Hellobee

I’m still really old fashioned in the sense that I like to put pen to paper and write things down by hand; then I find incredible fulfillment in marking things off as I go.  Just this year, I’ve started to break out of my old ways, and found several organization apps that have made life simpler for me.  Today, I want to introduce a home organization app that’s really worked for me!

Whether you’re busy entertaining your kid all day or logging long hours at the office, we can all agree that it’s hard to want to clean up house at the end of the day.  For the record – it’s not a complete pigsty around here – I do make sure the dishes are clean, and the toys put away, but the deep cleaning really falls by the wayside and I’ve had enough.

Since becoming a mom, I’ve implemented a few things that really helped kick my butt into gear, including meal planning and diligent budgeting.  I’ve been wanting to put together a chore schedule for some time now, but never got around to it.  You know how that goes, right??

I discovered an app called “Home Routines” that has all the features I’ve been looking for to help me with a cleaning schedule I can stick to.  It does cost $4.99, but I’m not quite ready to splurge on a cleaning lady, and had free iTunes credit, so I was okay with it.  I also didn’t find any free apps that met all my needs like this one did (let me know if you know of one!).

The first screen looks just like the screenshot above.  It tells you today’s date, then it breaks out sections for morning, evening, and weekly tasks.  This is where you’d input the regular tasks you’d do on a daily or weekly basis, such as take out the trash, wash the dishes, reconcile your budget, fold and put away laundry, etc.

Towards the end of the screen you’ll see that there is also something called a “Focus Zone.”  Your focus zone is the zone in your house you want to focus on that day.  Today, my focus zone is the Master bedroom and Master bathroom.

If I click into “Focus Zone 5,” it will bring me to my detailed list of things I need to do in that room.  On the bottom left hand corner, you’ll also see a clock icon with “15 minutes” next to it.  If you click that button, the clock will run down and an alarm will sound once those 15 minutes are up.  It’s been very effective in keeping me quick, efficient, and aware of my time!

You can choose how many zones you need in the “zone settings” section.  The default number is 5 zones, but you can have up to 7.  I divided up my zones based on clustered areas in my house according to what made the most sense.  For example, our designated play area is right next to the entryway and downstairs bathroom so I thought it’d be easy for me to clean all three of those areas at once.

The only thing I don’t like about this app is that there is no way of dragging and rearranging your list items.  If you want your lists in a particular order, you’ll have to delete and then input it in the order that you want.  In the same vein, it automatically assigns your zone to a day of the week, with no easy way to rearrange.  What if I don’t want to clean my master bedroom and bathroom on Friday and want to do it on Tuesday instead?  It’s an annoyance to manually input it all over again just because you don’t plan on following the assigned zone day.  Other than that, this is a great app.

A household chores schedule can be really overwhelming at first (or maybe it’s just me), but I found that it was most time consuming that first week.  After awhile you don’t have to deep clean every little thing so much as just do some light maintenance to keep the house in reasonably good shape.

How do you stay on top of your household chores?  Do you have other apps you’d recommend?