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HomeRoutines is One! (Appy Birthday!)

Published by Rosie on January 28, 2011

I can hardly believe it, but it’s now  a whole year since HomeRoutines was first for sale in the App Store.

To celebrate, we’re holding a weekend sale on HomeRoutines and HomeRoutines for iPad.  We’ll keep it going for three days as it’s a long weekend here (Auckland Anniversary Day!)

It’s been a busy year, while we talked with you and listened to your requests and ideas, and put them in place to make the app better.  Since we released that first version (HomeRoutines 1.0!) we’ve kept the updates coming.

Look at all these features that weren’t in the app when it was first released!

Apart from the separate iPad version, all those features were free upgrades, and we have even more upgrade awesomeness coming this year!

Another blast from the past is the old HomeRoutine icon:

It’s a front-loading washing machine. I know, right?

We made some early users sad when we changed it, but I’m pleased with our gold star icon.

It’s more colourful, that checkmark is like the Internationally Recognised Symbol for “This is a productivity app”, and the gold stars are what HomeRoutines is all about.

And here’s our “Before and After view of the home screen:

Thank you so much for all your feedback and kind reviews, and all your mentions on Twitter and your blogs. They’ve helped us keep developing the app and making it even better.

We have some tremendously awesome plans for the app this year, so keep watching that update screen!

Thanks again!

Rosie and Tim

HomeRoutines.com

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HomeRoutines 1.81 Update

Published by Rosie on January 20, 2011

We have just submitted a small update to the App Store.

Thank you for your support, feedback and your kind reviews on the app store. We appreciate it – especially when you update your reviews with a new version 🙂

What’s New for iPhone in HomeRoutines 1.81

This is a minor update to HomeRoutines to fix some bugs, but we have some awesome new features coming soon!

  • We’ve improved routine reminders: if you delete or rename a routine, the reminders are immediately deleted or renamed to match.
  • We fixed some bugs that occurred on iOS3 devices:
  • if you tried to copy without selecting something first, it made the app crash
  • if you pasted multiple tasks it caused a bug
  • We’ve improved the app’s performance on older devices, and fixed various other little bugs.

What’s New for iPad in HomeRoutines 1.81

  • You can now edit routines with your iPad in portrait or landscape mode (thanks for your patience with this one, it was very confusing!!!)
  • We improved routine reminders: if you delete or rename a routine, the reminders are immediately deleted or renamed to match.
  • We fixed a bug which meant that the date, daily messages and today’s routines weren’t refreshing properly each morning.
  • And we resolved a crashing bug that happened if you deleted a routine while you were viewing it.

We also fixed some bugs that occurred on iPads running iOS3:

  • if you tried to copy without selecting something first, it made the app crash
  • if you pasted multiple tasks it caused a bug
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Choosing a housework “system”: Organized Home

Published by Rosie on January 17, 2011

Organized Home by Cynthia Townley Ewer is a comprehensive, well organized reference site, with special sections dedicated to creating a Household Notebook, decluttering, organizing and seasonal tasks. It also offers some nicely designed Printable planner pages and a fab section called SHEs organized – with resources for people following the Sidetracked Home Executives system that was a precursor and inspiration to FlyLady.  I think the HomeRoutines app works really well with the SHE mindset as well!

Organized Home is the first place I came across the Four Box method of decluttering.  It’s a good reminder that you don’t need any special products to declutter.  (Don’t procrastinate thinking you need a set of special baskets to declutter into – a cardboard box from the grocery store will do just fine, and you can put it straight in the car to donate!)

Cynthia has also written a great book called Houseworks, which contains heaps of the wonderful advice on the website.

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Extra credit routines help you do the hard jobs

Published by Rosie on January 14, 2011

I was thinking about how easy it is for me to make my routines too long, with too many tasks in them. There are things that absolutely have to be done in my morning routine – like changing the nappy on Mr Small and Stinky, breakfast dishes and so on. But then there are things that can slide more easily, like sweeping the floor post-breakfast etc, especially when I get tied up chasing Mr Small and Less Stinky around the house, and you just know he’s going to run through the swept  up piles of sweepings…

Everyone has something that seems like an insurmountable obstacle, even though it doesn’t really take that long, and those are the things that you want to build up a habit of doing.

But you don’t want to leave your regular routines incomplete while you do.  So I had an idea – split those jobs off into an extra credit routine. So I did, and I’m enjoying my completed star for my morning routine, and giving myself a funny encouraging message to do those extra important jobs as well.

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