HomeRoutines

I like and use Things for my to-do list. It works well for larger projects, and changing tasks. When it comes to household chores, however, I try (not always successfully) to follow the Flylady philosophy, which is all about breaking your chores into small tasks, and working on larger chores for no more than fifteen minutes at a time. Oh and shining your sink before you go to bed, of course. For most of the to-do apps out there, that would mean entering a whole lot of stuff every day, which would take more than fifteen minutes for sure.

HomeRoutines, while not an official Flylady app, follows the same basic philosophy. Everything is fully customizable, so you can create your own morning and evening routines. Zones for the week  can also be edited, and the room names can be changed, as well as the tasks associated with them. So I may not have a dining room, but I do have a shed that is sometimes referred to as “the black hole”, so I can easily rename the dining room the black hole, and replace dining room tasks with shed tasks

Once you set up your routines for morning, evening, and weekly tasks, you just tap each task as it is completed and get a gold star! If you’re feeling like you haven’t gotten anything done, just go look at your Accomplishments, and all your gold-star tasks will be there. At the end of the day, you can clear all your stars, and your lists will be ready for you tomorrow.

There’s also space for additional to-do tasks for the day, as well as notes for every day of  the week. And of course, there’s a fifteen minute timer that plays a fanfare when time is up! Gold stars and fanfares might sound a little cheesey, but they really are motivating, and that triumphant music made me smile when I heard it go off.

This app works just perfectly for me. I work full-time, so the Flylady email reminders sometimes make me tense. If I’m sitting at my desk, I can’t exactly go put in a load of laundry or clean the cobwebs from the bedroom ceiling, and I can’t always remember all those little tasks by the time I get home in the evening. The only thing missing from HomeRoutines are 27 fling boogies and hotspot fire drills. It would be great if I could schedule events like those for the hours I’m home, and have them send me push notifications.

More control journal than to-do app, HomeRoutines is more about checklists and developing habits than sending you nagging reminders that can leave you feeling more overwhelmed than motivated. Even if you’re not an avid Flybaby, HomeRoutines will help you keep up with all those mundane little chores, and keep your home looking company-ready at all times. Set up is quick and easy, and once you’ve customized your routines and zones, all you have to do is open the app and tap those gold stars as you get things done. HomeRoutines is well-worth its $4.99 price, and earns five jars of applesauce!

Many thanks to HomeRoutines for kindly supplying an app code for this review!

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