling a cord. The only issue that I came across is that I have a very deep swale in front of my house. I swear I’m the house with the deepest one, and all of the hurricane water ends up at my house every year. My automower would get stuck in it, so be aware that if you don’t have a flat lawn, find one that’s right for your yard. Because of this, I have someone mow my lawn for me. There are always neighborhood kids looking to make a few dollars, and for me, it’s worth it.
6. Schedule Your Pool Chemicals Automatically
Balancing pool chemistry is one of those tasks that sounds like a weekend project every single week, but it doesn’t have to be. Automatic chemical dispensers and systems like the Hayward AquaRite saltwater chlorination system remove the manual testing-and-pouring routine entirely. Salt systems generate chlorine continuously from dissolved salt in the water, keeping levels consistent without daily intervention. Pair it with a smart water monitor (like the Ondilo ICO) that reads your pool chemistry from your phone, and pool maintenance becomes a quick weekly glance at an app rather than a chemistry experiment every Saturday.
7. Meal Prep Once, Eat All Week
Summer eating should be easy. I don’t EVER do fancy in the summer (unless we’re going out to dinner). Meals should taste like something you grabbed off a grill or out of a cooler, not something you labored over. Dedicating one weekday evening to batch-cooking: a big pot of pasta salad, marinated proteins ready to grill, cut fruit in the fridge, dips, and snacks portioned out. The rest of the week, dinner is assembly, not cooking. I was using Tovala and having meals delivered for a while, and I need to start placing my orders again. You could add a meal kit service like Cook Unity (which I’ve been wanting to try for a while now) or Home Chef for the nights when you want something a little different, without the full mental load of planning, and pair it with your Walmart delivery for the staples.
8. Automate Your Home’s Cooling Schedule
Running the AC full blast all day is expensive and unnecessary when no one’s home. A smart thermostat like the Google Nest or Ecobee learns your schedule and pre-cools your home before you arrive, so you walk in from the heat to an already-comfortable house without wasting energy while you’re at the pool. Program weekend cooling schedules separately so Saturday afternoon always feels like stepping into an oasis. It’s a small thing that consistently delivers that *ahh* moment the second you open the front door. Or if you’re older like I am, let’s let you actually sleep without the night sweats.
9. Outsource Your Home Cleaning Schedule
Even with a robot vacuum and mop handling daily floors, your house in summer will get lived in harder with more people being home all day. And if you live by the beach, it can be even tougher with beach towels, barbecue smoke, extra guests, and sandy dog paws. Consider scheduling a monthly clean through a local cleaning company during the summer, specifically. I’ve been seeing ads on TV that have great deals for first-time cleanings (and don’t forget to check Groupon for coupons as well). It’s a targeted seasonal ritual: you handle the daily maintenance with your smart tools, and a professional handles the deep work periodically. Coming home to a fully clean house after a long weekend away feels like checking into a hotel. Budget for it the same way you’d budget for any other summer treat.
The Real Summer Upgrade
None of these rituals is about being lazy. They’re about being strategic with your time and attention. When you were a kid, summer felt infinite because no one asked you to vacuum or check the pool chemistry or run to the grocery store. The chores existed and your parents just handled them in ways you never noticed.
Now *you’re* the parent, the homeowner, the adult keeping everything running. The difference is, you’ve got tools they never had: robots that clean your pool while you float in it, devices that keep the water level perfect without a second thought, grocery delivery that shows up without you leaving the yard, and floors that clean themselves overnight.
Stack enough of these rituals together and something starts to happen. Summer starts to feel a little longer. Weekends feel a little slower. There’s more time for popsicles before noon and afternoons that don’t have anywhere to be.
That’s the ritual worth keeping.
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