Household Management Apps
It can be difficult to keep on top of household chores with our busy lifestyles. As with many things these days we often turn to technology for a solution, and there are now a variety of household management apps available which I believe can be a useful tool to help us keep track of tasks.
This month I have chosen three of these to trial and have reviewed them below. I have chosen three very different apps, with varied approaches and interfaces, as we are all motivated by different things. Hopefully one of these will work for you!
All of these apps are available on both Android and Ios.
Our Home
Our Home is a great app for families but is also effective for individuals, couples, or house shares.
Households can create tasks and assign them to family members with a points reward system when chores are complete. I found this great as a self-motivator but I would imagine it is also brilliant for children.
The interface is simple and clean with a calendar tab where you can view upcoming tasks. Tasks can be set with differing frequency (twice a day, once a month, every Thursday) and also a set points reward, for example making the bed could be 5 points, and cleaning the oven 100 points.
Real life rewards can be offered when a family member accumulates a set number of points, for example “one hour of Xbox when you reach 20 points”.
I enjoyed the customisation options when creating a task, assigning categories which range from different rooms of the house to maintenance, health, study, creativity, and many more. You can then filter tasks by date, category, or family member meaning it is easy to keep an overview of everything.
There is also a groceries list which can be added to by all members of the family.
This is a great basic app for keeping track of tasks and rewarding yourself or family members.
Habit Bull
Habit Bull is the app for people who want a step up from a simple task organiser. It feels much more like a fitness app but is really great for tracking household tasks too.
It includes functions for monitoring your progress over time, so for example you can see a graph of how many days in a row you made the bed (seeing a daily streak rising over time is a great motivator to keep going and beat your personal best) as well as discussion boards where people can share their achievements and struggles. (Just a note – these boards contain discussion of some adult topics so be aware of that before diving in.)
The app also includes “inspirational quotes” which you may or may not find useful, and you can also sync the app with Google fit if you want to combine fitness into your daily routine.
I like the ability to set tasks for a number of days per week, allowing you to be realistic, for example “cook a meal 3 days a week” and also to track in terms of negatives such as “drink less than 3 cups of coffee today”.
I found this app a little less enjoyable than Our Home, but I would strongly recommend it to anyone with a competitive nature!
Epic Win
Epic Win is a bit of a wild card. It functions like a game where you complete tasks to gain points and level up.
Each task is entered as a “Quest” where you can set the repeat rate, “Epicness” of 50-300, and which category it falls under (Strength, Stamina, Intellect, Social, or Spirit). As you complete tasks your avatar grows and changes, and you progress through the map of the game, collecting “loot” as you go.
This is a great app if you want to have some fun at the same time as motivating yourself to complete tasks, but the inputting of tasks is rather clunky so I would recommend only using this for regular everyday tasks rather than to keep track of anything more complicated.
I enjoyed the story element of the game, wanting to get to the next version of my avatar and discover upcoming loot, and definitely felt motivated to do just one more task each day to get to the next level.
There are also a few other apps along the same lines as Epic Win, such as Habitica and Do It Now RPG.