Home Routines blog

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    Newsletter April 2025

    Hello, friends! Good news – we finally released the new Home Routines app! If you pre-ordered it earlier it may already be on your device, but otherwise you can find it in the App Store. Give it a try! This is a brand new, free app, separate from the “Classic” version, and it won’t overwrite or replace the original. We have already received some detailed feedback from folks who have downloaded it so far, and we appreciate it so much! It makes such a difference…

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    Newsletter January 2025

    Hi friends, Just wanted to send a quick note and say we are still alive and working on our new app. We are really looking forward to sharing it with you all! We’re sorry that we didn’t manage to release it in 2024 as we intended. At this time of year, all the social media messages are pushing the idea of huge, aspirational goals – “A New Year, a New You.” I am myself not immune to thinking a new journal and a nice new…

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    Newsletter October 2024

    Hello friends, I hope September treated you well and that you are safe and sound from the terrible storms. It’s springtime here in New Zealand, but we still enjoy some of the trappings of the Northern Hemisphere’s autumn. (I do look forward to my yearly pumpkin spice latte as we get further into the month) The teens have already dragged Tim down to the local beach for their first swim of the season, but it is far too chilly for me at this stage! ⭐️ New features survey results…

  • Newsletter August 2024

    Hello friends, Seems like August is zooming past us! We will have family visitors around this weekend for our daughter’s 20th birthday, so I’ve been whipping around, tidying up here and there. Today I tackled a (slightly overloaded) shelf of tabletop games in the living room. Time passes, interests and energy levels change, so we’ll be sending some old games off to new homes, and others will be packed away elsewhere for now. Fortunately we’re past the age of having little kids who tip out…

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    Newsletter June 2024

    Hello, friends! How is your June going? It’s the middle of winter, here in New Zealand. Where we are (Auckland) it’s pretty mild, so for me this just means a light cardigan on errands day. Or a puffer jacket if I go for a walk down the chilly beach (for mental health purposes, and to say hello to local dogs) ⭐️New Home Routines app later this year!⭐️ We’ve been working hard at a refreshed version of Home Routines. Our first version was released in 2010…

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    “5 by 5s” five star rating!

    Recently I’ve been really enjoying catching up on the excellent videos and resources produced by Steph at The Secret Slob. She has a great speed cleaning hack that she calls “5×5”. She uses a timer to keep on task, and zips around cleaning five rooms, for five minutes each. If she has extra time at the end of a room, she pops back to the “worst room” to do a little more there. (There is so much more on her Youtube channel, have a look…

  • Half-Tidying avoidance

    “Half-tidying” is when you only sorta-kinda put things away.  You know, you open the bathroom cupboard, scrunch up your eyes and just shove that new shower-puff into the nearest space. I’m prone to this because if I look properly I get stressed about where the “correct” place is to put that thing, and in order to locate that “correct” place I think I need to empty everything out of the cupboard and have an extended Tetris-type arranging party and it will take hours I tell…

  • Half-Tidying (AKA I’ll just leave this here)

    Here are some things I have “just” put in the wrong place “for now” in the past day or so. You know. Then Dan Howell (Danisnotonfire) from the You Tubes talked about it better than me. (note: video includes cussing) One week ago I did a hard-core complete tidy of this room and yet here I am standing in a post-apocalyptic laundry pile. … So, how did this happen? I’ve thought about it and I think it’s because people tend to only ever do half-tidies….