The HomeRoutines app makes it simple for you to keep track of your regular household chores and routines - and adds a bit of fun with gold stars and the world's most triumphant music at the end of the 15 minute timer! And at the end of the day, you can look at your Accomplishments list and say "Go me!"
You can make lists and lists and lists, and have the best of intentions, but some days you can only manage the basics. Having a ready-made list of the absolute priorities can help out on those days!
Stephanie from Totally Together Journal has a great list called The Daily 7 for a Highly Successful Household
This is what it looks like in HomeRoutines:
Our latest update is now available in the app store, with some cool new features.
The whole-routine stars on the home screen now fill in progressive pizza-wedges as you complete tasks. If it just so happens that your routine is only mostly complete – you’ll get a star that is mostly filled in with gold. We were appalled – appalled! – when someone told us how sad it made her when she nearly completed her routine but the star was still blank like she hadn’t done anything. So we fixed that to be a bit more forgiving.
We got this request in a review from HoldiesMama:
You know what would be the cherry on top? Being able to email our accomplishments to ourselves or (for me) our Spouse. I want a running record to bask in my glory!!!!! Hmmm, what does this say about me? I don’t care! I still think it would be Great!
First we added an action button at the bottom of the Accomplishments screen, so you can share your completed tasks via email. Then we thought you might like to share other lists, so we added it to the bottom of all your routines, zones and to-dos as well.
You can now paste a list into any new task item in HomeRoutines, and each new line in your list will become a new task.
HomeRoutines 1.7 is iOS 4.0 tested and supports the flash new iOS 4.0 features:
And a minor tweak to the formula that generated the zone dates, so a weekend at the start of the month doesn’t turn into a zone of its own and get the zone dates all out of whack with the FlyLady zone calendar.
One of our most common feature requests is for us to add recurring tasks that happen less frequently.
There are a couple of different sorts.
The second sort are tricky. They don’t fit comfortably into routines, because they are important, time-sensitive, and not as “forgivable” as regular routines. You don’t want the reminder to change your smoke detector batteries to reset after a day or a week like the routine stars, because it’s too important for that.
We’re thinking about the best way to approach this in HomeRoutines. They don’t fit well in routines, for the reasons listed above. Perhaps they’d fit well under To Dos, but I don’t want to make the entry of To Do items more complicated by adding settings to each and every task just to enable you to make some tasks recur infrequently. Or perhaps they’re a whole new section on the home screen – or a whole new app!
What do you think? Do you want recurring tasks? How would they work best for you?
Here’s a little idea for those of us who can be *ahem* less than diligent about keeping up with their washing piles (Mt Washmore, or whatever) Make a laundry routine and you’ll really earn that home screen star – as well as being reminded to do the washing every time you lookat the app!
(Also you won’t leave other routines incomplete through not doing the laundry part of them, eh?)
PS: I did make the title of that routine “GOAL: Clean undies” but then I got all embarrassed of my screen shot and changed it to socks. They are all important.
Here are some more glowing reviews for HomeRoutines. Thanks, y’all!
Highly recommended for anyone with an iphone. Even worth getting an iphone just to run it.
(Habit Hacker is a great new site, by the way, with a fresh way of looking at the value of building routines and habits for not only your housework, but also for your creative endeavours and for taking care of your body and your health. Highly recommended for its tongue-in-check attitude and hilarious new terminology!)
HomeRoutines is a great app that can change your home and your life! That might sound extreme, but with this tool, you can start making small changes to your life to make it more peaceful. Who wouldn’t want that, right?! I HIGHLY recommend it to all!
We’ve been working hard and adding a lot of the features you’ve been asking for. We’ve also got lots of cool ideas for the future!
Here’s a quick look at the new stuff.
Schedule your Routines
You can now choose which days of the week a routine will appear, and which days it will reset.
A small box at the bottom of each routine will reflect the current schedule and reset settings, and you can touch it to access those settings to edit them.
Switch between the routines that are scheduled to appear today, and all the routines you have made, using the All toggle button at the top of the homescreen.
We’ve added more boxes to the To Do section, so you can plan ahead for this week, and tasks to do later on. You can drag tasks freely between the boxes in ToDo, and the star on the home page will still light up when you’ve completed all the tasks in the Today box.
You can set all your Focus zone stars to clear at the start of the month.
We have added a new Help and Support section to the home screen.
You can also backup your data to your computer (highly recommended if you have littlies who like to play with your phone like me!) and directly access the help section of the website from the app.
Lovely picture we bought from Andrew at Mumblier, who is drawing them so he can buy an iPad. He very obligingly drew one with stars, despite my vague requests.
We’ve had some reports of people having problems with the app crashing since they’ve installed the update to HomeRoutines 1.5.1, which we had hoped would stop those things happening instead of making them worse.
If this happens to you please contact us at support@homeroutines.com so we can help.
We’d also appreciate it if you could use the new Send Diagnostic Data feature to send your routines and things to us for troubleshooting. (Just go to Help and Support at the bottom of the home screen) These won’t be identifiable as belonging to you, but if you’re willing, you can put your email address as the first item in your to do list. Then we will be able to reply to you specifically regarding that file. You can just email us without sending it through, of course, but it will help us figure this thing out.
Fantastic! Adrianne from Illinois told us in a comment:
I am using the Daily Reminders section to help me begin to answer that “What’s For Dinner?” question on a regular basis. I realized I could be somewhat generic and put “Crockpot meal” down for any given night or be even more specific and put down the name of a favorite recipe.
What a good idea. Thank you, Adrianne! If you have a regular pattern to how you eat throughout the week (or even if you don’t) you could plan out a week’s dinners in your HomeRoutines Daily Reminders, and you’ll see that wee note on your home screen telling you what you planned.
How do you use the HomeRoutines Daily Reminders? Leave us a comment!
There is a four step process to giving your house a makeover, bit by bit, and all the steps work great in HomeRoutines.
Over the next little while, I’ll be working through each of these steps, and how the HomeRoutines app can help keep you focused.
Minor Chaos in Underthebedland
Before you can start really cleaning out your home, you need to get rid of the clutter around the place. There’s not much point dusting your shelves or polishing your kitchen table if they’re covered in crap items you don’t really love or find to be beautiful or useful. I don’t think we ever get to stop decluttering, because (despite our best intentions) there is always more stuff coming into our homes. To keep in balance, some stuff needs to go out again… in the trash, to recycle, to a friend or relation, to the thrift store, to sell online, or a garage sale. The main thing is it has to go.
I’m only just getting what it means to really declutter, so I’ll leave the explanations to the experts:
Take a walk around your house and just note down in your customized Focus zones, the areas that need reviewing or decluttering. You might want to even delete the cleaning tasks in your Focus zones lists for now. The time for detailed cleaning will come, but not yet.
(Don’t burn yourself out, though, and if you haven’t got your basic routines going yet, focus on that to start with or it will all fall to pieces.)
For example, in my daughter’s room I need to declutter by:
Now you’ve got a list, don’t go rushing around like a headless chook trying to do everything at once, or you’ll end up with the contents of all the drawers and cupboards in the middle of your floor and it will be a horrible, overwhelming mess. Been there, done that, and it sucked. Badly.
Like the FlyLady says, Your homes did not get messy in a day and they will not get clean overnight.
So, each day, when you’ve got a few minutes, you can have a look at your Focus zone list and pick one or two jobs off your decluttering list, for one room. Set the timer if it will help to keep you focused, don’t start unpacking everything, and get ready to make some decisions. If you do a bit of decluttering each day or so, after a few months you’ll feel like you have more room to breathe, and soon you’ll be ready to start your detailed cleaning in your Focus zones.
HomeRoutines is an essential app when it comes to managing your chores. The app is universal and is ideal for anyone. Chores are broken down by days of the week, but it doesn't end there. Each day is then broken down into morning and evening chores. The app includes a feature called "Focus Zones," which assigns certain rooms of your house to specific days for cleaning. The organization this app provides for a household is revolutionary and is well worth twice its price.
