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HomeRoutines for iPad

Published by Rosie on November 22, 2010 1

HomeRoutines for iPad

HomeRoutines is now available for the iPad!

It includes a new interface design for the iPad, and all the great features of the iPhone version. We’ve worked hard to make this a great app for the iPad, and hope you enjoy it!

Take charge of your recurring home tasks with HomeRoutines, now on the iPad. Create routine checklists, then complete them on your chosen days of the week, with reminder notifications to keep you on track and a gold star for each completed task. Your checklists can automatically reset – start fresh each morning. HomeRoutines is totally customizable, easy to use, and friendly, not bossy.

Keep your email, calendar and to-do lists clutter free by keeping recurring housework chores in HomeRoutines, the only app designed from scratch to suit the real flow of your home.

Detailed cleaning lists are built in with the “Focus Zones” section – add rooms and tasks to suit your house, then do a little bit of extra housework every day and you’ll never have to spring clean again! Up to seven zones so you can switch focus each  day of the week. If you’re a “Flylady*” fan, you’ll love the option to switch zone each week of the month to stay in sync with her zone schedule.

Discover the power of speed cleaning with HomeRoutines’ built-in timer – set your timer to 10 or 15 minutes, set your mind to it and see how much gets done.

There’s even a built-in to-do list for simple one-off jobs, and a daily message option helps you plan the pattern of your weekdays.

HomeRoutines’ unique Accomplishments list is the “Tada!” to your todo. Review all the tasks you’ve completed today. You can even share your accomplishments via email.

Focus on a task list by rotating your iPad to portrait, or stay in landscape mode for an overview of your day.

Comprehensive online manual is available – and if you have any questions or feedback, email us at support@homeroutines.com and we will respond quickly to help you out. We’re also on Facebook and Twitter.

(Notifications are not yet available until the pending iOS 4.2 update is released from Apple – should be any day now)

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HomeRoutines 1.8 Update (Available now!)

Published by Rosie on November 16, 2010 7

This has turned into quite a major update with many much-requested features, and of course the update is free – we love making HomeRoutines better and better! Thank you all for the support and all your feedback. Remember you can update your review on the app store when you get an update too. 🙂

Routine Reminders

Routine reminder

We’ve had a lot of requests for this one, so here it is, and I don’t know how I lived without it!

Routine notification

Reminders only go off on the days the routine is shown, and you choose a time for each routine’s reminder. They use the local notification service on your phone, so you don’t need an internet connection to receive your reminders.

Routine reminder settings

More Zones

Crikey, it's 7 zones

You can now select to have 5, 6, or 7 zones, so if you want to spread out your current focus or sort your rooms in a different way, you have more options.

It also means you can use a zone for your garden, garden shed, garage or car.

Zones 6 & 7 won’t appear in the rotation if you’re switching zone per week of the month, but you can choose them manually at any time.

New Zone Scheduling Options

Now we have up to 7 zones we are free to put in another much-requested feature: scheduling a zone per day of the week.

Many of the housework systems out there have a focus per day of the week, so we’re stoked to get this feature in there to suit all the speed-cleaning, uncluttering, housework 101’ers, and everyone else who finds this the easiest way to keep a thin layer of tidy across the whole house all the time.  Of course, the original week-of-the-month schedule is still there for the “Flybaby” crew.

You can also choose when you want your zone stars to reset, once a week or once a month. This is a separate choice from the zone schedule because we thought you’d like to choose; we can see the benefits of all the available combinations, so we left it up to you.

Wide Keyboard

We’re supporting the horizontal orientation for the iPhone now for easier typing.

Horizontal keyboard

While we’re looking at the keyboard, we’ve also made the ‘Return’ key say Next when you’re typing in a list, to make it clearer that you can skip to the next item by tapping it.

More Space

You can put an unlimited amount of text in your tasks now with multi-line editing.

Detailed instructions for CORRECTLY making the bed

Improved daily message

Your daily message will now appear at the top of the home screen with today’s date – just touch the disclosure button to edit.  You can now enter as long a message as you wish, and add ‘returns’ in there if you want.  (If the daily message feature bugs you, delete the text in the default messages and they won’t be there to bother you any more 🙂

Daily message

The daily message screen is now always editable, so you don’t have to touch edit to start editing your messages.

Daily message screen

Cut and Paste Routine tasks

You’ve been able to copy rooms in your focus zones for ages, so it’s about time!  Now you can easily create similar routine lists for different days of the week without heaps of re-typing.

Action button

Just touch the action button (the one with the arrow on the right of the tool bar) and choose Copy Task List.

Then pop over to your other routine, touch edit, and hold on the Add New Task; touch Paste.  There it is.

Accomplishments Count on the Home Screen

12 tasks completed today!

The number of accomplishments today is right on the home screen so you can see how awesome you are at a single glance.

Backup with iTunes file sharing

You can now back up your data locally with iTunes file sharing (at the bottom of the Apps screen on iTunes)

File sharing on iTunes

You need the free iOS 4 upgrade to do this.

At present you can only back up using this method; restore requires the original wifi version. This is due to an issue with the app not restoring data from file sharing if it is currently running.   We will be making restore work via file sharing very soon.

iPad version coming really soon

The glorious iPad version of HomeRoutines has been submitted for review, and should be available for purchase very soon. The app will have a lower introductory price to make it easier for everyone who has been using the iPhone version on their iPad.

Enjoy the update – and don’t forget to update your reviews!

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HomeRoutines 1.7 now available

Published by Rosie on July 28, 2010 2

Our latest update is now available in the app store, with some cool new features.

Progressive Stars

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.

Share your accomplishments and lists

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.

Clever paste

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.

Plus Also

HomeRoutines 1.7 is iOS 4.0 tested and supports the flash new iOS 4.0 features:

  • Fast application switching
  • Crisp new high-res graphics for the iPhone 4
  • Timer will still sound if HomeRoutines isn’t the running app (using local notifications)

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.

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Recurring tasks in HomeRoutines

Published by Rosie on July 4, 2010 14

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.

  1. A routine that only appears only in certain months of the year, or weeks of the month. For example, a holiday routine with all the tasks you only do in November and December.
  2. Tasks that are important but infrequent, and aren’t actually routines. For example;
  • changing air conditioner filters
  • giving the cat flea medicine every 6 weeks
  • putting out the recycling bin every second week
  • ensuring the cat has its once-a-year vet checkup and vaccinations in January.

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?

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What’s New in HomeRoutines 1.5.1

Published by Rosie on April 19, 2010

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.

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Problems with HomeRoutines 1.5.1 Upgrade

Published by Rosie on April 15, 2010

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.

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